by Harry Burlington

Created on: December 16, 2011   Last Updated: December 20, 2011

Listed below are the for best public golf courses in America, listed by Golf Magazine for 2008, 2009, 2010 combined.  Featured below are four of America’s best public golf courses.  These courses were designed with challenging fairways, oceans adjacent to the 18th green, and combining two golf courses into one so winds can play as a factor in the golfers game.

Pacific Dunes –This public golf course was designed by Tom Doak in 2001 and is located in Bandon, Oregon. The following are the course specifications.  Type: Public Resort, Par: 71, Yardage: 6557, Course Rating: 73, Slope Rating: 133, Holes: 18, Grass: Fescue.  

Pacific Dunes golf course uses the natural lay out of the land and golfers may be hitting golf balls over and around natural crevasses in the fairway that have been there for thousands of years. 

Pebble Beach –This world renowned golf course was designed by Jack Neville and Douglas Grant in 1919 and is located in Pebble Beach, California.  Since 1919, the phenomenally difficult challenges that Pebble Beach Public Golf Course provides and has hosted the most elite tournaments in all of golf.  Pebble Beach Public Golf Course has held the annual AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, the 1972, 1982, 1992, 2000, and 2010 U.S. Open Championships.

Whistling Straits –This public golf course was designed by Pete Dye in 1998 and is located in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.  Whistling Straits gets its name due to its location along two miles of Lake Michigan shoreline.  The fairways are lined with shore rock and are constantly howling with wind down each fairway.

Kiawah Island –This public golf course was created by Pete Dye in 1991 and is located in Kiawah Island, South Carolina. Kiawah Island has hosted the 2007 Senior PGA and is scheduled to host the 2012 PGA Championships. Kiawah Island public golf course will become only the fourth course that will host each of the PGA of America’s major championships.  It is compared to the golf courses across the Atlantic Ocean as being similar in how the winds affect the course, outside of England and Ireland.  An interesting fact about this course is there are no winds that prevail on the fairways or the whole course for that matter.  Pete Dye’s brilliance is showed here at Kiawah Island public golf course because he took the prevailing wind situation and used it to his advantage.  Pete Dye designed two courses and made them into one with Easterly winds and Westerly winds.

Works Citied:

Golf Magazine 2008, 2009, and 2010 combined Annual Best Public Golf Courses in America

http://www.publicgolfcourses.net/top-100-golf-course s/golf-magazine-top-100-public-golf-courses.php

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