Where to Play
Best Golf Courses in Jacksonville & Ponte Vedra
The most recognisable hole in golf, and the first island green ever built.
Northeast Florida is the state's oldest golf country, and it carries two things nowhere else in Florida has: the most recognisable hole in the sport, and the first island green ever built. Nine courses in the region, and the concentration around Ponte Vedra Beach is the reason people fly into Jacksonville.
1. TPC Sawgrass
The Players Stadium Course is the first stadium course ever built, and the reason the phrase exists. Commissioner Deane Beman asked Pete Dye for a course that favoured no particular player and could be watched, so Dye and Alice Dye made spectator viewing a design input rather than an afterthought.
No two consecutive holes run in the same direction, which keeps the wind constantly changing. The par-3 17th and its island green is the most recognised hole in golf.
Dye's Valley is the one you can more easily get a tee time on, and it is a proper Dye test in its own right.
2. Ponte Vedra Inn & Club
The Ocean Course was built in 1928 without construction equipment. Roughly a hundred mules dredged the lagoons and pushed up the mounding that still gives the course its movement.
Its ninth hole is credited as the first island green ever built -- fifty years before Dye's 17th down the road. The Lagoon is the shorter, gentler companion, with water on eleven holes.
3. World Golf Village
King & Bear is the only course Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus ever designed together, and it is public. Their contrasting instincts are visible in it: Scottish-links ideas alongside modern American ones, with lakes edged in native coquina rock.
Slammer & Squire is named for Sam Snead and Gene Sarazen, who consulted on it, and was ranked second in the United States for course conditions in 2022.
4. Amelia Island
Oak Marsh is Pete Dye routing through tidal marsh and live oak, where the marsh edge itself is the hazard. Long Point is Tom Fazio given a coastal site with genuine variety -- ocean dune, marsh and interior woodland in one routing. The Golf Club of Amelia Island is the public option, designed by two tour winners.
How to plan it
Sawgrass and Ponte Vedra are four miles apart, so a two-day trip covers the historically important golf without a drive. Add World Golf Village if you have a third day; it is twenty-five minutes south and the King & Bear is a genuine one-off.
Browse every Jacksonville course.