# The Best George Cobb Golf Courses in America Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-george-cobb-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 George Cobb never became a brand. He built 40 courses in our dataset across eight states, Alabama to West Virginia to Maryland, most of them in the Carolinas and the southern mountains, most of them for clubs and resorts rather than for television. And then one of his courses in Charlotte grew up to host the PGA Championship. Cobb's career is the working architect's career: university courses, military golf at Camp Lejeune, mountain clubs at 4,800 feet, island golf reached by ferry, and a steady southeastern footprint built one sensible, playable, durable course at a time. Ranking his best means ranking the full range of that working life, from Charlotte's championship stage to a plantation course in the Tryon foothills. Golfers tracing his Carolina work can cross check it against our [Charlotte ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-charlotte-nc/) and the [Linville town page](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-linville-nc/). ## 1Quail Hollow Club Cobb opened Quail Hollow in Charlotte in 1961, and the course he started has become a major championship venue: home of the PGA Tour's Wells Fargo Championship, now the Truist Championship, since 2003, host of the 2017 PGA Championship won by Justin Thomas, the 2022 Presidents Cup, and the 2025 PGA Championship won by Scottie Scheffler. The Green Mile, holes 16 to 18 around the lake, is its signature finish. The honest caveat belongs inside the ranking, not under it: Arnold Palmer and Tom Fazio have both reworked the course since, so the Quail Hollow of today is a Cobb foundation under famous later hands. It still tops this list, because no other Cobb course has been asked to do what this one does every year, in the highest estimate tier of private golf. ## 2Golden Eagle Golf Course If Quail Hollow is the famous one, the Golden Eagle is the architect's own verdict. Cobb considered it one of his best creations, and architects are rarely wrong about their own work. Opened in 1976 at the Tides Inn in Irvington, on Virginia's Northern Neck, designed with John LaFoy also credited, it is carved through wooded ground around a 50 acre lake and plays par 72 at 7,025 yards, a 74.4 rating and 136 slope from the championship tees. The signature fifth is a 463 yard par 4 cape hole along the lake, called one of the finest par 4s in Virginia. The Tides Inn dates to 1947 and the course has hosted numerous VSGA events. Resort access, which makes it the best Cobb most golfers can actually book. ## 3Linville Ridge Country Club Cobb at altitude. Linville Ridge, from 1983, is a private club at about 4,800 feet, billed as the highest golf course east of the Mississippi, its par 5 13th playing to a green at 4,949 feet. The course runs par 72 at 6,746 yards, the par 3 16th plays about 110 feet downhill, and Golf Digest ranks it No. 14 in North Carolina. Bobby Weed has updated every hole, which cuts both ways: the upkeep is championship grade, and like Quail Hollow, the purity argument gets complicated. The mountain golf itself, thin air and falling tee shots, is pure Cobb range finding. ## 4Cobb Course The course that carries his name, at the Resort at Glade Springs in Daniels, West Virginia, opened in 1972: 7,121 yards, 51 bunkers, 8 lakes, and more than 200 feet of elevation change across the routing. The 16th is a 420 yard par 4 requiring three water carries, a hole that makes its demand four times over if you count the nerve. Golf Magazine named it No. 1 in West Virginia in 2007 and Golf Digest has placed it in the state's top five. Resort access, mountain terrain, and the most dramatic single hole in the Cobb catalogue after the Golden Eagle's fifth. ## 5Bald Head Island Club Cobb on an island with no cars. Opened in 1974 on Bald Head Island, North Carolina, reached only by ferry, with golf carts the transport once you land. The holes play through maritime forest, marsh and near the beach, and Tim Cate renovated the course in 2010. Private, with guest and rental access windows, and the ferry logistics define the trip in a way that filters for golfers who actually want to be there. Island Cobb, salt air Cobb, the prettiest setting on this list. ## 6University of Maryland Golf Course Cobb the university architect. College Park, 1959, par 71 at just over 7,000 yards from the back tees on the edge of the Maryland campus, home to the Terrapins. Bill Love renovated it in 2008 and it hosted the Nationwide Tour's Melwood Prince George's County Open in 2010 and 2011, which says the bones were tour worthy fifty years after he drew them. Public and university access at campus prices, and the best everyday value on this page. ## 7Cleghorn Golf & Sports Club Cobb in the foothills near Tryon, at Mill Spring, from 1967: par 71 at roughly 6,800 yards of mountain valley golf with long par 3s and big par 5s, now part of the Tryon Resort. The ground has the deepest past of any Cobb course, a colonial plantation granted by the Crown in 1764 and bought by William Cleghorn in 1775, its 1837 manor house still overlooking the fairways. A Golf Digest Best Places to Play honoree and a PGA.com pick among North Carolina's best, resort and public access. ## 8Carmel Country Club South Course Cobb's second Charlotte entry, from 1962, the championship layout of a two course private club in south Charlotte, renovated by Rees Jones and a regular host of USGA qualifying and Carolinas events. It closes this list as the reliable club course, the Cobb a membership plays weekly rather than the Cobb the tour visits. The concession for the whole body of work: Cobb's courses invite the charge of sameness, solid southeastern parkland and mountain golf drawn by a regional hand, and at his weakest that charge lands. At his best, on a cape hole in Virginia he called one of his finest and a Charlotte course the majors keep choosing, the working architect outlasted the brands. Long after the famous names on his courses changed them, the routings underneath are still his. **Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.