# The Best Golf Courses in Akron

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-akron-oh/

[The Course Rankings](/)

Town Rankings / Ohio


A deep sand bunker guarding a green. Photo: Santeri Viinamäki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Akron's golf reputation was built by a tire company. Harvey Firestone put his country club south of the city in 1929 so his executives and his guests would have somewhere serious to play, and the South Course became one of the most televised pieces of ground in American golf: three PGA Championships, decades of World Golf Championships, and a long run as the place where Tiger Woods won eight times, a number that tells you exactly what kind of course it is. Power, precision, no shortcuts. Woods collected golf courses the way other people collect weaknesses. This one fit him.

All three courses on this list live at the same club, which makes Akron an unusual ranking: one address, three different tests, and an order that longtime members argue about with genuine heat. We score the golf first. The golf at Firestone has a clear hierarchy, and so does this page.

## 1Firestone Country Club South Course

The South is called the Monster, and the name stuck because it is earned. The 16th, a par 5 of well over 600 yards with a pond guarding the green, is the famous hole, but the course's real character is the accumulation: long par 4 after long par 4, tree lined, demanding a driver hit straight and then a long iron hit properly, in an era when most tour courses had stopped asking for the second one. The WGC fields came here for years and the winning scores stayed honest. That is the evidence, and it is overwhelming.

The concession is that the South is not charming. It does not seduce you, it processes you, and plenty of fine golfers prefer the North Course's variety and scenery for their own game. Understood. But a ranking is not a preference poll, and the Monster's championship record, three PGAs and all those WGCs and eight Tiger wins, is the strongest resume of any course in Ohio that is not named Muirfield or Scioto. First, and the gap is real.

## 2Firestone Country Club North Course

Robert Trent Jones Sr. built the North as the scenic sibling, routing it around the club's big reservoir so that water shapes hole after hole. It hosted professional golf of its own in its day and it remains a serious test, just a more varied and more forgiving one than the South: more angles, more risk decisions, more holes where a clever shot beats a strong one. For a member playing three times a week, the North might be the better course to live with, and many Firestone members say exactly that.

It concedes the one thing that decides this list, which is that nobody built a legend on the North. It is the course you play on the trip. The South is the course you came for. Second place at Firestone is still better golf than first place in most Ohio towns, and the North wears it comfortably.

## 3Firestone Country Club Fazio Course

The third course, originally the West, was redesigned by Tom Fazio and carries his name now. It is the resort round of the three: wider, more contoured, more interested in showing you a good time than in sorting you out. Stay and play packages live here, corporate outings live here, and the second round of a 36 hole day should live here too, because your swing after lunch on the South does not need another examination.

The concession is built into the compliment. The Fazio is the least demanding and least historic course at the club, third on any honest card. But every great multi course property needs a course that sends golfers to dinner happy instead of hollowed out, and Firestone's version of that course is still a Fazio on good Ohio ground. Third of three, at this address, is a fine thing to be.

One practical note for the visitor: the South is a walking test in every sense, and it is the round to schedule first, on fresh legs, with the North or the Fazio as the afternoon assignment.

Walk the South on a quiet weekday and the scale of it settles on you by the back nine, fairway after fairway built for a sterner game. Akron made tires. It also made this.

**Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.