Ranking the 10 Best PGA Championship Golf Courses
There's nothing like a golf course.
No venues in professional sports blend striking visuals with historical significance, architectural merit and competitive challenge quite like the 72-hole layouts that host world-class tournaments, particularly major championships.
It's surely the case for the PGA Championship, which begins Thursday at Quail Hollow, a 7,626-yard, par-71 club in Charlotte, North Carolina, that hosted the PGA in 2017, the Presidents Cup in 2022 and is the annual home of the Wells Fargo Championship.
Based on things like course difficulty, aesthetic beauty and memorable moments from the tournament, the B/R golf team embraced the major week buzz and put together a 10-to-1 ranking of the best courses to host the PGA Championship since its inception in 1916.
Take a look at what we came up with and drop a thought in the app comments.
10. Medinah Country Club (Medinah, Ill.)
1 of 10
Founded in the early 1920s as a country retreat from the hustle and bustle of nearby Chicago, the Medinah Country Club has hosted two PGAs among its eight majors, both of which were won by Tiger Woods in 1999 and 2006.
Its grades for the championship layout on Course No. 3 sometimes waver, but the level of drama that has come from the stretch drives of the events there warrant a top 10 inclusion.
9. Atlanta Athletic Club (Johns Creek, Ga.)
2 of 10
Less-celebrated winners have been the norm about an hour northeast of downtown Atlanta, where Larry Nelson (1981), David Toms (2001) and Keegan Bradley (2011) captured the Wanamaker Trophy on the AAC's Highlands Course.
For Toms and Bradley, in fact, it's been the lone major title. For those who fancy a bigger screen, some of the golf scenes in 2004's Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius were filmed at the club.
8. Kiawah Island Golf Resort (Kiawah Island, S.C.)
3 of 10
Take a Pete Dye-designed layout and drop it within eye and earshot of the Atlantic Ocean and you have yourself a golfer's paradise. Dye's Ocean Course has been the site of Rory McIlroy (2012) and Phil Mickelson (2021) victories in the PGA Championship, and it'll host the event again in 2031.
Golf Digest, citing its slopes, bunkers and Bermuda grass, deemed it America's toughest course in 2010.
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7. Winged Foot Golf Club (Mamaroneck, N.Y.)
4 of 10
The design nerds and history buffs go particularly crazy about Winged Foot, a 100-plus-year-old facility in Westchester County, about 25 miles northeast of midtown Manhattan.
The contoured greens on the four par 4s that complete the West Course test short games and psyches, and the facility was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2024. Davis Love III's PGA win there in 1997 is his lone major.
6. Pebble Beach Golf Links (Pebble Beach, Calif.)
5 of 10
If iconic scenery is your thing, there's no place quite like Pebble Beach. The public facility hugs the coastline of the Monterey Peninsula and provides stunning views of the Carmel Bay as it opens to the Pacific Ocean.
Golf Digest gave its No. 1 course in America blessing in 2001, and the trivia buffs will recall that Lanny Wadkins beat Gene Littler there to win the 1977 PGA in the first-ever sudden-death major playoff.
5. Oakland Hills Country Club (Bloomfield Hills, Mich.)
6 of 10
It's hardly hyperbolic to consider Oakland Hills a golf time capsule. The game's best players have come to suburban Detroit nine times in search of a major win, including PGA Championships in 1972, 1979 and 2008 and six U.S. Opens.
The Robert Trent Jones design is lauded by those in the know for its routing—how holes are laid out across a piece of land—and its greens, creating a haven for target golf.
4. Oakmont Country Club (Oakmont, Pa.)
7 of 10
No matter your publication of choice, there's near consensus that the knee-rattler in suburban Pittsburgh is one of the most difficult golf courses in the country. Its two named bunkers—Church Pews and Big Mouth—are iconic elements as is the section of the Pennsylvania Turnpike that separates several holes from the rest of the course.
The most recent of three PGAs played there was 47 years ago, but there have been four U.S. Opens since, and another will tee off next month.
3. Southern Hills Country Club (Tulsa, Okla.)
8 of 10
If the PGA decides on a permanent home, there's a case to be made for Tulsa's Southern Hills, which has hosted the event a record five times and will make it six in 2032.
It's a subtle and simple setup that requires successful players to move the ball from side to side while battling temperatures that can soar past 100 degrees. Only one of its five PGA winners (Nick Price, 1994) has bettered 8-under par.
2. Baltusrol Golf Club (Springfield, N.J.)
9 of 10
Phil Mickelson moved the memorable moments needle in North (Central) Jersey in 2005, picking up his second major and first PGA Championship by getting up and down from 247 yards for a clutch birdie on the 72nd hole that beat Thomas Bjorn by a shot.
Jimmy Walker won his lone major when the event returned in 2016 and the Lower Course has also hosted seven U.S. Opens and four U.S. Amateurs.
1. Oak Hill Country Club (Rochester, N.Y.)
10 of 10
The dear, departed Rochester Times-Union newspaper revealed the secret of Oak Hill in the early 1940s, putting up a $5,000 purse that drew rivals Walter Hagen, Sam Snead, Ben Hogan and Gene Sarazen, among others.
Snead won the event and birthed the Donald Ross-designed masterpiece's mystique by saying "This course is certainly one of the finest I have ever seen, fit for either an Open or a PGA.”
Eighty-plus-years later, it's hosted three U.S. Opens and four PGA Championships, including the 2023 edition won by Brooks Koepka.
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