Where to Play
Best Golf Courses in Palm Beach County
The densest golf county in America, and the courses you can actually book.
Palm Beach County has more golf per square mile than anywhere else in the United States, and most of it you cannot play. That is the honest starting point. Seminole, Broken Sound, The Polo Club, Addison Reserve and St. Andrews are all private in the strict sense, and no amount of planning gets you on without a member.
What is left is still the best public golf in Florida.
1. PGA National Resort
Five courses on one property in Palm Beach Gardens, and the only place in the region where a visitor can play championship golf without knowing anybody. The Champion is the one the tour plays, built by the Fazios in 1981 for the 1983 Ryder Cup and reworked repeatedly by Jack Nicklaus since. Water is in play on all but two holes.
The rest of the property is deliberately varied. The Palmer is the most forgiving, The Fazio sits in the middle, and The Match is the odd one out: Andy Staples cut the entire playing area to fairway height and built it around match play, which removes the usual penalty for missing a green.
Green fees run $150 to $500 depending on course and season.
2. The Park, West Palm Beach
The Park is the most interesting thing to happen to Florida public golf in a decade. Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner built it on old municipal ground with accessibility as the brief, and it shows: wide corridors, difficulty concentrated in the greens rather than in forced carries.
West Palm Beach residents play at a discount and juniors for twenty dollars. There is also the Lit 9, a floodlit par-3 nine. A course of this pedigree priced for the city it sits in is genuinely rare.
3. The Breakers
Two courses, and they could not be less alike. The Ocean Course is the oldest golf course in Florida, laid out by Alex Findlay in 1897 and still on the same ground beside the hotel. Roughly a hundred mules dredged the lagoons and pushed up the mounding, which is why it still rolls the way it does. Under 5,800 yards.
Breakers West is the serious test at 7,104 yards, reshaped twice by Rees Jones and lengthened for the modern game.
4. Emerald Dunes and Trump International
Emerald Dunes is where Tom Fazio, unable to find elevation on flat Palm Beach ground, simply built it: the SuperDune rises fifty feet and holds three tees, three greens and a waterfall inside one feature.
Trump International runs just under 7,500 yards, with Jim Fazio moving serious earth to manufacture the interest.
5. The county courses
This is where Palm Beach quietly beats the rest of Florida. Okeeheelee is 27 holes in three interchangeable nines for under fifty dollars, backing onto a national wildlife refuge. Osprey Point is another 27, an Arthur Hills design named the number one place to play in Palm Beach by Golf Digest. Southwinds, Boca Raton Municipal and The Links at Boynton Beach fill out a public network no other Florida county matches.
Boca Municipal carries a 148 slope from the tips, which is steeper than most of the private clubs above it on this list.
Making a day of it
Palm Beach to Miami is about an hour, and plenty of golfers do the drive for dinner. If you are extending the trip, MyRSVP's Miami guide covers the dining and nightlife side.
Browse every Palm Beach course for scorecards, green fees and access.