Page 44 - 2014 Travel Guide to California

CA.GOLF
BY ROBERT KAUFMAN
California’s
10 Best Public Golf Courses
Dramatic landscapes and top architects create magnificent places to swing away
Do you prefer a uniform field for every
sport? Then go compete on a baseball dia-
Robert Trent Jones, Sr. & Jr., Arnold Palmer
and Tom Fazio.
NORTHERN
CALIFORNIA GOLF
CordeValle Golf Club, above, stakes
its claim to the top tier of Northern
California golf courses along with
Pebble Beach, Spyglass, Pasatiempo
and Bayonet, but there are other
excellent places to play, including
Half Moon Bay Golf Links, San
Francisco’s Harding Park and
Presidio, San Ramon’s Bridges,
Livermore’s Course at Wente
Vineyards, Napa Valley’s Silverado
and Sonoma’s Sea Ranch. For
more information on these areas,
see pages 72-91.
mond, a football field, a hockey arena, or a
basketball or tennis court. Better yet, take up
bowling. These games provide a variety of
challenges but their venues are identical
inside the lines. Not golf. This is a sport that
thrives on an assortment of landscapes to
test competitors and there is nowhere on the
planet with as wide a variety of geographic
settings, combined with year-round climate
conducive for playing golf, as California.
Since the first golf course in the state
was established in Vallejo at Mare Island GC
(1892), California has been a heavenly
canvas for a who’s-who of course architects
to have stamped their mark, from old-
school designers like Alister MacKenzie,
A.W. Tillinghast and Willie Watson to
modern-day shapers like Jack Nicklaus,
California is now home to 920 golf
courses (according to the National Golf
Foundation, December 2012) consisting of
iconic and hidden gems. Of this total, 636
are open for public play and represent a
broad range of diversity, value and quality.
The good news is there are plenty of
options to choose from. The bad news is
there are too many choices!
To further debate over which are the
best public golf venues, the following is a
selection of ten California dreamin’
courses (from south to north) every golfer
should experience. Half the list represents
courses where the pros play, and with the
Pacific Ocean as one the state’s greatest
geographic assets, it’s not surprising to
find half the list hugging the coast.
42 2014 T R AV E L G U I D E TO C A L I F O R N I A
ROBERT KAUFMAN. OPPOSITE TOP: SEBASTIEN BUREL/SHUTTERSTOCK