Town Rankings / South Carolina
The Best Golf Courses in Hilton Head Island
Every April, the week after the Masters, the PGA Tour drives to a lighthouse. Not a clubhouse, not a mountain, a red and white lighthouse behind an 18th green, on a course that should not work by modern Tour logic: short, tight, small greens, no room to bomb away. Harbour Town should have been outgrown in 1985. Instead the RBC Heritage is still there and the best players in the world still speak about it with respect. Hilton Head's whole golf identity flows from that stubborn fact.
Sea Pines alone can fill a trip: Harbour Town, Heron Point, Atlantic Dunes, two Pete Dye connections and a Davis Love III rebuild. Across the island, Palmetto Dunes answers with its own three, and we rank two of them here. Five courses, built across six decades by architects who each thought they knew what Lowcountry golf should be. We score the golf first, then the day, then access and value. The lighthouse wins. The order behind it is where the fighting starts.
1Harbour Town Golf Links
Harbour Town opened in 1969, designed by Pete Dye with Jack Nicklaus consulting, and it changed what resort golf could be. Dye's small greens and railroad tie bunkering broke from 1960s design norms, the course played short and tight when the era wanted long and open, and the Heritage has been its stage since 1969, played the week after the Masters in front of galleries who come as much for the place as the field. At about 7,100 yards it is a shotmaker's course by Tour standards, which in 2026 is another way of saying it tests the parts of the game the other 51 weeks ignore.
The red and white Harbour Town Lighthouse behind the 18th green is the signature image, and for once the signature image undersells it. The course's real identity is inland, in the pines, on holes where position beats power three shots in a row.
The concession is price and setup. Resort access runs $300 to $450 for non guests at the premium end, and the tight corridors that charm Tour players can punish a resort golfer having an average day. Pay it anyway. This is the most important resort course built in America in the second half of the twentieth century, and it is not done being interesting.
2Sea Pines Atlantic Dunes
Atlantic Dunes is Davis Love III's 2016 rebuild of the old Ocean Course, and its history is the island's history: the original 1962 Ocean Course, by George Cobb, was Hilton Head's first course. Love restored ocean views and dune character to ground that had gone soft and shaded, and one hole plays to the beach, carrying the island's only oceanfront hole lineage. A course with the island's first golf in its soil, rebuilt by a designer who loves the Lowcountry, now plays as Sea Pines' second act.
It ranks second here on trajectory. Atlantic Dunes is the modern answer to Harbour Town's classic argument, wider, more visual, built for the resort golfer's eye as much as the shotmaker's brain, and it gives a Sea Pines trip its necessary contrast.
The concession is that a rebuild, however good, is still arguing with a masterpiece across the resort, and Atlantic Dunes' best holes borrow their charge from the ocean access its sibling famously lacks. Second place, earned, with the beach as its closing argument.
3Sea Pines Heron Point
Heron Point is Pete Dye again, his 2007 redesign of the former Sea Marsh course, returning to Sea Pines nearly 40 years after Harbour Town. The older Dye, given his own resort to revisit, built a risk and reward course with water and waste areas, shorter and more strategic than Harbour Town, asking the golfer to choose lines rather than simply find fairways. It is the connoisseur's second Sea Pines round, the one architecture fans argue about in the bar.
The concession is that Dye's later mannerisms, the sharp edges and visual intimidation, can feel like a tribute act when the original is a mile away. Heron Point is very good. It is also, unavoidably, the other Dye at Sea Pines, and third place in its own resort is the honest slot.
4Heritage Palmetto Dunes Robert Trent Jones Course
The Robert Trent Jones Course at Palmetto Dunes, opened 1969, the same year as Harbour Town, is the headline course of the island's other resort, and its signature is the par 5 10th, playing directly toward the Atlantic. Roger Rulewich, a Jones associate, led the 2002 renovation, the lagoon system runs through the Palmetto Dunes courses, and the whole operation represents the classic resort model executed at a high level: big, scenic, welcoming golf.
The concession is that 1969 produced two island courses and history kept one of them. Set against Harbour Town, the Jones course is the conventional contemporary, very good resort golf without the design break that made its neighbour immortal. Fourth here is a ranking against giants, not a dismissal.
5Palmetto Dunes Arthur Hills Course
The Arthur Hills Course, opened 1986, plays partly off the resort property through the Leamington community, which gives it the odd charm the records note: off resort holes most guests do not expect. Hills built lagoon golf in the Lowcountry idiom, and his course is the third of the resort's three, the repeat guests' round, less heralded than the Jones course down the road.
The concession is straightforward. Fifth among five strong resort courses, with the least distinct identity of the group and no signature hole the island talks about. It loses this ranking on memorability, which at Hilton Head is the currency that counts. The lighthouse is still lit when you drive home, and it is not shining on the fifth best course.