# The Best Donald Ross Golf Courses in America Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-donald-ross-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 Two hundred sixteen Ross courses sit in our dataset, across 28 states, from Maine municipal golf to a Florida club so private it did not appear on television until 2020. That range is the first thing to understand about Donald Ross. He was not a boutique designer who built eight masterpieces and stopped. He was a working architect who gave America a way to build golf courses, town by town, for forty years. Ranking his best means ranking the survivors: the places where his greens, his routings, and his restraint are still legible under a century of trees, committees, and restorations. His idea of golf, as these courses show it, is consistent. Use the land's rises for green sites. Make the approach, not the drive, the examination. Crown the greens so a lazy shot sheds away. The courses below are the ones where that idea survived best. Local context for several of them sits in [our Chattanooga town ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-chattanooga-tn/), [our Knoxville town ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-knoxville-tn/), and [our Colorado Springs town ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-colorado-springs-co/). ## 1Seminole Golf Club Juno Beach, Florida, 1929. The routing turns so nearly every hole plays in a different wind direction, several holes run along a dune ridge near the Atlantic, and the bunkers were later reworked by Dick Wilson and by Coore and Crenshaw without breaking Ross's frame. It hosted the 2021 Walker Cup and, in 2020, the TaylorMade Driving Relief match, its first television exposure. Consistently ranked among the top courses in America, private and invitation only, costs in a high estimate tier. The wind argument puts it first: Seminole asks a new question on every tee without ever raising its voice. ## 2Oak Hill Country Club East Course Pittsford, New York, 1926, par 70 at 7,394 yards. Six major championships and the 1995 Ryder Cup, PGA Championships in 1980, 2003, 2013, and 2023, and Curtis Strange winning his second straight U.S. Open here in 1989. Andrew Green led a 2019 restoration back toward the original Ross vision, clearing the tree lined excess that had narrowed it. The strongest championship Ross on this list. ## 3Essex County Club Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. Ross's design work from 1909 to 1917 survives on 180 acres a quarter mile from the Atlantic: rugged topography, native fescue, chocolate drop mounds, crowned greens. A portion of the third green may be among the oldest continuously operated greens in the nation. Ross served as the club's professional and lived near the 15th tee, which explains the care. It hosted Curtis Cups in 1938 and 2010, and admitted women from the outset, including the Curtis sisters. Bruce Hepner restored it in 2001, expanding greens to original sizes. ## 4Worcester Country Club Worcester, Massachusetts, opened 1914, routing basically unchanged for a century. It hosted the 1925 U.S. Open, won by Willie Macfarlane over Bobby Jones in a 36 hole playoff after Jones called a penalty on himself at the 11th, and the first official Ryder Cup in 1927, plus the 1960 U.S. Women's Open. One of only three courses to host a U.S. Open, a U.S. Women's Open, and a Ryder Cup. Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner restored it in 2023-24. History this dense on a routing this intact is rare anywhere. ## 5Broadmoor East Course Colorado Springs, opened July 4, 1918, at over 6,400 feet. Holes 1 to 6 and 16 to 18 are Ross originals; the middle holes are Robert Trent Jones Sr., combined in 1952. Jack Nicklaus won his first major here, the 1959 U.S. Amateur at 19, and Annika Sorenstam won her first major, the 1995 U.S. Women's Open. U.S. Senior Opens in 2008, 2018, and 2025. Putts famously break away from the mountains. Resort access, and ranked the top public access course in Colorado in Golfweek classic listings. ## 6Donald Ross Course, French Lick French Lick, Indiana, 1917, opened as the Hill Course. Walter Hagen won the 1924 PGA Championship here, and it hosted the LPGA Championship in 1959 and 1960. Restored in 2006 in a $6 million program with the Donald Ross Society. The greens slope hard from back to front, the 8th drops six feet, and three par 3s measure about 240, 250, and 250 yards, among Ross's toughest sets of one shotters anywhere. Resort access makes it the most playable great Ross on this list. ## 7Holston Hills Country Club Knoxville, Tennessee, 1927, built on the McDonald Farm by members of Cherokee who wanted a longer, tournament ready course. Tom Doak has said it is the closest course around to what Ross originally designed, which is the highest purity claim any Ross course can make. Renaissance did light touch work from 1997, and Kris Spence began a bunker renovation in 2024 from Ross's own drawings. Private, and a purist's answer. ## 8Country Club of Birmingham West Course Mountain Brook, Alabama, unveiled 1925, now 7,226 yards at par 71. Later work by Robert Trent Jones Sr. and Pete Dye makes it, by its claim, the only course in America with architectural work by Ross, Jones, and Dye. Hosted the 2013 U.S. Mid-Amateur, ranked No. 3 in Alabama in 2025. It places eighth because the layers dilute pure Ross, and it places at all because the bones held up under two strong successors. The concession for the whole list: Ross also stamped out plenty of ordinary courses, and his name gets used as a quality guarantee he never promised. Hundreds of clubs trade on a Ross attribution that a restoration budget cannot rescue. The eight above are not trading on the name. They are the evidence for it. **Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.