Course Comparisons / Florida
Sandhill Crane Golf Club vs. Panther National Golf Club: The Palm Beach Gardens Choice
Palm Beach Gardens gives a golfer the widest choice in American golf within one city limit. On one side, a municipal course routed through nature preserve land where a resident can book a tee time like a citizen. On the other, the first new private club to open in Palm Beach County in two decades, co-designed by Jack Nicklaus and Justin Thomas, playing 7,864 yards from tees named for a tour star. Sandhill Crane against Panther National is not really a contest. It is a question about what golf in a rich Florida city is for.
Sandhill Crane Golf Club
Sandhill Crane is the city's own course, on ground that carried an earlier identity in the Eastpointe West era before the rebrand. Roy Case was the original architect in 1992, and the course received a 2.5 million dollar redesign by Dusenberry Design in 2013, the kind of reinvestment municipal golf needs and rarely gets. It plays par 72 at 6,504 yards, routed through nature preserve land, which gives a public round in Palm Beach Gardens something money usually buys: space, quiet, and wildlife instead of back fences.
Then the city added a second act. The Nest, an 18-hole par 54 course by Nicklaus Design, opened on site in 2023. A municipal facility with a championship course and a Nicklaus-designed par 3 course is a serious public golf offering by any national standard. Sandhill Crane's argument is civic: good golf, honestly priced by municipal standards, open to everyone, on preserved land. In our Palm Beach Gardens town ranking, it is the course that represents the whole city rather than one gated part of it.
Panther National Golf Club
Panther National opened in November 2023, co-designed by Nicklaus and Justin Thomas, whose first design credit this is. The numbers are extreme on purpose: par 72, 7,864 yards from the back JT tees, rated 78.7 with a slope of 147. A 78.7 rating is among the hardest numbers in American golf. The signature 15th is a 246-yard par 3 over water to a near-island green, a hole that would be the longest par 3 most golfers ever attempt, played as a genuine one-shotter rather than a layup puzzle.
The club landed on television quickly, as host venue for the return of The Skins Game in 2025, which tells you what Panther National is built to be: a modern, media-ready, ultra-private statement in the most competitive private golf market in Florida. As the first new private club in the county in twenty years, it had to justify its existence against neighbors with decades of prestige, and it chose scale and difficulty as the justification. Nobody will call it subtle.
The comparison, honestly
On the golf alone, at the highest level, Panther National wins. A Nicklaus and Thomas design at 7,864 yards with a 147 slope is a championship instrument, and Sandhill Crane at 6,504 yards is not trying to be one. Concede that fully. If you are a tour-caliber player with access to both, you play Panther to test yourself and Sandhill to enjoy yourself, and you know the difference.
On the day, the gap narrows in interesting ways. Panther offers the modern private club day: pristine, exclusive, expensive in the way that private clubs at this level are, with costs firmly in the highest estimate tier and details available only through the club. Sandhill offers a public day through a nature preserve with a par 3 course attached, at municipal access. For a visiting golfer without connections, only one of these days actually exists, and it is the public one. Access is not a footnote in our scoring. It is a category, and Sandhill Crane wins it by knockout.
Value needs no long paragraph. One course is a city service. The other is a private club that opened in 2023 in Palm Beach County. Both are priced correctly for what they are.
The verdict
Panther National is the better golf course. Sandhill Crane is the better answer for almost every golfer who will ever type this comparison into a search bar, because almost every one of them can book Sandhill this week and will never see Panther except on television during The Skins Game. That is not a sentimental verdict. It follows our own logic: golf first, then the day, then access and value, and a course you cannot play scores zero on the holes you are imagining.
Pick Panther if you get the invitation. Take the member up on it without hesitation, play the JT tees only if your game truly belongs there, and save a ball for the 246-yard 15th. Pick Sandhill Crane for your actual golf life in Palm Beach Gardens, and add The Nest when the light is fading. The full town picture is in the 5 best golf courses in Florida context and the Palm Beach Gardens ranking linked above. A city that funds a preserve-routed muni while a Nicklaus and Thomas giant opens across town is a city that understands both halves of the game.