Town Rankings / Florida

The Best Golf Courses in Kissimmee

Kissimmee exists, for golf purposes, because of a simple overflow problem. Orlando fills up. Tee sheets at the famous names sell out, hotel rates climb, and the buddies trip that needs four rounds in three days looks south down the corridor and finds big resort courses, condo rentals by the dozen, and tee times still sitting there waiting. Kissimmee is the pressure valve for Central Florida golf, and it has gotten good at the job.

Nothing here pretends to be a private club with a century behind it. This is resort golf built for groups: wide lodging, wider fairways, courses designed to handle a twelve handicapper's best day and worst day in the same foursome. We score the golf first, and in Kissimmee the golf that wins is the golf with terrain, variety, and a reason to come back for a second round instead of just a second course.

1Reunion Resort Golf

Reunion Resort takes the top spot on the strength of its Palmer course, an Arnold Palmer design opened in 2004, formerly called the Legacy Course, and one of three signature courses at the resort. Start with the ground. Reunion sits on rolling terrain that is unusual for the Kissimmee area, where the default setting is flat, and Palmer used the movement to build wide fairways and dramatic waste bunkers that punish the greedy line without ending the hole for everyone else.

Three signature courses at one resort is a claim plenty of places make. The difference here is that the Palmer gives a trip an anchor, the round the group argues about at dinner, while the rest of the resort fills the supporting slots. The concession is the gate. Resort access generally means staying there or buying a package, so this is not a course a passing golfer books on a whim. For the trip Kissimmee exists to serve, though, anchor the week here and the rest of the itinerary gets easier to build.

2Celebration Golf Club

Celebration is a father and son design, Robert Trent Jones Sr. and Robert Trent Jones Jr. together, opened in 1996 in the planned town Disney built next door to its parks. That pedigree is rare anywhere, the two Joneses on one course, and the golf has the older Jones' scale with the younger's sharper edges. It has hosted US Open qualifying, which means the USGA has looked at it as a serious examination and agreed.

Public access at premium Kissimmee pricing puts Celebration within reach of any trip, no resort stay required, and that matters in a ranking where the top spot is gated. The concession is setting. A planned town is a planned town, tidy and managed, and golfers who want their Florida golf a little wilder will find Celebration composed where they wanted it unruly. Composed, well built, and second here by a small margin.

3ChampionsGate Golf Club

ChampionsGate is the name the buddies trips book first, the big resort golf operation built for exactly the traffic Kissimmee handles, and there is nothing wrong with being the volume answer. Groups come back year after year because the machine works: lodging, practice ground, tee times when Orlando proper is booked out, and golf that sends twelve handicaps home happy.

So why third? Because a ranking that scores the golf first has to reward the courses with the strongest individual identity, and ChampionsGate's identity is the operation around the golf more than any single hole a player carries home. That is a concession with the praise left in. For a first Kissimmee trip with a mixed group, this may still be the smartest booking on the list. Smart booking and best course are different categories, and ChampionsGate wins one of them.

4Mystic Dunes Golf Club

Mystic Dunes, a Gary Koch design opened in 2001 at its resort in Celebration, sells variety harder than anything else in town. The resort's own description splits the course in two: a links style front nine and a lowcountry back nine, with large elevation changes and waste areas by Florida standards. Two courses in one round is a promise that usually collapses by the turn. Here it mostly holds, because the terrain changes are real rather than painted on.

The concession is consistency. A split personality course gives a group plenty to argue about and a few holes that feel like they wandered in from another property. Fourth on this list, but the most talked about round of many Kissimmee trips, which is its own kind of win. Play the anchor at Reunion, argue about Mystic Dunes on the drive back up the highway, and you have done Kissimmee the way it was built to be done.