County Rankings / Florida

The Best Golf Courses in Hillsborough County, Florida

Hillsborough County is Tampa, which means its golf ranking is really two rankings wearing one coat. There is the private Tampa of South Tampa clubs and golf only retreats founded by steakhouse money. And there is the public Tampa of municipals named for Babe Zaharias and military courses on the bay. Twenty two courses sit in the county. The top of the list belongs to the privates, and it is not particularly close, but the middle of this list is where Tampa golfers actually live, and we have ranked it accordingly. We score the golf first, then the day, then what it costs you, and in a county this flat, design imagination is what separates the memorable from the merely green.

1Old Memorial Golf Club

The county's clear No. 1. Steve Smyers designed it, it opened in 1997, and the Outback Steakhouse founders built it as a private, golf only club. No tennis, no pool politics, a pure golf culture with an elite caddie program and a sandy, natural Smyers design that looks like nothing else in Tampa. It hosted the Outback Pro-Am era events. Costs sit in the highest estimate tier. Everything else in Hillsborough is ranked in its shadow.

2Palma Ceia Golf & Country Club

Tampa's oldest private club, golf dating to 1916, with Tom Bendelow and later Donald Ross era work in its bones. It has hosted the Gasparilla Invitational, a top mid amateur event, since 1932, in South Tampa's Palma Ceia neighborhood. Classic in town parkland, and the club where Babe Didrikson Zaharias era Tampa women's golf history runs through. High estimate tier, and worth it for the 1916 bones alone.

3Avila Golf & Country Club

Jack Nicklaus's Tampa design, 1988, private, in the Avila community. Par 71 at 6,926 yards, and the signature hole is the par 5 13th, surrounded by water with a wall blocking the front of the green. Nicklaus in Florida usually means a stern second shot course, and Avila delivers that brief inside the county's most polished private setting.

4Hunters Green Country Club

Tom Fazio in New Tampa, 1991, private, par 72 at 6,877 yards. The signature hole is the par 4 18th, where water follows the right side before the approach plays toward the clubhouse. Fazio's polish against Smyers's wildness is the county's best private architecture debate, and Hunters Green holds the polished end with confidence.

5Cheval Golf & Athletic Club

Steve Smyers again, in Lutz, 1987, par 71 at 7,021 yards, the longest test in the county's top tier. The par 3 17th is the signature, water short of the green wrapping around the left side to the back. Two Smyers courses in the top five is not an accident. On flat Tampa ground, his sandy, angular style creates the interest the land withholds.

6Bloomingdale Golfers Club

The best public course in the county. Ron Garl designed it in Valrico, it opened in 1982, plays par 72 at 7,165 yards, and it has hosted PGA Tour Qualifying School. A public course that Q School trusted carries a competitive credibility no other Hillsborough daily fee can match.

7Apollo Beach Golf Club

Robert Trent Jones Sr. in Apollo Beach, 1962, public, par 72 at 7,033 yards on Tampa Bay, with water in play on all 18 holes routed around small lakes and inlets. The oldest design pedigree on the public side, and a round where the bay and the hazards are the same conversation for four hours.

8Carrollwood Country Club

A 27 hole private club in Tampa's Carrollwood, the Meadow, Cypress, and Pine nines by Ed Ault and Dan Maples, from 1972. Each 18 hole combination plays par 72 at about 6,900 yards, and the Pine nine finishes with a par 5 to an island green. Depth and variety earn it this rung.

9Babe Zaharias Golf Course

The county's most loved municipal. A City of Tampa course named for Babe Didrikson Zaharias, who owned and managed it in the 1940s and 1950s. Par 70, tees from 4,800 to 6,000 yards, in the Forest Hills neighborhood. The front nine is named the Babe and the back nine the George, after her husband, the former professional wrestler George Zaharias. History you can play for city rates.

10MacDill AFB, Bay Palms Golf Complex

Thirty six holes of military golf on Tampa Bay. The North, by Elton Moore, opened in 1946 at par 72 and 6,422 yards. The South, by Ron Garl, opened in 1986 at 6,761 yards. Civilians can play by requesting a base access form in advance, which makes this the county's most unusual tee time to arrange and one of its most rewarding.

Behind these ten, the bench runs honest and ordinary in places. Buckhorn Springs, a 1968 Harris Green private club in Valrico, sits at the highest elevation in the county, about 90 feet, on natural springs ground. Cypress Creek in Ruskin and Diamond Hill in Dover give south and east county public golfers solid par 72 tests past 6,800 and 7,000 yards. Countryway, a par 61 executive course of eleven par 3s and seven par 4s, serves the Westchase beginner better than any full length course could. Rogers Park, Rocky Point, Temple Terrace, Tampa Palms, and the rest fill out a county bench of 22 that never leaves a Tampa golfer without a game. In the Florida state ranking, Hillsborough's top two travel well. The rest of the county stays home, plays its water, its sand, and its flat Gulf light, and minds its own considerable business.