Town Rankings / Arizona

The Best Golf Courses in Lake Havasu City

The bridge is the story and everyone knows it. London Bridge, dismantled stone by stone in London, shipped across an ocean, and rebuilt here in 1971 over a channel in the Arizona desert. You can play golf in its shadow. The town exists because a man bought a bridge and built a city around it, and the golf, modest and sun-baked, has been riding along ever since.

Let us be candid, because this list requires it: Lake Havasu City is a boating town with golf, not a golf town. Three courses make the bench, none of them will host anything televised, and the honest way to rank them is as what they are, places to play a warm round while the lake does the heavy lifting. We score the golf first, then the day, and here the day includes the water, the bridge, and a cold drink with a view of both. Judged that way, the order is clear enough.

1The Courses at London Bridge

Thirty-six holes under and around the famous bridge, and the address alone earns the top spot, though the golf holds up its end better than skeptics expect. This is playable desert golf, nothing tricked up, routed for the resort crowd the town actually gets: visitors who want a morning round, a fair test, and lunch within sight of the water.

The concession is that the bridge outshines the architecture, and it is not close. Strip the landmark away and this is a solid, ordinary Arizona facility. But you cannot strip the landmark away. Setting counts in our scoring, and playing beneath a bridge that crossed an ocean to get here is a setting no amount of design money buys. First place, without much of a fight.

2Iron Wolf Golf and Country Club

Iron Wolf is the private option, the Lake View course at the Refuge, built for the community around it rather than the weekend visitor. Members get the more manicured version of Havasu golf, lake views worked into the routing, and the quieter tee sheet private golf always promises.

Why not first? Because the public golfer reading this list cannot book it, and because on the golf alone it does not separate itself from the bridge courses enough to overcome that. It is a good members' course in a town that needs one. Second place reflects both halves of that sentence.

If someone hands you a member invitation, take it and do not overthink the order. The gap between first and second here is mostly about who can get through the gate, not about a chasm in quality, and a free pass through any gate in golf is worth more than a ranking.

3Havasu Golf Club

Havasu Golf Club is the old local workhorse, the affordable east-side round, the place league players and winter visitors have kept alive for years. The conditioning will not match the resort course across town and the layout asks fewer questions. It also costs less, fills a tee sheet, and asks nothing of you but a few hours.

Every golf town has a course like this and most rankings pretend it does not exist. We would rather rank it third and say plainly what it is: the round you play because you live here, or because you are here for the lake anyway.

That is the whole bench, three courses deep. Come for the bridge, stay for a morning round, and be back on the water by the time the desert heat makes its point.