# The Best Brian Silva Golf Courses in America Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-brian-silva-golf-courses-in-america/ [The Course Rankings](/) Architect Rankings A golf ball beside the hole on a green. Photo: PattayaPatrol, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Brian Silva has two careers hiding inside one name. In the first, he is New England's restorer of Donald Ross and Seth Raynor, the architect clubs call when a Golden Age course needs its templates and greens recovered rather than replaced. In the second, he is an original designer who built his own Raynor inflected courses from scratch, most famously one outside Chattanooga that Golf Digest keeps ranking among the best holes in modern America. His dataset here runs to 24 courses across eight states, from Georgia to Maine, private clubs and municipal courses mixed together. We rank the best eight from the writable records. The pattern to watch: Silva's best work happens where a classic vocabulary, Ross's or Raynor's, meets land that lets him use it at full scale. Our town pages for several of these stops, including [the Augusta ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-augusta-ga/), [the Durham ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-durham-nc/) and [the Bretton Woods ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-bretton-woods-nh/), carry the local context. ## 1Black Creek Club Silva's masterpiece is an original, which is the twist. Black Creek, outside Chattanooga, opened in 2000, and Silva built his own versions of Raynor and Macdonald template holes there, including a Short and a Biarritz. The par 5 sixth is a Silva original ending in a punchbowl arena of more than 55,000 square feet, ranked by Golf Digest as one of the best holes in America designed after 2000. The course plays 7,204 yards with a slope of 138. Golf Digest ranked it in Tennessee's top 10 from 2003 through 2020 and No. 12 in its 2025-26 state list. The club was the vision of Doug Stein, founder of the Seth Raynor Society, who describes the design as Seth Raynor channeled through Brian Silva and himself. When a restorer of templates gets to build them new, on his own land, this is the ceiling. ## 2Metairie Country Club The purest restoration brief in American golf right now. Seth Raynor designed Metairie outside New Orleans, built by Joe Bartholomew, work beginning in 1922 and completed in 1925, with template holes including Punchbowl, Biarritz, Redan, Leven, Road and Eden versions. A 1928 land swap altered holes 14 to 18 and later renovations compromised the design. Silva was hired in 2021 to reimagine a pure Raynor course, recreating the Bottle, Biarritz, Redan, Leven, Road and Eden templates. If Black Creek is Silva composing in Raynor's language, Metairie is Silva editing Raynor's own manuscript back to its first draft. ## 3Mount Washington Course Donald Ross designed this course for the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, completed in 1915: par 72, 7,004 yards beneath the Presidential Range. Silva restored it to Ross's original plans, reopening August 1, 2008. It has hosted four New Hampshire Opens and the 2010 New England Open, and Golfweek has voted it the Best Course You Can Play in New Hampshire since 2009. The par 3 fifth and par 5 11th frame views of the hotel. Resort access means this is the Silva restoration any golfer can book, and it has held the state's top public honor for a decade and a half. ## 4Augusta Country Club A Donald Ross design from 1927 that shares a border and the Rae's Creek area with Augusta National, close enough that members can see the National's property from parts of the course. Silva led restoration work recovering Ross features. The club hosted early professional events in Augusta's winter tour era, and its costs sit in the high estimate tier, stated as an estimate because the club publishes nothing. Augusta Country Club's answer to its neighbor's shadow was to recover its own Ross identity, and Silva was the hand it hired. ## 5Cape Cod National Golf Club Silva the original designer again, on the Cape. Built in 1998 in Brewster: 18 holes, par 72, 6,954 yards, 90 bunkers and 12 doglegs. Membership is by invitation, with public access only as guests of the Wequassett Resort. Golf Digest has it 25th in Massachusetts in the cited list. Ninety bunkers signals the intent: a modern championship examination in a resort setting. ## 6Hope Valley Country Club A Ross design opened in 1927 in Durham, the city's first country club and suburb, with Silva restoring Ross features. Byron Nelson won the 1945 Durham Open at Hope Valley during his record streak year, which puts a Silva restored green complex under one of the most famous winning runs in golf history. Costs sit in the mid to high estimate tier. It ranks below the Bretton Woods restoration on scale and below Augusta on aura, but as classic in town Ross, recovered by the region's leading Ross scholar, it is the connoisseur's pick on this list. ## 7Breakfast Hill Golf Club Silva without a Golden Age ghost to serve, on the New Hampshire Seacoast. Breakfast Hill, in Greenland a few miles south of Portsmouth and just off I-95, opened in 2000 on 170 acres of family owned land. It is not long at 6,492 yards and par 71, rating 70.5 and slope 133, but it demands accuracy, with thick stands of trees lining most fairways and large rock outcroppings giving it a distinctly New England feel. Seacoast guides rank it in Golfweek's top five among America's best daily fee facilities. Public, and pure Silva: proof his instincts work with no famous name on the original scorecard. ## 8Darby Creek Golf Course A Cornish and Silva design opened in 1993 in Marysville, Ohio, along Big Darby Creek, a national scenic river. The front nine plays links style, the back nine parkland, two distinct nines in one round, praised in Ohio public guides for variety and conditioning. It shows the populist end of his range: public golf carrying the same intelligence as the private restorations. The concession this ranking owes: Silva's fame rests on restoration, and restorations are collaborations with dead men who get most of the credit. But Black Creek and Metairie settle the authorship argument. Given a blank site, he built a top ten in state original. Given a compromised Raynor, he was the architect the faithful trusted to rebuild it. The restorer is an author. **Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.