courses-travel
The Most Beautiful Golf Courses in the World
A tour of the most beautiful golf courses on earth, from clifftop links to alpine fairways, and how to keep the view long after the round with a print of your own.
Golf is the only sport that hands you a landscape as part of the deal. You walk four hours through it, you frame your best shots against it, and long after you have forgotten your score you still remember the way the light sat on the water at the turn. Some courses take that idea and run with it. They are built on cliffs, threaded through dunes or perched under mountains, and the golf almost becomes secondary to the view.
This is a tour of the most beautiful golf courses in the world. It leans on the classics that photographers, painters and travelling golfers keep coming back to, and it favours places where the scenery is genuinely part of the round rather than a backdrop you glimpse from the clubhouse. If a course you have played, or dream of playing, makes this list, it might be one worth keeping on your wall. More on that at the end. For a companion read, see our guide to bucket-list golf courses every golfer should play once.
What makes a golf course beautiful
Beauty on a golf course is not just a pretty view. The courses that stay with you tend to share a few things.
A landscape the golf lives inside. The best scenery is not looked at from a distance, it is played through. Think fairways that follow a coastline, greens cut into dunes, or tee shots that ask you to carry a ravine.
Contrast and drama. Water against rock, green turf against pale sand, manicured lines against wild gorse. The eye loves an edge, and great courses are full of them.
A sense of place. A course should feel like it could only exist where it is. Scottish links, Californian cliffs and New Zealand headlands each look like nowhere else, and that identity is a big part of why they are worth travelling for.
The score fades within a week. The view stays for a lifetime.
The most beautiful golf courses in the world
These are courses celebrated the world over for their setting as much as their design. The list mixes hallowed private clubs with resort and public courses you can actually book, because beauty should not be gated behind a membership. They are in no strict order, since ranking a cliff against a mountain is a fool's errand.
Stunning golf courses worth travelling for
Pebble Beach Golf Links, California, USA
Learn morePerhaps the most photographed stretch of golf on earth. The middle holes hug the cliffs above Carmel Bay, and the closing run back along the Pacific is the stuff of daydreams. It is a public course, so with planning and budget, ordinary golfers really can play it.
Cypress Point Club, California, USA
A short drive from Pebble Beach and even more private, Cypress Point is revered for the way Alister MacKenzie routed it through forest, dune and coastline. Its clifftop par threes over the crashing Pacific are among the most admired holes anywhere.
The Old Course at St Andrews, Scotland
Learn moreThe home of golf. It is not dramatic in the clifftop sense, but the low, rumpled links, the shared fairways, the deep pot bunkers and the Swilcan Bridge carry more history than any course on the planet. Beauty here is about atmosphere and heritage.
Cape Kidnappers, Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand
A Tom Doak design set on fingers of farmland that run out toward sheer cliffs high above the sea. Several holes appear to fall off the edge of the world, with nothing beyond the green but ocean and sky.
Fairmont Banff Springs, Alberta, Canada
Golf under the Canadian Rockies, with the Bow River winding through and the grand old castle hotel presiding over it all. The mountain backdrop is so constant that it is hard to keep your eye on the ball, and few would blame you.
Old Head Golf Links, Kinsale, Ireland
Learn moreBuilt on a diamond-shaped promontory that juts out into the Atlantic, all but surrounded by water. Holes play along cliff edges hundreds of feet above the sea, and sea mist can roll in to make the whole place feel otherworldly.
Cabot Cliffs, Nova Scotia, Canada
A modern links on the west coast of Cape Breton, routed along bluffs, beaches and clifftops above the Gulf of St Lawrence. Its clifftop par threes and constantly changing coastal views have made it a firm favourite in barely more than a decade.
Kauri Cliffs, Northland, New Zealand
On the North Island, with holes strung along cliffs above the Pacific and views out to the islands of the Bay of Islands. Pair it with Cape Kidnappers on a New Zealand trip and you have two of the most scenic rounds imaginable.
Playing a private club
Several of the most beautiful courses, such as Cypress Point, are private and effectively only playable as a guest of a member. Do not let that put you off the list. Plenty of the world's most stunning golf, including Pebble Beach, Old Head and both New Zealand cliff courses, is open to resort or public play if you plan ahead.
Beautiful golf beyond the famous names
The headline courses deserve their fame, but breathtaking golf is far more widespread than the usual top-ten lists suggest. The links coast of the British Isles and Ireland is dense with beauty, from the dunes of the north-west of Ireland to the wild Scottish Highlands. For a deeper look, see our guide to the best links courses in the UK and Ireland.
The southern hemisphere holds its own too. Australia's sandbelt and its dramatic coastal courses are a world of their own, which we cover in Australia's most scenic golf courses. Desert golf in Arizona and the Middle East offers a different kind of beauty again, all sculpted fairways against raw rock and sand. And the great heathland courses south of London prove that inland golf, framed by heather, silver birch and pine, can be every bit as striking as the coast.
You do not need a passport to find it, either. Chances are there is a hole near you, lit up on a summer evening, that stops you in your tracks. Beauty in golf is not only about the famous cliffs. It is about the places that mean something to you, and those are often the ones most worth remembering.
The most beautiful golf courses: common questions
What is the most beautiful golf course in the world?
There is no single answer, since it depends on the kind of scenery you love. Pebble Beach is the most famous for coastal drama, the Old Course at St Andrews for history and atmosphere, and Cape Kidnappers for sheer clifftop spectacle. Any of them has a strong claim.
Can amateur golfers play these courses?
Many of them, yes. Pebble Beach, Old Head, Banff Springs, Cabot Cliffs, Cape Kidnappers and Kauri Cliffs all welcome resort or public play if you book ahead. A few, such as Cypress Point, are private and generally require playing as a member's guest.
When is the best time to see these courses at their best?
Late spring through early autumn suits most northern-hemisphere links and mountain courses, when the light is long and the turf is at its greenest. For New Zealand and Australia, the seasons flip, so their summer runs from roughly December to February.
How can I remember a course after I have played it?
Photos fade into a camera roll, but a framed print of the course keeps the view somewhere you actually see it every day. Many golfers commission a piece of art of a bucket-list course they have played, or one they are still dreaming about.
Put a beautiful course on your wall
Browse course artKeep the view long after the round
Design a personalised print of any course in the world, from a bucket-list dream to the local track you love. Choose the layout, add a date or a message, and we print and ship it.
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