What Is a Public Golf Course?

It seems like definitions matter.

As a certifiable golf sicko, I do like to look at “Best Of” lists as ways of getting ideas of places to play. Of course, some of these lists aren’t that helpful - the overall “Best Courses In The United States” lists include places like Augusta, Cypress Point, Pine Valley and other exceptionally private courses that mere mortals can’t really even think about playing unless they get incredibly lucky.

So, they usually come out with a secondary list called “Best Public Golf Courses.” THAT is the kind of list that I can and have used to see what great courses may be somewhere I’m already traveling, or to help shape a golf vacation.

Recently, Golf Digest put out another list, and did a follow-up article about some of the new courses to enter their list. The highest ranked new public course was The Lido, in Rome, Wisconsin, which came in at 68th overall.

The Lido is an interesting project - it’s an inch-for-inch replication of a golden age course from New York, on the Sand Valley property owned by Mike Keiser and home to (now) three other 18-hole courses and a 17-hole short course. It’s INCREDIBLY high on my list of Bucket List courses, and I will one day play it.

Here’s the issue some (including Andy Johnson of the Shotgun Start podcast) had with the inclusion on this list: The Lido is not a public golf course.

It’s a private member club that allows for people to play it IF they are staying at the Sand Valley property, and only on (I believe) Mondays through Thursday. But still, you don’t have to be a member or a guest of a member to play.

So, is this a public course or not?

To me, if I can get onto a course without knowing the right person, or having my club make a phone call, it’s public. If I can’t, it’s private.

Is this private? It’s what Bing AI thinks is private.

The distinction matters because in the United States a preponderance of great courses are closed-gates private. In the UK and Ireland, there are places like Muirfield, Royal County Down, Old Head and others that don’t open up their entire tee sheets to guests, but you can get on with enough advance planning and forethought. The courses that are genuinely private are few and far between.

If you, like me, are willing to call over a year in advance, at 1:30 AM until you can get through to Royal County Down, you too can play.

But if you are open to “anyone” as long as that person can not only afford your greens fees but has to spend a night or two at your lodge, are you really public?

What about a course that doesn’t force you to stay but you can’t make a tee time until two weeks prior, at which point there may be no tee times available because of others having far more advance booking privileges?

What about municipal golf courses that also sell memberships to book a week earlier than others, almost ensuring that the prime tee times won’t be available for the rest of the public?

When I scan through the Top 100 Public Golf Courses, it looks to my estimation that a good third of them fall into something like the above category. But I can play all 100 of these courses if I really want to. And I think that’s the intent of this list.

The list - or others like it - used to be called Top Courses You Can Play, as my buddy Oski pointed out. And that’s probably a better way to describe these courses. I’m not really interested in the charters of the courses, and whether they consider themselves public or something else, but I do care whether I can find a way to get out on the course.

The bigger problem, of course, is how many courses don’t let folks on. I belong to a private club - I’ve suggested that we put a handful of tee times up on GolfNow every week, both to gain extra revenue but also to show off the course to folks. There’s a sentiment that this would impact our exclusivity and hurt membership (why pay for a membership if you can play it once a month anyway?) but I think it could do just the opposite - drive interest in the club by exposing it to more golfers.

Anyhow, the term “public” means something very specific to folks - which is that the tee sheet is wide open. But really, those courses are far and few between, even the courses on the Best Public Lists. And I think this confusion highlights that issue even more.