Courses
The best Tom Weiskopf golf courses
As a player, Tom Weiskopf won just one major championship while several of his contemporaries—Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Johnny Miller among others—were racking up multiple. That doesn’t take away from the fact that his 16 PGA Tour wins leave him among the best players of his generation, but, right or wrong, the Ohio native gets left out of most conversations about the all-time greats.
Coincidentally, there are some who characterize Weiskopf’s distinguished career as a golf course designer in a similar fashion. But even more so than as a player, it is unfair to discount his overall body of work. Weiskopf, who died in 2022 at age 79 from pancreatic cancer, was a prolific designer and earned numerous “Best Of” awards in Golf Digest’s rankings during his 40 years in the business. To the average golf fan, Weiskopf's design at the Stadium course at TPC Scottsdale is the most recognizable, as it hosts the PGA Tour's WM Phoenix Open. But Weiskopf's designs host other PGA Tour events, like the CJ Cup Byron Nelson at TPC Craig Ranch and the new Utah Championship, which is a new fall event this year hosted at Black Desert, which was the last course Weiskopf worked on before he passed away.
More From Golf Digest
Weiskopf and his design partner Jay Morrish were also the first Americans to design a golf course in Scotland, and Loch Lomond remains one of the best in the world, ranking 56th on our most recent World 100 Greatest list. Troon Country Club—named our Best New Private course in 1986, and Shadow Glen (more below) earned Best New Private in 1989, edging out one of their own collaborations, Forest Highlands Golf Club.
Scroll on for the complete ranking of the best Tom Weiskopf courses, and 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 be higher or lower on our rankings.
More From Golf Digest
From Golf Digest Architecture Editor emeritus Ron Whitten: The Tom Weiskopf-designed Forest Dunes in Michigan is a terrific layout on a terrific piece of property, with sand dunes deposited by the nearby Au Sable River and covered with mature pines. But it's not a unique piece of property. When I first played it, I was struck by how much Forest Dunes resembles a Texas course designed by Weiskopf's former partner, Jay Morrish. That course, Pine Dunes in Frankston, Texas, is built on much the same terrain, sand dunes covered in pines. Though they were working at the same time on their respective projects (Forest Dunes was completed in 2000 but didn't open until 2002; Pine Dunes opened in 2001), I don't think Weiskopf or Morrish had any idea that they were working on such similar courses, and I don't think they stole each other's ideas. But it's uncanny how they created kissing-cousin courses.
Click here for Whitten's complete review.
.jpg.rend.hgtvcom.861.574.suffix/1651164032300.jpeg)
More From Golf Digest
From Golf Digest Architecture Editor emeritus Ron Whitten: It was once said, probably first about California's Monterey Peninsula, that great golf courses breed great golf courses. That's certainly true of the foothills of the Rockies a half hour south of Denver, where The Ridge at Castle Pines North sits almost immediately next door to Sanctuary Golf Club and just to the north of The Country Club at Castle Pines, which in turn is bordered on its south by famed Castle Pines Golf Club. The Ridge, the only one of the four courses actually located in the town of Castle Pines (the others are in Castle Rock), is the only one of the four open for public play. (According to the city website, The Ridge is municipally owned, but privately managed by Troon Golf.) I'm not saying The Ridge is as great a golf course as Sanctuary or Castle Pines, both of which have resided on Golf Digest's list of America's 100 Greatest, or even quite as good as the Country Club at Castle Pines, one of Jack Nicklaus' relatively hidden gems.
For Whitten's complete review, click here.
More From Golf Digest
• • •
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!