Architect Rankings
The Best Ed Seay Golf Courses in America
Ed Seay is the name golfers know without knowing they know it. As Arnold Palmer's longtime design partner, his hand is on 24 courses in this dataset across 14 states, from La Quinta to Ponte Vedra Beach to Bellaire, Michigan, and the work shares a philosophy the record makes visible: build the course for the people who will actually play it, members, resort guests, publics, and test them with water, length and bunkering rather than with tricks. The Palmer name drew the crowds. Seay's routings kept them coming back. Regional readers can place the leaders through our La Quinta ranking, our Ponte Vedra Beach ranking, and our Bellaire ranking. His best eight, from the writable records:
1Sawgrass Country Club East/West
Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, 1974, a solo Seay design and the strongest credential on this page: it hosted THE PLAYERS Championship from 1977 to 1981, before TPC Sawgrass opened. A 27 hole private club across A1A from the ocean. Before the Stadium Course became the event's permanent theater, the best players in the world won the Tour's flagship at a Seay course. History that direct outranks everything below it.
2Tradition Golf Club
La Quinta, California, 1997, Palmer and Seay in the foothills of the Santa Rosa Mountains, par 72 at 6,915 yards. The land was the Hacienda del Gato ranch, a getaway for Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn and Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, and Palmer kept a home here as his west coast base. The par 4 17th drops more than 200 feet from tee to fairway. Membership capped around 250, by invitation, no tee times, bunkers filled with white crushed marble and a 9 hole par 3 course alongside. Desert private golf at its most polished.
3Isleworth Golf & Country Club
Windermere, Florida, 1986, Palmer and Seay, later reworked by Steve Smyers. Famous as Tiger Woods's longtime home club, host of the Tavistock Cup team matches, with the Butler Chain lakes shaping several holes. The 2009 Woods incident began outside his Isleworth home and put the club in national news for the wrong reason, but the golf standing was earned on the course: a private test good enough to be the home base of the best player of his generation. Private access, costs in the highest estimate tier only.
4Tournament Club of Iowa
Polk City, Iowa, 2003, Palmer's design company with Seay, winding through forest beside Big Creek State Park with many elevation changes. Par 71 at 7,108 yards, slope 140, water on 13 holes including 12 acres of man made lakes across 230 acres of hills and bluffs. It hosted the Principal Charity Classic in 2005, sits among Golfweek's Iowa public courses ranked nationally in 2026, and its five par 3s have been described as collectively the best set in Iowa. Public access with a private club's examination.
5Myrtle Beach National King's North
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, the Palmer rebuild opened in 1996 over a 1970s original, headline course of the three course Myrtle Beach National complex. The par 5 6th, The Gambler, has an island fairway made famous by its Kenny Rogers song association in local telling, and the par 3 12th and 18th island and water holes are the signatures. Public access. No course on this list gives a visiting golfer more theater per dollar.
6Old Tabby Links
Spring Island, Okatie, South Carolina, 1992, Palmer and Seay on a private island community, built around the tabby ruins of a former plantation house in a Lowcountry marsh and oak setting. Seay's nature first routing here has no forced carries for members, a deliberate kindness that suits both the ground and the membership. Private, costs in the highest estimate tier. The most atmospheric course on this list.
7Marsh Landing Country Club
Ponte Vedra Beach again, 1986, Seay routed through Intracoastal marsh, par 72 at 6,821 yards. The signature par 3 12th plays 160 yards from the member tees over marshland, all carry to a small green bunkered front and back. Two Seay courses in one beach town, a decade apart in character: Sawgrass carries the history, Marsh Landing carries the marsh.
8The Legend
Shanty Creek Resort, Bellaire, Michigan, 1986, Palmer and Seay, par 72 at 6,764 yards. Given 4.5 stars in Golf Digest's Places to Play and named a top resort course by Golf Magazine readers, with the third tee overlooking Lake Bellaire and the signature par 5 seventh playing alongside Shanty Creek to a narrow green at the base of a hill. Resort staff describe it as Palmer's best design in Michigan. Northern Michigan resort golf with a real pedigree.
The concession: Seay's work, carrying the Palmer firm's commercial brief, can lean on water and repetition in its weaker outings, and several of his courses are better known for who played or lived there than for any single hole. Dated is the word critics reach for, and on the lesser designs it lands. But a solo course that held THE PLAYERS for five years, a public Iowa course with that par 3 set, and a desert club Palmer chose as his own base add up to a catalog any architect would sign. Seay built for golfers, not for magazine covers, and forty years of tee sheets have graded the work kindly.