Where to Play
Best Golf Courses in Orlando
Fifteen courses within half an hour of the parks, and the handful that justify the trip.
Orlando has more golf than any other city in Florida, and most of it sits within half an hour of the theme parks. That proximity is the reason it works: you can play a genuinely serious course in the morning and still make a dinner reservation on International Drive. The catch is that the quality range here is enormous, and the courses that market hardest to visitors are not always the ones worth your money.
Here is what is actually worth playing, and how to get on each one.
1. Bay Hill Club & Lodge
Bay Hill is the one everybody knows, and for good reason. Dick Wilson routed it in 1961, but the course played today is Arnold Palmer's, shaped over decades by a man who owned the club and treated it as a personal project. It hosts the Arnold Palmer Invitational each March.
Access is the hard part. Play is limited to members and to guests staying at the Lodge, so the round has to be built around a stay rather than booked on a whim. If you are planning a trip around one course in Orlando, this is the one to plan around.
2. Orange County National
Two eighteens on 900 acres with no housing anywhere on the property, which in central Florida is close to unheard of. Panther Lake is the more varied of the pair, crossing rolling meadow, native pine and wetland with elevation changes of up to sixty feet. Crooked Cat is the links half: wider, more exposed, and routed so the wind never comes from the same direction twice.
Green fees run roughly $55 to $120 depending on season, which for two courses of this standard is the best value in the region. Both are fully public.
3. The Reunion Resort trio
Reunion is the only property in the world with courses by Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus side by side. The Nicklaus is the longest at 7,219 yards; the Watson sits in the middle and rewards a player who can move the ball along the ground; the Palmer Legacy is the shortest but sits on the most broken ground, with elevation changes of up to fifty feet.
Play is for resort guests and members. Staying on site is the straightforward route.
4. Disney's Magnolia and Palm
The Magnolia is the long one at 7,505 yards with a 142 slope, and it hosted the PGA Tour's Walt Disney World Golf Classic. The Palm is shorter, tighter and more strategic, reworked by Arnold Palmer in 2013.
Both are fully public and both carry more wildlife than you expect. On the Magnolia, deer, osprey and alligators are routine, and a flock of wild turkeys has stopped tournament play more than once.
5. Ritz-Carlton Grande Lakes and Waldorf Astoria
Two resort courses built on the same principle: keep the land and build around it. Greg Norman routed the Ritz-Carlton along the headwaters of the Everglades and preserved the existing ponds, wetlands and live oak, work that earned Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary certification. Rees Jones did something similar at the Waldorf Astoria, using the land's contours and drawing on classic courses, some of them a century old.
Both are semi-private with resort access, and both are more forgiving than their price suggests.
6. Shingle Creek and Celebration
Shingle Creek runs along the creek that feeds the Everglades and has what amounts to its own exit off the Beeline. The Arnold Palmer Design Company rebuilt it in 2016 around strategy rather than length, with drivable par 4s sitting alongside long ones.
Celebration is the only course Robert Trent Jones Sr. and Jr. designed together, built to their shared rule that every hole should be a hard par and an easy bogey.
Both are public, both sit in the $45 to $135 range, and both are easier to book at short notice than anything above.
How to plan it
If you have three days, the sensible shape is Orange County National for the value, one Reunion course for the signature experience, and Disney's Magnolia for the history. If you have one day and want the best golf you can simply book, play Panther Lake in the morning and Crooked Cat in the afternoon.
Browse every Orlando course for scorecards, green fees and access details.