# The Best Golf Courses in Baltimore County, Maryland Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-baltimore-county-md/ [The Course Rankings](/) County Rankings / Maryland A deep sand bunker guarding a green. Photo: Santeri Viinamäki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Baltimore County holds two courses that have hosted a decade of major championship golf between them and a municipal system so old that one of its nines was segregated within living memory. Eighteen courses make the county list. We score the golf first, then the day, then access, and we will not pretend the public courses win the top spots. They win something else, and it is named below. The state picture sits in [the full Maryland state ranking](/blog/the-5-best-golf-courses-in-maryland/). ## 1Baltimore Country Club East Course A.W. Tillinghast's East Course at Five Farms, in Lutherville, opened in September 1926 and was recognized as a masterpiece immediately, which almost never happens and happened here. The East then collected the 1928 PGA Championship, the 1932 U.S. Amateur, the 1965 Walker Cup, which ended in the only tie in that event's history, and the 1988 U.S. Women's Open, won by Liselotte Neumann. Keith Foster's 2015 restoration returned the greens, bunkers and corridors to Tillinghast's intent. Ranked No. 2 in Maryland and No. 112 in the country by Golf Digest for 2025-26, famous for its par 3 collection and for Tillinghast par 5s like the barn hole 6th and the great hazard 14th. This is the county's champion and it is not close. ## 2Caves Valley Golf Club Tom Fazio built Caves Valley in 1991 on 962 acres of rolling hills, pastures, woods and wetlands in Owings Mills,. The championship file is modern and thick: the 2002 U.S. Senior Open, won by Don Pooley over Tom Watson in a five hole playoff; the inaugural LPGA International Crown in 2014; the Senior Players in 2017; and the BMW Championship in 2021, won by Patrick Cantlay over Bryson DeChambeau in a six hole playoff, and again in 2025, won by Scottie Scheffler. A 2023 Fazio renovation rebuilt every green complex and changed par from 72 to 70 for the 2025 BMW. Caves Valley concedes the top spot on architecture and age. On tournament proof this century, it beats the champion. ## 3Elkridge Club Seth Raynor in Maryland is rare, and Elkridge, in Baltimore's Roland Park area, is the surviving example: par 71 at about 6,390 yards, with template holes that include a Double Plateau, a Biarritz and a Punchbowl. Brian Silva restored the Raynor design extensively from 2003 to 2008. It will never outrank the two championship courses above it on scale. Graded on design pedigree per acre, it has an argument for second, and we record the argument before overruling it. ## 4Greystone Golf Course The best public course in the county, and the ranking's hinge. Greystone, in White Hall, is Baltimore County owned, par 72 at 6,925 yards with a rating of 73.5 and a slope of 139, rolling through farmland with 140 feet of elevation change. It was built as a private championship facility before the county took it over as a public course, and it shows. Fees run about $45 to $70, and the state guide calls it one of the best value upscale public rounds in the metro area. Every golfer in this county can play our No. 4. That has never been true of Nos. 1 through 3. ## 5Hayfields Country Club A private club in Hunt Valley designed by Brian Ault and opened in 1998: par 72, 7,041 yards, slope 142 from the back tees, built around a historic manor and farm. It hosted six PGA Tour Champions events, with fields that included Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson and Lee Trevino. ## 6Baltimore Country Club West Course The second course at Five Farms, opened in 1962 and redesigned in 1990 by Bob Cupp and Tom Kite: par 72, 6,795 yards, rating 73.0, slope 133. It is a member course that balances the championship East, graded against a masterpiece every day, and holds up. ## 7Mount Pleasant Golf Course Baltimore's municipal championship history lives here. A city course in northeast Baltimore, par 71 at 6,728 yards, opened in 1933 and credited to Gus Hook in the fuller record. It hosted the Eastern Open PGA Tour event in the 1950s, and Arnold Palmer won at Mount Pleasant in the tour history the city tells. It is the Classic Five's strongest playing member. ## 8Clifton Park Golf Course Baltimore's first public golf course, built in 1915 on the former summer estate of Johns Hopkins, par 71 at about 5,950 yards, opening beside the historic Clifton Mansion. Gus Hook designed it, and the same hand shaped Mount Pleasant and Forest Park. One of the Classic Five, run by the Baltimore Municipal Golf Corporation since 1985. ## The rest of the county Diamond Ridge, in Windsor Mill, is the county workhorse: par 71 at about 6,610 yards, sharing a clubhouse with The Woodlands next door. Forest Park, another Hook Classic Five course at about 6,120 yards, walks well in northwest Baltimore. Fox Hollow in Timonium, an Edmund B. Ault design at par 70, is the beginner friendly option near the State Fairgrounds. Hunt Valley Country Club spreads 27 holes in rolling former hunt country. Carroll Park is the list's conscience: nine holes, seven par 4s and back to back par 3s at the 6th and 7th, no hole longer than 371 yards, designated for African American golfers on set days from 1934 under segregation and desegregated in 1951, part of a National Register listed park. Longview appears in county listings as a nine hole Timonium course, though its record suggests it is a stale duplicate of Fox Hollow under a former name, and we rank it as a listing, not a living course. Rocky Point, Rolling Road and Sparrows Point round out the eighteen on the county bench without full records in our file, named here honestly rather than padded with invented detail. The back of this list is ordinary in places. The top of it is championship golf and a civic system older than most private clubs. Baltimore County holds both, and that is the ranking. **Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.