Where to Play
Best Golf Courses in Naples & Southwest Florida
A private-club region with unusually good public golf.
Updated · November 12, 2026
Naples has a reputation for private golf, and it is deserved. Calusa Pines, The Concession and Gateway are all member-only, and the density of gated club golf here is higher than anywhere else on the Gulf coast. But the public and resort golf here is unusually good.
1. Tiburon
Two Greg Norman courses at the Ritz-Carlton. The Black is the original and the harder; the Gold is marginally gentler and hosts the CME Group Tour Championship.
Norman mixed idioms deliberately: stacked sod-wall bunkers borrowed from links golf sit alongside coquina waste areas that are entirely Floridian.
2. Saltleaf Golf Preserve
Saltleaf is Raymond Floyd's old Raptor Bay course, which he returned to rebuild in 2022 before it reopened under a new name. It was ranked sixth in Florida in 2023.
The signature is a drivable par-4 2nd, and there is a par-3 short course steps from the championship eighteen -- a pairing nothing else in southwest Florida offers.
3. Lely Resort
Two public eighteens with very different authors. Flamingo Island is Robert Trent Jones Sr. in his classic manner: big greens, heavy bunkering, length as the defense. Mustang is Lee Trevino, longer on paper but wider, with more recovery available.
4. The private tier
Worth knowing about even if you cannot play them. Calusa Pines was built by Hurdzan and Fry on ground that does not behave like Naples, with real elevation and pine. The Nest in Bonita Springs — Pelican's Nest until the rebrand — is the region's 36-hole Tom Fazio club, and its two eighteens are different rounds rather than two halves of one: the Gator is the longer and higher-rated at par 73, while the Hurricane gives up 187 yards from the tips and takes the steeper slope in exchange — 140 against the Gator's 130, which is the number that matters to everyone who is not scratch.
A note on Old Corkscrew
Old Corkscrew, Jack Nicklaus's homesite-free course in Estero, used to lead this list. Daily golf there has ended, and the property is being rebuilt as Pandion Club, a private, golf-only club with a new Kyle Phillips course targeted to open in November 2027. It will not reopen to the public.