County Rankings / Hawaii
The Best Golf Courses in Honolulu County, Hawaii
Honolulu County is the whole island of Oahu, 27 courses in our count, and it contains a trap for ranking panels. The famous golf here is resort golf, priced for visitors and photographed at golden hour. The golf Oahu residents actually swear by is spread across military courses, municipal courses, and private clubs most tourists never hear named. We score the golf first, so the Tour venue leads, but read the whole list before booking anything, because the county's best value sits in the middle of it, and its most interesting round sits in the jungle on the windward side. For the wider picture, see the Hawaii state ranking.
1Waialae Country Club
The county's ceiling and its most examined course. Waialae is the private Honolulu club that hosts the PGA Tour's annual Hawaii stop, which means its holes get tested by a full Tour field every year and its greens are the ones television keeps returning to in January. It leads on record and reputation in broad strokes. Private, so it is a study course for most golfers rather than a booking, but a county ranking that did not start here would not be serious.
2Ko Olina Golf Club
The best resort round most visitors can actually play. Designed by Ted Robinson and built in 1990 in the Ko Olina lagoons resort zone in Kapolei, it is a former LPGA Tour venue, which separates it from the decorative resort golf that fills resort brochures up and down the leeward coast. Tournament history plus public and resort access, at dynamic tee time pricing, makes it the practical headliner of the county for a visiting golfer.
3Palmer Course
The second half of the Turtle Bay operation on the North Shore, and the bigger name of the two courses there. The Palmer Course carries the resort's championship reputation, while its sibling, the Fazio Course, plays the supporting role as the friendlier second round. We place the Palmer here on reputation in broad strokes, the North Shore's standard bearer, with the caveat that resort conditioning and pricing decide whether a given week flatters it.
4Ko'olau Golf Club
The most interesting course in the county, and it is not close. Public, in Kaneohe at the foot of the Ko'olau Mountains, in a jungle setting completely different from Oahu's resort courses, and described by NBC Sports as one of the world's most difficult golf courses. Difficulty lists are usually marketing. Ko'olau's is geography: ravines, jungle, and mountain weather on the wet side of the island. It will beat you up. Golfers fly home talking about it anyway, which is more than the county's polished resort courses can say.
5Kapolei Golf Club
Designed by Ted Robinson and built in 1994, a public 18 holes playing up to 7,003 yards, and ranked No. 8 in GolfPass Golfers' Choice top public courses in Hawaii for 2025. That last line is a players' ranking rather than a panel's, and it fits. Kapolei is the leeward side's working championship course, long enough to be honest, public enough to be a habit.
6Hawaii Prince Golf Club
Arnold Palmer and Ed Seay designed it, it opened in 1991, and it is a 27 hole resort facility in Ewa Beach whose three nines combine for rounds up to 7,255 yards. Twenty seven holes at that length gives it the most golf per acre of ambition on the leeward plain, and Palmer's name on an Oahu resort course has aged better than most celebrity design credits of its era.
7Mid-Pacific Country Club
The windward side's private standard, a members' club in Kailua with the kind of local standing that never needs to advertise. Placed here on reputation in broad strokes: in Oahu golf conversations, Mid-Pacific is the private name that comes up first after Waialae. Short movement, by design, because we rank its golf on record we can check, and its record is its membership's loyalty.
8Oahu Country Club
Honolulu's old line private club, the establishment address of island golf, in the hills above the city. Its case is history and membership depth rather than public record, and we give it the county's second private slot on that standing alone. Golfers who prize the club as an institution will argue it belongs higher. Golfers who prize only the holes can start their argument at Ko'olau.
9Royal Kunia Country Club
The elevated leeward option, a public course above the Ewa plain with the views that altitude buys on Oahu and a local following that keeps it in every best of the west side conversation. Placed on reputation in broad strokes among the county's public bench, behind Kapolei on verifiable record and ahead of the purely convenient options below.
10Klipper Golf Course
The military entry, 18 holes at Marine Corps Base Hawaii in Kaneohe, golf on the windward side for those with base access. Military courses are the county's quiet value story, and Klipper leads them here, with Barbers Point Golf Course, built in 1963 at the old naval air station and playing par 72 up to 6,403 yards, close behind for eligible players.
The rest of the county is honest, useful golf, and some of it is beloved. Ala Wai Golf Course, designed by Donald MacKay and built in 1931, par 70 in the heart of Honolulu, is the most convenient course for a visitor staying in Waikiki without a car, and resident rates require a Hawaii ID and golf ID card. Coral Creek, by Robin Nelson and James Haworth from 1999, plays 6,808 yards of public golf in Ewa Beach. Ewa Villages, a municipal course by Richard Bigler from 1996, stretches to 6,952 yards. The Hawaii Kai Championship Course, a William F. Bell design from 1973 in East Honolulu, and nine hole Kahuku, a municipal oceanside par 35 on the North Shore dating to 1937, round out a bench with real range. The back of this list is ordinary in places and we will not pretend otherwise. The front of it, a Tour venue, a tournament tested resort course, and a jungle brute at the foot of the Ko'olau range, is a county top three most islands in the world would take.