# The Best Golf Courses in King County, Washington Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-king-county-wa/ [The Course Rankings](/) County Rankings / Washington A deep sand bunker guarding a green. Photo: Santeri Viinamäki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons King County holds Seattle, and Seattle golf has a split personality: a private old guard built in the 1920s by A. Vernon Macan's generation, a Fazio flagship east of the city, and one of the busiest municipal systems in America holding the whole thing up from underneath. Twenty five courses in our count. We score the golf first, which puts the private courses on top, but the soul of this county's golf is public, and the back half of this list is where Seattle actually plays. See [the Washington state ranking](/blog/the-5-best-golf-courses-in-washington/) for how the county's best travels. ## 1Aldarra Golf Club The modern standard. Designed by Tom Fazio and opened in 2001 in Sammamish, east of Seattle, Aldarra is ranked No. 2 in Washington by Golf Digest and listed among America's Second 100 Greatest Courses. No. 2 in the state and first in the county by a clear margin, because it is the one King County course built in the modern era to a national template and measured, by the panels, to have met it. Private, so most Seattle golfers will know it by reputation. The reputation is earned. ## 2Seattle Golf Club The establishment club, the private name Seattle golf has revolved around for a century, placed here on standing in broad strokes. Every serious conversation about the county's private golf includes it in the first breath, and we keep its movement short for the usual reason: we argue from record where we have record, and Seattle Golf Club's record is its membership's regard rather than a file of facts we can print. ## 3Broadmoor Golf Club The best documented of the old guard. Founded in 1924, opened for play in April 1927 just south of the University of Washington and west of Lake Washington, designed by A. Vernon Macan, the leading Pacific Northwest architect of his era. Par 70, 6,427 yards. The history is the argument: Broadmoor hosted the 1945 Seattle Open, won by Byron Nelson with a 259 for 72 holes, a world record at the time, and the revived 1961 Seattle Open won by Dave Marr, plus the 1961 U.S. Girls' Junior. A private club whose trophy case includes a Byron Nelson world record does not need our help. It needs only to be read correctly, ahead of every public course in the county. ## 4Inglewood Golf Club Macan again, at the north end of Lake Washington in Kenmore. Founded in 1919 and opened for play in July 1921, designed by A. V. Macan and Robert Johnstone. Inglewood hosted the PGA Tour's Seattle Open in 1936, 1963, and 1965, then held the Senior PGA Tour's GTE Northwest Classic from 1987 to 1995, playing par 72 at 6,808 yards. Two Macan courses in the county's top four is not sentimentality. It is the correct reading of who built Seattle golf. ## 5The Club at Snoqualmie Ridge The county's modern tournament address in the foothills at Snoqualmie, a private club course built for televised golf in a mountain setting, placed on reputation in broad strokes. It gives the east side a second modern flagship beside Aldarra, and on a given panel the two Snoqualmie valley arguments swap positions with the Newcastle courses below. We keep Ridge fifth on the strength of its tournament standing. ## 6Coal Creek Course The best public golf in the county, on the strangest site. Designed by Robert E. Cupp in consultation with Fred Couples and opened May 8, 1999, on a former coal mining and landfill site in Newcastle, where coal was found in Coal Creek in 1853 and mined into the 1940s. Par 72, 7,024 yards, five par 3s and five par 5s, on a 350 acre hilltop operated by Oki Golf, with a 44,000 square foot clubhouse and views of Seattle, Puget Sound, and the Olympics. Its sibling, the China Creek Course, opened in 2001 to par 71 across gentler ground, and the pair of them make Newcastle the county's public golf capital. Coal Creek leads on yardage, variety, and nerve. ## 7Druids Glen Golf Club The public brute. A Keith Foster design in Covington from 1997, par 72 and 7,146 yards from the back tees, with more than 60 bunkers, a slope of 144 and a rating of 75.1 from the tips, Mount Rainier as the backdrop, and a GolfPass citation as one of the ten most difficult courses in Washington. Public golfers who complain that county golf tops out at friendly will be cured here in one round. ## 8Washington National Golf Club The university course, in Auburn, built as the home of University of Washington golf and carrying the modern collegiate standard of length and practice infrastructure. Placed on reputation in broad strokes among the county's modern public and semi public tier, behind Coal Creek on documented record and ahead of the municipal bench on ambition. ## 9Jefferson Park Golf Course Now the history that matters most to Seattle itself. Jefferson Park opened in 1915 as the first municipal golf course in Washington state, was already logging over 100,000 rounds a year by 1920, and was renamed the Bill Wright Golf Complex on October 19, 2024. Wright learned the game here and in 1959 became the first Black golfer to win a USGA national championship, the U.S. Amateur Public Links. Fred Couples learned the game on these fairways too. No private club in the county can match that paragraph. Ninth on golf, first in the county's civic life, and it is not close. ## 10Bellevue Golf Course The municipal workhorse of the east side. Designed by David W. Kent and opened in 1968 in the Bridle Trails area, par 71, narrow fairways lined with tall pines that make accuracy off the tee the whole exam, open year round with a heated, lit range. It received votes in the Cascade Golfer Washington public course ranking, as did Auburn Golf Course, a 1948 municipal playing par 71 and 6,450 yards along the Green River. The bench runs deep and mostly municipal: Jackson Park, open since 1930 and known as the driest public course in Seattle. Foster Golf Links in Tukwila, opened in 1925, par 68 along a Duwamish River that surrounds 65 percent of the course. Maplewood in Renton and Mount Si in Snoqualmie, both from 1927, both par 72. The back of this list is ordinary weekday golf and we will say so. The front of it, a Fazio flagship, a Nelson record, two Macans, and the muni where Fred Couples started, is a county that built every kind of golf there is. **Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.