# The Anchorage Golf Guide

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/anchorage-ak-golf-guide/

[The Course Rankings](/)

Town Guides / Alaska


A golf course in autumn foliage. Photo: Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In June, golf in Anchorage runs past 10 p.m. That is the fact every visiting golfer should build a trip around, ahead of course rankings, ahead of everything. A place where you can tee off after dinner and finish in daylight is playing a different sport than the one you flew in from, and Anchorage, in Southcentral Alaska, leans into it completely.

The anchors for a visit are Anchorage Golf Course, the two Moose Run courses (Creek and Hill), Fox Hollow, and Russian Jack Springs Park. We rank them in [our Anchorage town ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-anchorage-ak/) and set the state context in [the full Alaska state ranking](/blog/the-5-best-golf-courses-in-alaska/). This guide is about how to use them.

## Start at Anchorage Golf Course

Play Anchorage Golf Course first. It opened in 1987, designed by Bill Newcomb for the Municipality of Anchorage, and Golfweek ranks it No. 1 in Alaska. It plays 6,601 yards with views of Denali and the downtown skyline, which is a pairing no other municipal course in America can offer: a major peak and a city skyline in the same round. Thick pines guard the fairways, and moose are known to stroll them. A moose on a fairway is not a photo opportunity to rush. It is a delay you accept, at distance, because the moose was playing through long before the course existed.

The course hosted the 2022 U.S. Senior Women's Amateur, and that championship carried a piece of trivia that matters to the USGA: it completed the set, a championship held in all 50 states. Alaska was the last box, and Anchorage Golf Course checked it. Forrest Richardson has led a long renovation since, with remodeled greens, new bunkering, and added tees, so the course that hosted in 2022 is still being improved rather than preserved in amber. Municipal ownership, a national championship, ongoing investment: that is the profile of the city's main course, and it should be the center of any golf visit.

## Then Moose Run, late

Moose Run is the second act, and it claims to be the northernmost 36 holes in America, on JBER land. Thirty six holes across the Creek Course and the Hill Course gives Anchorage something most northern cities never get: a full day of golf without repeating a hole, or, in June, a full evening of it. This is where the 10 p.m. golf belongs. Play Anchorage Golf Course in the morning for the views and the championship ground. Play Moose Run late, when the light flattens and the round stops feeling like a round and starts feeling like the reason people live through Alaskan winters.

Fox Hollow and Russian Jack Springs Park round out the local list as the shorter, simpler options. Every golf town needs courses where beginners, kids, and golfers with two free hours can actually play, and a guide that only lists championship venues is lying about how a town's golf works. Play them for what they are, without demanding they be what they are not.

One honest note on expectations. Anchorage is a working city in Southcentral Alaska, not a golf resort that happens to have a town attached. The golf is municipal and military in character, the season is short, and conditioning follows an Alaskan calendar rather than a brochure. Golfers who arrive expecting manicured resort presentation will misread what is in front of them. Golfers who arrive for light, scenery, wildlife on the fairways, and golf that most of the country simply cannot schedule will get exactly what they came for.

## The mistake visitors make

Visitors schedule Alaska golf like golf anywhere else: a morning tee time, done by two, sightseeing after. In June that wastes the best of it. The late light is the attraction, the moose are not a schedule, and Anchorage's courses ask so little planning compared to resort golf that there is no excuse for playing at noon and quitting. Tee off late. Finish under a sky that never quite darkens. Denali on the horizon in the morning, golf past ten at night: no other American golf town offers that exact day.

**Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.