Architect Rankings
The Best Gil Hanse Golf Courses in America
Gil Hanse is the only architect on any of our lists whose best work mostly consists of other men's golf courses. Thirty five courses in our dataset touch his name across 17 states, and the famous ones are restorations: Ross, Tillinghast, Maxwell, and Thomas courses that a century of committees had sanded down, handed to Hanse and Jim Wagner to be made sharp again. His originals are fewer and newer. So this ranking carries a built in argument about credit, and we will have it openly at the end. First, the eight courses where his hand matters most, from a Texas championship site in Frisco to a Nebraska short course near Valentine and a college classic in New Haven.
1Los Angeles Country Club North Course
The restoration that made him the restoration architect. Herbert Fowler laid out the original North in 1921, George C. Thomas Jr. redesigned it opening in 1928, and Hanse, Wagner, and Geoff Shackelford restored the Thomas design in 2010, even rebuilding Fowler's lost Little 17th as an extra hole. The proof came in June 2023, when the club hosted its first major, the U.S. Open, after the 2017 Walker Cup. Beyond 7,500 yards for that Open across rolling canyon terrain in Los Angeles. Thomas built it. Hanse gave it back, and the USGA's verdict on the result is on the record.
2Oakland Hills South
Donald Ross opened the South in 1918. It hosted six U.S. Opens and three PGA Championships, the 2004 Ryder Cup, and the 2002 and 2016 U.S. Amateurs, and Ben Hogan called it The Monster after winning the 1951 U.S. Open with a final round 67. Robert Trent Jones Sr. had toughened it for that era. Hanse's restoration, reopened in 2021, removed the Jones era influences and restored the Ross character, and the USGA answered by scheduling U.S. Opens in 2034 and 2051. Par 72 in regular play, 70 for majors, 7,509 yards. Restoration as resurrection, with the receipts.
3Southern Hills Country Club Championship Course
Perry Maxwell designed it, it opened in 1936 in Tulsa on land donated by oilman Waite Phillips, and it has hosted three U.S. Opens, in 1958, 1977, and 2001, and five PGA Championships, with the 2032 PGA set to make it the first course to host that event six times. Tiger Woods won the 2007 PGA here, Justin Thomas in 2022. Hanse's 2019 restoration removed hundreds of trees and re exposed the creeks Maxwell used in his routing. On Golf Digest's 100 Greatest list since 1966, No. 24 on GOLF's 2024 to 25 Top 100. The creeks were always the design. Hanse just let them back in.
4Baltusrol Lower Course
A.W. Tillinghast's Lower opened in 1922 as part of the first contiguous 36 hole dual course project in America. It hosted U.S. Opens in 1954, 1967, 1980, and 1993, with Jack Nicklaus winning in 1967 and 1980, plus the PGA Championship in 2005 and 2016 and the KPMG Women's PGA in 2023. The famous par 3 fourth plays over a pond, the hole Robert Trent Jones aced in 1954 to prove his lengthening was fair. Hanse restored the Lower, reopening in 2021, and the 2029 PGA Championship is already scheduled. A National Historic Landmark since 2014, restored by the one architect the landmark era trusts.
5The Course at Yale
The shared credit case in its purest form. Charles Blair Macdonald and Seth Raynor designed it, it opened April 15, 1926, built for a then record $400,000 on the 720 acre Greist Estate, with template holes including the world's best Biarritz at the ninth, plus Redan, Alps, Road, and Double Plateau holes. Hanse and Wagner are now midway through a major restoration to bring back the 1926 design. Ranked No. 2 in Connecticut by Golf Digest and No. 1 private in the state by Golfweek, and recently made more publicly accessible, a rare window into Macdonald and Raynor for the public golfer. It ranks fifth because the restoration is still becoming, not done.
6Mossy Oak Golf Club
Finally, an original, and the proof he can do it from a blank page. Designed with Jim Wagner and opened September 2, 2016 in West Point, Mississippi, built by George Bryan on a former dairy farm across from Old Waverly. Only one tree was removed from the 180 acre property, and the bunker sand came from the Tombigbee River. Par 72, 7,212 yards, set in the Mississippi Black Prairie and branded Nature's Golf. Ranked No. 2 in Mississippi by Golf Digest. Hanse designed it just after completing the Rio Olympic course, and it shows the same economy: the land first, the architect second.
7Fields Ranch East
His championship original. Designed with Jim Wagner at PGA Frisco, opened in 2023 alongside the PGA of America's new headquarters, and it hosted the 2023 Senior PGA Championship, the first championship at the facility, in its opening season. The PGA Championship follows in 2027 and 2034. Ranked No. 34 in the Dallas Morning News 2025 Texas Top 100. New courses rarely get handed two PGA Championships before their fifth birthday. The PGA of America looked at Hanse's restoration record and bet its own headquarters course on the original design version of him.
8Lake Merced Golf Club
The transformation case. Willie Locke designed it with more than 200 bunkers, opening in 1923. MacKenzie renovated it in 1929, cutting some 140 bunkers. Highway 280 construction in 1962 forced a re routing that erased the MacKenzie character. Hanse's $15 million restoration, completed in 2022, recreated about 14 and a half of the original holes and 150,000 square feet of MacKenzie style bunkering, and won Golf Digest's Best Transformation award for 2023. Par 72, 6,923 yards, host of six LPGA Tour events between 2014 and 2020. Erased once by a highway, brought back by an architect patient enough to rebuild another genius's bunkers from evidence.
Now the concession this list has been circling. Ranking Hanse means ranking Ross, Tillinghast, Maxwell, and Thomas through him, and purists are right that the genius on these eight properties is mostly borrowed. Some restorations also freeze a course at one chosen year, as if 1928 were automatically truer than every year after. Fair. But the work is real, the choices are his, and a generation of great American courses was going soft and treed in before he started taking the trees out. When a golden age masterpiece needs its teeth back, there is one phone number everybody calls.