Architect Rankings

The Best Arthur Hills Golf Courses in America

Arthur Hills built 89 courses in our dataset across 22 states, from Scottsdale to Hilton Head, from municipal golf in Colorado to private clubs in Kentucky horse country. That volume is the first thing to understand about him. Hills was not a boutique architect guarding a short portfolio. He was a working designer for the decades when American golf communities were being built by the hundreds, and his name sits on resort courses, public courses, university courses, and private clubs in every region east of the Rockies and plenty west of them. The fair criticism of that career is consistency: spread that thin, some of the work is housing first golf with a famous signature on the scorecard. The fair defense is at the top of this list. When Hills got serious ground and a serious client, he produced courses that hosted national championships and still anchor state rankings. These are the best seven.

1The Club at Olde Stone, Bowling Green, Kentucky

Founder Jim Scott hired Hills in 2000 to design the best golf experience in Kentucky, and Hills delivered a course Golf Digest ranked No. 2 in the state. Opened in 2006 across 220 acres of bluegrass with zoysia fairways, bentgrass greens, and elevation changes over 150 feet, Olde Stone hosted the Junior Ryder Cup in 2008 and its first USGA championship, the 2022 U.S. Girls' Junior, plus NCAA regionals and the Southern Amateur. Golf Digest named it eighth among Best New Private Courses and Golfweek put it No. 33 on its Top 100 Residential list at opening. At 7,372 yards with Drew Rogers renovations continuing the work, this is Hills with a mandate and a budget, and it is his best.

2Journey at Pechanga, Temecula, California

Designed by Steve Forrest of Arthur Hills and Steve Forrest and Associates and opened in August 2008 at Pechanga Resort Casino, Journey is the most dramatic course on this list by a wide margin. Par 72 at 7,219 yards across 300 acres at the base of Pu'eska Mountain, rising and falling some 300 feet. The 420 yard sixth drops so steeply that tee shots hang in the air eight to ten seconds. The par 3 17th, Island in the Sky, has its green perched at the end of a high desert ridge, and the 18th finishes on a classic Biarritz green. Every hole carries a Luiseno name, the routing was kept clear of sacred tribal sites and sensitive ground, and the clubhouse covers 62,000 square feet. Resort golf rarely risks this much elevation. Journey does, and wins for it.

3Orchard Course, Newport National Golf Club, Middletown, Rhode Island

Hills with associate Drew Rogers, opened in 2002, built on a 200 acre former landscape nursery and orchard. It plays 7,244 yards to par 72 with a 138 slope, a links style layout with views of the Atlantic Ocean and Sakonnet Passage, certified as an Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary course, and named the Number One Public Access Course in New England by New England Golf Monthly. A public course at No. 3 on an architect list this deep is a statement about the golf, not the business model. New England public golfers have very few courses of this caliber open to them. This is the one.

4Southern Trace Country Club, Shreveport, Louisiana

Established in 1988, 7,015 yards through open meadows and dense oak forest, and the tournament record carries it: host of the Web.com Tour's Southern Open from 1990 to 2002, plus multiple Louisiana state amateurs and the AJGA David Toms Junior Invitational. It has appeared atop Golf Digest Louisiana rankings several times, and Jim Lipe completed a $4.2 million renovation in 2022 rebuilding all 18 greens. Members repurchased the club from ClubCorp and added a 70,000 square foot practice facility. Southern Trace is Hills as a private club steward: a course good enough for a tour feeder event for twelve years, then reinvested in by the people who play it.

5Westhaven Golf Club, Franklin, Tennessee

Arthur Hills, Steve Forrest and Associates, opened August 29, 2009, the first new course in the Nashville market in more than a decade. Golfweek and Golf Digest named it one of the Best New Courses of 2010. It plays par 72 at about 7,000 yards from the championship tees, and its defining decision is what is not there: a core golf course on 200 acres with no homes lining the fairways, set apart from the Westhaven community, moving through the hills and ridgelines of western Williamson County alongside the Harpeth River and past historic stone walls. In a career full of community golf, Westhaven is the proof Hills valued core golf when a client let him build it.

6Palmetto Hall Golf Club, Arthur Hills Course, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina

Semi-private on Hilton Head, opened in 1991, par 72 at 6,918 yards from the back tees, built on the site of an old Civil War garrison, and named to Golf Digest's list of America's Top 10 New Courses in 1991. Heritage Golf Group bought Palmetto Hall in 2022, and the Hills Course debuted renovated greens and new Better Billy bunkers in October 2024. Hilton Head is the most competitive resort golf market in the Southeast, and a 1991 Hills course that still earns renovation money and public tee times there has outlasted dozens of louder openings.

7Todd Creek Golf Club, Thornton, Colorado

The public closer. A links inspired Hills design opened in 2007, par 72 at 7,435 yards with a 74.8 rating and 138 slope, a prairie links routing through creek wetlands north of Denver. The green complexes run as large as 11,000 square feet with domed, heavily contoured surfaces, which is Hills trusting public golfers with serious putting surfaces instead of flattening the course for pace of play. It opened as Heritage Todd Creek for a Lennar community, and Borders Golf bought it in June 2012 and renamed it Todd Creek. Whatever the name, it is the best public Hills course in the West on this list, and the most underpriced examination in Colorado golf.

The concession for the whole body of work stands where we put it at the top. With 89 courses in the dataset, the median Arthur Hills course is a solid community course, not a Olde Stone, and his reputation among architecture purists suffers for the housing era volume. Fair. But judge the top, as we do in the best golf courses in Hilton Head Island, in the best golf courses in Lexington where his University Club courses serve the Wildcats, and in the best golf courses in Temecula, and the top is genuinely good: a Kentucky private that hosted a Junior Ryder Cup, a tribal resort course with a Biarritz finish under a mountain, and New England's best public course. An architect is his best seven courses, argued honestly. Hills can stand on his.