Architect Rankings
The Best Bill Coore Golf Courses in America
Bill Coore's idea of golf, built course by course with Ben Crenshaw across 26 designs in this dataset and 18 states, is restraint as a weapon. Find the holes the land already contains. Move as little of it as possible. Let width do the tempting and angles do the punishing. The range in the record is the evidence: a former landfill in Dallas, a reclaimed phosphate mine in Florida, potato fields and 200 foot dunes on Long Island, pineapple slopes in Maui where the partnership built its very first course in 1991. Same method, wildly different ground. That consistency across terrain is why Coore's best courses are argued about the way musicians argue about a catalog, and why regional readers will want to place the leaders locally through our Dallas ranking and our Scottsdale ranking. Here are his best eight from the writable records.
1Friar's Head Golf Club
Baiting Hollow, New York, 2003, par 71 at 7,070 yards, founded by Ken Bakst, the 1997 U.S. Mid-Amateur champion. The routing moves between sand dunes 200 feet above Long Island Sound and reshaped former potato fields, two landscapes in one round, and it rose from 34th on Golf Digest's 100 Greatest on debut in 2011 to 14th. Golfweek put it No. 2 on its 2026 list of best modern courses in the United States. The 15th, a 460 yard par 4 from an elevated tee guarded by a vast bunker, is the argument in one hole. The finest Coore and Crenshaw course in America, on our card.
2Colorado Golf Club
Parker, Colorado, 2007, par 72 at 7,604 yards at over 6,100 feet elevation through ponderosa hills and ravines on a 1,700 acre property. Named top new private course in America in 2007 by GOLF Magazine, then tested by the best: the 2010 Senior PGA Championship won by Tom Lehman, the 2013 Solheim Cup, the 2019 U.S. Mid-Amateur. Golfweek ranks it the No. 2 private course in Colorado. Championship proof at altitude, on ground the design treats gently.
3Plantation Course
Kapalua, Maui, 1991, the first course the team built, and still the most watched. Host of the PGA Tour's season opening Sentry Tournament of Champions from 1999 to 2025, a par 73 across the slopes of the West Maui Mountains with views of Molokai and Lanai, finishing at a 663 yard par 5 sweeping downhill toward the Pacific. Golf Digest ranks it No. 23 among America's public courses. A first design that hosted the Tour's winners only event for a quarter century is not a bad opening statement.
4Warren Golf Course
Notre Dame, Indiana, 1999, built on 250 wooded acres on the northeast side of campus and funded by alumnus William K. Warren Jr. Par 72 at 7,020 yards, generous fairways, small undulating greens, a certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary. It hosted the 2019 U.S. Senior Open, won by Steve Stricker by six shots over David Toms, plus the 2010 U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links and NCAA regionals. A university course with a Senior Open on its record is Coore's public facing masterpiece.
5Trinity Forest Golf Club
Dallas, 2017, par 72 at 7,450 yards, built on a former landfill south of downtown, a links style layout with a double green the club calls the largest in North America. Ranked No. 26 in the Dallas Morning News 2025 Texas Top 100. Private, and ranked below Warren here on access and proof rather than imagination: turning a landfill into this took nerve, and the golf keeps getting better as it matures.
6Saguaro Course
We-Ko-Pa, Fort McDowell, Arizona, 2006, Golfweek's No. 1 Arizona public course in its 2026 state list. A links style desert layout built for walking, short green to tee walks, set on Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation land with no homes, roads or businesses interrupting the desert, par 72 at about 6,966 yards. The name We-Ko-Pa means Four Peaks in the Yavapai language. The best public Coore in America that a golfer can simply book and walk.
7Ozarks National
Big Cedar Lodge, Hollister, Missouri, 2019, par 72 along ridgetops and dropping into dramatic valleys in the Ozarks, native grasses and extensive bunkering throughout, a stone house more than 100 years old visible from several holes. Ranked No. 3 in Missouri by Golf Digest for 2025 and 2026, and it hosted PGA Tour Champions golf in 2020, won by Phil Mickelson in his Champions debut. The youngest course on this list, and already carrying a real record.
8Wicker Point Golf Club
Alexander City, Alabama, opened September 2023 on Lake Martin, the only Coore and Crenshaw design in Alabama. Five greens touch the shoreline and the back nine is largely lakefront, Zeon Zoysia fairways and TifEagle Bermuda greens. It debuted at No. 2 in Alabama on Golf Digest's Best in State ranking, No. 1 in the state by GOLF Magazine in 2025, and runner up for Best New Private Course in 2023. New, private and already the best course in its state by one major ranking.
The concession this list owes: Coore and Crenshaw's restraint can read as sameness if you play three of their courses in a month, and the gentle, low profile style gives a golfer fewer photographable moments than flashier architects provide on purpose. Some of their mid tier work gets praised for the signature rather than the shots. Fair. But at the top of the catalog the method produces courses that wear their land like it was always golf, and Friar's Head at No. 1 is the standard: dunes above the Sound, fields below, and not one hole that looks moved in from somewhere else.