# The Miami Golf Guide

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/miami-fl-golf-guide/

[The Course Rankings](/)

Town Guides / Florida


A deep sand bunker guarding a green. Photo: Santeri Viinamäki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

For five decades the professional game spent part of every winter at Doral, and the Blue Monster was the backdrop: a long, water guarded Dick Wilson course from 1962, nicknamed for exactly the trouble it kept finding for people. That course still anchors Miami golf. But walk ten minutes into Coral Gables and the Biltmore Golf Course is playing a completely different century, a Donald Ross design from 1925 with the great hotel tower rising behind the holes, canals and banyans instead of fountains and gallery ropes. Miami golf is those two arguments plus a municipal course on the Beach that most visitors never learn exists. Play all three sides and the city makes sense.

This is resort and municipal golf, no private club gatekeeping on the whole bench, which simplifies a trip enormously. Everything here can be booked. The variables are price, wind, and order.

## History First, Monster Last

Start at the Biltmore. Ross opened it in 1925 alongside the Biltmore Hotel, Brian Silva restored it in 2007 toward its Ross character, and the round moves through canals and mature banyan and oak corridors in the middle of Coral Gables. It is also a piece of University of Miami golf history, a working course in a residential neighborhood rather than a resort stage set. Played first, it sets the trip's tempo correctly: walkable in spirit, strategic rather than violent, the oldest idea of what Florida golf was supposed to be. The resort and public access comes at premium Coral Gables pricing, and the setting argues it is fair.

Miami Beach Golf Club is the middle round nobody plans and everybody enjoys. It is a municipal course on Miami Beach, redesigned by the von Hagge group in 2001 on ground that has held golf since the Bayshore course of the 1923 era, all water and skyline views at municipal access, albeit municipal at premium Miami Beach pricing. Play it on the day between the classics. It keeps the trip inside the city's real geography, beach side rather than resort side, and it is the easiest round on this bench to pair with an afternoon doing literally anything else in Miami, which most golf trips here should include at least once.

## Doral, In the Right Order

The Trump National Doral complex is the finale, and it has an internal order worth respecting. Play the Red Tiger first. Gil Hanse redesigned the old Red Course and it reopened in 2014 as the Red Tiger, shorter and more strategic than its famous sibling, a course that asks for shot selection instead of survival. It is also the perfect rehearsal: same resort, same wind, same water in the vocabulary, at a scale that lets you learn how this property plays before the main event.

Then the Blue Monster, last, on a morning when the group is as sharp as it is going to get. Hanse led the major redesign completed in 2014 on Wilson's 1962 bones, and the modern Monster is long, wet, and unapologetic, finishing with its signature 18th: a long par 4 with water down the left and the fountain as backdrop, a closing hole built for television that plays every bit as hard as it looks. Concede what the critics say, that resort golf at premium South Florida pricing should perhaps love you back a little. Then play it anyway. Five decades of tour golf were not an accident, and standing on that 18th tee with a one shot lead in your group match is a legitimate piece of the American golf experience.

The mistake is playing the Blue Monster first, on arrival day, because it is the famous one. Jet lagged, wind unread, short game cold: the Monster eats that golfer whole and the rest of the trip becomes rehabilitation. The second mistake is skipping the Biltmore to play Doral twice. The Ross is the better architecture day. It is not even the controversial position in Miami anymore.

Winter is peak here and earns it, dry and warm while the rest of the country is frozen, priced accordingly across the bench. The shoulder months trade a little heat for a lot of value. Summer golf is a dawn discipline with storm watching built into the afternoon, doable for the committed and priced like the locals' season it is. Whenever you come, respect the wind. It is the defending champion on every course in this guide.

End at the Biltmore in the evening if you can, the hotel lit up behind the last holes and the canals going dark. The Monster gets the television history. The Ross, a century in, gets the better goodbye.

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