Stanley Cup Playoffs
The 6 best hockey cities for golf, according to former NHL players
Game 7, Stanley Cup Final. Perhaps Masters Sunday and a U.S. Open on Father's Day are golf's only match for hockey's most exciting night, but even then, it's a tough battle. Yet with the NHL season coming to a close, puckheads will turn their attention outdoors this summer to play a little golf. Maybe you're already planning your trip to see a game during the 2024-25 season and wondering if golf should be part of those plans. And to that we’d say: Of course!
Though some of the best golf can be found near popular NHL stops such as New York, Boston or Chicago, where golf is unlikely for much of the NHL season, there are a number of cities where your sticks should, in fact, travel with you. We polled a handful of former NHL players, including Jeremy Roenick, Darren Pang, Brad May and John-Michael Liles, for their favorite warm-weather hockey cities for golf. Based on their input and our editors’ insights, we’ve put together a guide of the best cities for golf on the NHL schedule.
Be sure to click through to each individual course page for bonus photography and reviews from our course panelists. We also encourage you to leave your own ratings on the courses you’ve played … so you can make your case for why a course should’ve been included in this guide or future ones.
More Golf Digest Course Guides
6. Tampa Bay Lightning
A golf trip to Tampa can be as ambitious or convenient as you’d like. If you’re looking to play the best courses in the region and you're willing to drive 70 minutes, head inland to Streamsong Resort, where there are three courses ranked on our 100 Greatest Public list. One of the most highly anticipated course openings in 2024 is Cabot Citrus Farms, just over an hour north of Tampa, where there are two redesigned layouts, a 10-hole course and an 11-hole par-3 course. If you’re looking for options closer to the city when headed to a Tampa Bay Lightning game, check out these courses.
When arriving at Cabot Citrus Farms you’ll understand why Ben Cowan-Dewar sought this property for decades. A prehistoric ridge in Brookville, Fla., created rolling topography on sandy soil—a golf developer’s dream. In the early 1990s, World Woods opened with two acclaimed public courses and what was once the world’s largest driving range that hosted Tiger Woods commercial shoots. But playing conditions had deteriorated at World Woods. Its Pine Barrens course, once the 75th-best course in Golf Digest's ranking of America’s 100 Greatest Courses, quickly fell off that list in 2013. Cowan-Dewar inquired about the property with the previous owner, Japanese businessman Yukihisa Inoue, in 2014 and 2016, to no avail. Others also tried to buy it. Finally, as COVID-19 restricted travel, Cowan-Dewar chatted with Inoue through translators over Zoom and negotiated to purchase the property in 2021—giving his burgeoning Cabot resort and real estate empire its first U.S. offering.
That decades-long courtship has now paid off with Cabot Citrus Farms’ Karoo course, which opened this winter. Kyle Franz—known for his meticulous remodeling of North Carolina Sandhills courses such as Mid Pines, Pine Needles and Southern Pines—transformed the existing Pine Barrens course with Karoo, the first course to open. He reversed playing corridors in some cases, completely changing what was in the ground in many cases.
You see that immediately on the first hole—a massive double green for the first and sixth holes. Franz dubs this design style as “adventure golf.” Eleven holes boast double fairways—and the 18th has a triple fairway. “George Thomas was doing massive double fairways 100 years ago,” Franz explains. “So this was a really fun way to make people think a little differently while still staying rooted in good, classical architecture.”
The modern trend of pushing width and options is amplified with “super width” here, with some fairways over 100 yards wide, though strategy is still present—as large, exposed sand hazards often split the playing areas. Choosing the ideal side of the fairway will often open up an easier approach. —Stephen Hennessey
For a complete review of the newly opened Karoo course, click here.
5. Dallas Stars
Coming off a Western Conference Finals appearance in 2023 and 2024, now is a great time to be a Dallas Stars fan. If you’re heading to see a Stars game at the American Airlines Center, there are plenty of great options in the DFW area to get a few rounds in. If you stay at the Four Seasons in Irving, you can play the longtime PGA Tour host TPC Las Colinas. Stevens Park, a quality municipal just outside downtown Dallas, is the most convenient option if you’re heading to a game.
From Golf Digest Architecture Editor emeritus Ron Whitten: Stevens Park Golf Course, a municipal operation in a revitalized area of Oak Cliff just southwest of downtown Dallas, isn’t exactly a preservation of the past, but a celebration of it. The original design was by a pair of club pros, Jack Burke, father of 1955 Masters champ Jack Burke Jr., and Syd Cooper, father of Lighthorse Harry Cooper, one of those “best players never to have won a major.” The course was built on land donated by Walter A. Stevens and his sister Annie Laurie in memory of their parents, Dr. and Mrs. John H. Stevens.
From Golf Digest Architecture Editor emeritus Ron Whitten: A decade after golf architect Tripp Davis created one of the finest replica courses in the country, The Tribute Golf Club on the shoreline of Lake Lewisville north of Dallas, he returned and built another 18 adjacent to it called Old American Golf Club. The two have same architect, the same owner, a shared clubhouse and a shared shoreline, but they differ in many respects. The Tribute, a compact core layout with returning nines, duplicates famous British golf holes. Old American, a residential development course laid out in loop design—nine holes out and nine holes back, to maximize holes along the lakefront—was inspired by National Golf Links and Shinnecock Hills, so it also looks linkslike, with some scattered trees. But there are no template holes on this 18. Old American is a Tripp Davis original. As befits a design by one of the more talented golfers among the golf architecture community, it features options and bunkers galore and holes that demand oodles of local knowledge. When it opened in 2010, Tripp told a reporter that Old American was, "the most strategic course I've done." Now over a decade later, I suspect he still feels that way.
4. Carolina Hurricanes
It’d be a crime to keep the Carolina Hurricanes off this list. PNC Arena, often called "the loudest house in the NHL," is just an hour’s drive from Pinehurst, America’s golf mecca, and an even closer commute to three of the state’s most famous colleges: NC State UNC, and Duke. Play a quick 18 at their university courses before attending a hockey game or even an ACC basketball game—another bucket-list event.
More Golf Digest Course Guides
3. Florida Panthers
You don’t have to be an expert travel agent to recognize that an NHL arena in Florida belongs on this list. But the amount of decent public golf near Amerant Bank Arena actually surprised us. Fort Lauderdale isn’t a mecca of great public golf, but Miami is very doable from Sunrise, Fla., again, if you time it right with traffic. There are some great, historic tracks and luxurious resorts worth visiting that are also under an hour from the arena of the two-time defending Eastern Conference champs.
More Golf Digest Course Guides
2. San Jose Sharks
San Jose is one of our favorite places to fly into for golf. You’re about an hour away from great golf in nearly every direction. It’s just a little over an hour to Pebble Beach, which is always worth trying to get to, and courses near San Francisco or Oakland are both doable if you time it right with traffic. Brad May and Pang both called this one of their favorite cities for golf on the road. Even if you’re looking to play your golf closer to the SAP Center for a San Jose Sharks game, you have a number of great options.
1. Vegas Golden Knights
With the Arizona Coyotes moving to Salt Lake City for the 2024-25 season, Las Vegas takes our top spot for the best hockey city for golf. T-Mobile Arena is one of the best new sports venues in America, and we'd highly recommend parlaying a trip to watch the Golden Knights with some golf (if not to just get away from the tables!). Though high-roller jaunts Shadow Creek and Wynn Golf Club are likely to be the first courses on any list of Vegas golf, we've chosen to highlight some more affordable options that are among our favorites around Sin City.
_Credit Dave Burk.jpg.rend.hgtvcom.861.574.suffix/1668111742331.jpeg)
_Credit Could be the Day.jpg.rend.hgtvcom.861.574.suffix/1668826263620.jpeg)
More Golf Digest Course Guides
_Credit Dave Burk.jpg.rend.hgtvcom.406.271.suffix/1668111742331.jpeg)
• • •
Explore Golf Digest's new Course Reviews section where you can submit a star rating and evaluation on all the courses you’ve played. We've collected tens of thousands of reviews from our course-ranking panelists to deliver a premium experience, which includes course rankings, experts' opinions, bonus course photography, videos and much more. Check it out here!