# The Best Gary Player Golf Courses in America Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-gary-player-golf-courses-in-america/ [The Course Rankings](/) Architect Rankings A deep sand bunker guarding a green. Photo: Santeri Viinamäki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Gary Player's American design career is a map of the game's second home: resorts, clubs, and communities from Sarasota to Snowshoe. Our dataset holds 24 Player courses across 14 states, and the honest summary is breadth. He built playable golf for the places Americans actually take golf trips, including several courses any traveler can book, which is more than most architects of his playing stature managed. The best eight in our records follow. Do not expect a championship canon. Expect well sited resort and club golf, a few genuine standouts, and one Virginia course that would make any architect's list. Florida's portion of his work starts in [our Sarasota course ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-sarasota-fl/). ## 1Raspberry Falls Golf and Hunt Club, Virginia Player's best American course, and it is not close. Opened in 1996 in Leesburg's horse country on a former raspberry farm and hunting retreat, Raspberry Falls is Scottish in style: deep stacked sod pot bunkers, several of them named, including Satans Foxhole and Grants Tomb, with the namesake waterfall tumbling beside the 18th tee boxes. It plays par 72 at 7,191 yards under views of the Catoctin Mountains, and Golf Digest has ranked it in Virginia's Top 20, public or private. A Player course in a state top 20 against private competition is the outlier of his career, and it leads this list on the golf alone. ## 2The Cliffs at Mountain Park, South Carolina His best modern club course: a 2013 design for The Cliffs in northern Greenville County, a mountain valley layout at par 72 and 7,213 yards, rated 74.0 with a 139 slope. GOLF Magazine named it one of its Best New Modern Courses when it opened. Private, inside The Cliffs membership, and the strongest evidence that Player's later American work could still reach a high standard when the land and the budget matched his ambitions. ## 3Champions Retreat Golf Club, Georgia Twenty seven holes in Evans, near Augusta, with one nine each by Nicklaus (Bluff), Palmer (Creek), and Player (Island). The club has hosted the opening rounds of the Augusta National Women's Amateur since 2019 and carries Masters week demand at the high estimate tier. Player's Island nine holds its own in the most competitive design company an architect can be given, three legends, three nines, one property, which is why the whole club, not just his nine, earns third here. ## 4Steele Canyon Golf Club, California Twenty seven holes in Jamul, 18 miles east of downtown San Diego, opened in 1991 in three nines with three landscapes: Canyon, Ranch, and Vineyard. The Ranch nine's par 4 third is the signature, its tee perched 175 feet above the fairway, with free roaming cattle wandering a working ranch around it, while the Canyon nine sets greens on precipices above a lake. Golf Digest's Best Places to Play gave it four and a half stars. Player's most characterful public golf in the West. ## 5Kiawah Cougar Point, South Carolina The oldest golf lineage at Kiawah Island Resort: Player's original design of 1976, when it was the Kiawah Island Inn course, rebuilt by Player himself in 2019 along the Kiawah River and marsh. Resort access, river views on the closing holes, and the full local argument in [our Kiawah Island course ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-kiawah-island-sc/). A designer returning after 43 years to modernize his own routing is a story American resort golf rarely gets to tell. ## 6Lyman Orchards Player Course, Connecticut The only Gary Player design in New England, opened in 1994 as the second 18 at Lyman Orchards in Middlefield: par 71 at 6,725 yards through ravine, meadow, and orchard settings. The signature par 4 3rd demands an approach over a 75 foot deep ravine to a green guarded by a creek and bunkers. Public, distinctive, and geographically singular in his portfolio. ## 7Hilton Head National Golf Club, South Carolina Player with Bobby Weed in Bluffton, just off Hilton Head Island, a public course known for strong conditioning at public pricing: par 71 at 6,580 yards, rated 72.1 and 131. The par 4 sixth runs its entire right side along the largest lake on the course, with deep pot bunkers at the green. The Bluffton context is in [our Bluffton course ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-bluffton-sc/). Dollar for dollar, this is the Player round most golfers should actually buy. ## 8Raven Golf Club, West Virginia Player at Snowshoe Mountain, in the Alleghenies: elevation changes up to 200 feet, tree lined fairways cut by ravines, outcroppings, and streams. Golfweek has ranked it No. 2 among West Virginia public courses and No. 30 among public courses in the United States, per state tourism sources. Mountain resort golf is a narrow genre, and Raven sits near its top. The concession this list owes: Player's American work is mostly resort and community golf of its eras, and it produced no U.S. Open course and few designs that architecture critics fight over. His contemporary rivals built cathedrals; Player built the parish churches, everywhere, usually well. Judged as a body of work for traveling and club golfers rather than for championship history, it holds up better than its critical reputation. Start at Raspberry Falls, where the sod bunkers have names and the waterfall runs beside the last tee, and the case for the parish churches makes itself. **Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.