The 15 Best Golf Courses in Oregon

The unanimous No. 1 in Oregon, and it is not close. Golf Digest has ranked Pacific Dunes first in the state since 2003 and second among all public courses in America, and Golfweek and GOLF Magazine put it top here too. Doak routed the holes so they seem to emerge from the blowout dunes rather than sit on them - rumpled fairways, grotesque and glorious bunkers, four par 3s on the back nine, and a closing stretch that runs along the cliff edge above the surf. This is the course that made Bandon a pilgrimage and modern minimalism a movement.

The connoisseur's Bandon favourite. Trails begins in open dunes, climbs into a cathedral of coastal forest, and returns to the meadow and dunes for the finish - a journey through three landscapes in eighteen holes, and the finest inland round at the resort. GOLF Magazine ranks it second in the state, Golfweek agrees, and golfers who value architecture over ocean views quietly put it first. On a calm, grey morning in the trees, it might be the most peaceful great round in America.

A vast, wind-swept homage to C.B. Macdonald, the father of American golf architecture: template holes - Redan, Biarritz, Road, Short - rebuilt at heroic scale on the bluffs north of Pacific Dunes, with some of the largest greens on earth and the lone Ghost Tree watching over the 3rd. It is a walking museum that plays like a championship, and the widest, wildest canvas at the resort. First-timers grin for four straight hours.

The original - the course that started the revolution in 1999 and the Oregon course in our national top 10. Kidd, then a little-known young Scot, shaped gorse-lined fairways along the cliffs and proved Americans would cross an ocean's worth of effort for true links golf at home. Why fourth at its own resort? Because the three siblings ahead of it here are that good - and none of them is in the national list, so no ranking order is crossed. Play it first on any Bandon trip; everything else is measured against it. Read our full course review.

The newest of the five, opened in 2020 on the bluff land north of Old Macdonald: a full mile of oceanfront, green after green strung along the bluff edge, and not a single bunker on the property - the cliffs, the wind and the contours do all the defending. It is the most elemental golf at Bandon, closer to golf's origins than almost anything built this century, and the perfect final round of a trip: nothing but you, the fescue and the Pacific.

The most original idea in Oregon golf: a reversible course. Hixson's Hankins and Craddock layouts share fairways and greens on a working ranch in the high desert near Seneca - 36 holes woven through 27 greens - with the direction of play alternating by day. At near 5,000 feet the ball flies forever, the fairways run wide and firm, and the silence is total. Stay two days at The Retreat and you play the same ground as two entirely different courses.

Central Oregon's championship standard since 1995: a heathland-style Cupp design across 600 acres of wetlands and woodlands, with the Little Deschutes River crossing the course again and again on its way through the round. Crosswater hosted the senior major The Tradition from 2007 to 2010 and the PGA Professional Championship four times. The honest access note: play is for members and Sunriver Resort guests - book the resort stay, and one of America's most decorated resort courses is yours.

Portland's championship public course. Cupp preserved the wetlands and meadows beneath the Tualatin Mountains when Pumpkin Ridge opened in 1992, and Ghost Creek - the public half of the property - hosted the Nike Tour Championship a year later. Undulating fairways, thoughtful bunkering and the creek that gives the course its name run through a round that feels a world away from the city, thirty minutes from downtown. Its private sister, Witch Hollow, is not ranked here - Ghost Creek needs no help.

The other direction. Craddock plays the Silvies ground in reverse of Hankins, and the trick is that it works completely - different angles, different decisions, a different course standing on the same fairways. Golf Digest's panel ranks it 13th in the state in its own right. The two-day Silvies double - Hankins one way, Craddock the other - is the most fun puzzle in Oregon golf, with a ranch retreat, and its famous goat-caddie short course, waiting after the round.

Jack Nicklaus in the high desert, and a showcase for the playful side of his design work: the Nicklaus Course opened as a private club in 2004, then opened its tee sheet to the public and Juniper Preserve resort guests - and it has been a fixture on Golf Digest's 100 Greatest Public list ever since. The back nine, carved through an ancient lava flow with rock outcrops and a waterfall by the 13th green, is the show. Its Fazio sibling stays members-only, and unranked here; the Nicklaus is the one to book.