Where to Play
Best Golf Courses in Naples & Southwest Florida
A private-club region with unusually good public golf.
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 courses in this region are unusually good, and two of them are among the best in the state.
1. Old Corkscrew
Old Corkscrew is a Jack Nicklaus course with no houses on it. In southwest Florida that is close to unheard of, and the absence of real estate is the design: dense oak and pine enclose the whole routing.
The greens are the point. Fast, heavily undulating, and set as much as twenty feet above rolling fairways, which makes club selection the whole game. It reached seventh in Florida rankings and has held a top-30 place for a decade. Public.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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 defence. Mustang is Lee Trevino, longer on paper but wider, with more recovery available.
5. 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 Concession is named for Jack Nicklaus conceding Tony Jacklin's putt at the 1969 Ryder Cup, and carries a 155 slope.