County Rankings / Florida

The Best Golf Courses in Lee County, Florida

Lee County golf is Fort Myers golf, mostly, plus the bundled communities that fan out toward Estero, Bonita Springs, and Cape Coral: 30 courses in our dataset, the great majority of them private club golf built for residents. That shapes this list. There is no Seminole here, no national top 20 hiding in a Fort Myers subdivision. What there is, at the top, is one genuinely strong public course, one U.S. championship venue, and a Donald Ross municipal that has been part of the city's life for over a century. We rank it as we find it, alongside the 5 best golf courses in Florida.

1Old Corkscrew Golf Club

Old Corkscrew is the best course in Lee County and the easiest No. 1 on this page. A Jack Nicklaus Signature design opened in 2007 in Estero, built inside an Audubon certified natural setting with no residential housing on the course, named for the Corkscrew Swamp country of Southwest Florida. Water and preserve areas shape most holes. It is regularly ranked among the best public courses in Southwest Florida, charges dynamic premium pricing for the privilege, and earns it. In a county of community golf, Old Corkscrew is the one course built purely for the golf.

2Fiddlesticks Country Club

Fiddlesticks earns second on championship evidence. Its Long Mean course, a Ron Garl design from the club's 1982 founding in Fort Myers, hosted the 2022 U.S. Women's Mid-Amateur Championship and the 2010 U.S. Senior Women's Amateur, plays par 72 at 7,077 yards, and finishes with island greens at the par 4 9th and par 5 18th. Island greens as a finishing habit is a bold choice for a members' club, and the USGA's repeat business says the whole course backs it up. Private, 36 holes, with the second course, the Loch Ness, fully renovated by Kipp Schulties and reopened in January 2019.

3Fort Myers Country Club

Donald Ross designed Fort Myers Country Club, opened in 1917, and the city still plays it as its municipal course, known locally as The Fort. Thomas Edison and Henry Ford wintered nearby and played golf in Fort Myers in that era, which gives the old course a winter colony lineage few munis in America can claim. Steve Smyers led a major renovation in the 2010s, and access runs at resident friendly municipal rates. A Ross you can book, in the middle of the city he helped winterize. That is third here, and on value grounds it might be first.

4Bonita Bay Club, Bay Island

Arthur Hills built Bay Island at Bonita Bay Club in Bonita Springs in 1985, and it remains the longest and most challenging of the club's three on site Hills courses: par 72 at 7,006 yards, rated 74.5 with a slope of 147, in an Estero Bay setting. The club holds five courses in all, three here and two in Naples. Bay Island is the championship test of the set, the one the strong member reaches for.

5Colonial Country Club Fort Myers

Colonial is the county's biggest recent statement. Gordon Lewis designed it in 2002, then led a 9 million dollar renovation in 2025 that rebuilt all 18 greens, plus three practice greens, to USGA specifications. After the renovation the private Fort Myers course plays par 72 at 7,537 yards from the back tees, the longest card on this list. New greens on a 7,500 yard frame buys Colonial the fifth spot and a warning to the four above it.

6Crown Colony Golf & Country Club

Ron Garl's Crown Colony, opened in 1987 in Fort Myers, holds a genuine first: it was the first course in the United States built with Seashore Paspalum hybrid grass throughout the entire facility. It co-hosted the 77th Florida Open Championship, set up then as a par 71 at 6,815 yards, and plays par 72 at 7,013 yards for daily play. Private, and proof that this county's club golf has more invention in it than its reputation suggests.

7Lexington Country Club Fort Myers

Lexington is Gordon Lewis's 1995 Fort Myers design as rebuilt: Kipp Schulties completed a full redesign in 2017, with Celebration Bermuda fairways and TifEagle greens, and the course now plays par 72 at 7,123 yards, rated 74.6 with a 138 slope. Private bundled community golf at a championship length. The 2017 rebuild is why it sits seventh rather than lower; this is effectively a young course wearing a 1995 routing.

8Gulf Harbour Yacht & Country Club

Gulf Harbour, a Chi Chi Rodriguez and Gene Bates design opened in 1998 on the Caloosahatchee in Fort Myers, plays par 72 at 6,723 yards, rated 73.4 with a slope of 141, a number that warns you the water is not decorative. The club pairs the golf with a 186 slip deep water marina about 4.5 nautical miles from the Gulf of Mexico, and the layout is Audubon certified. Private yachting community golf, done at a slope most community courses would not dare print.

Behind these eight, the county settles into solid community golf: Eastwood, the city's Devlin and von Hagge municipal with 87 bunkers, Coral Oaks, Arthur Hills's muni in Cape Coral routed around century old oaks and eight lakes, and a long bench of private club courses that serve their members perfectly well without troubling a county ranking. The top, though, is better than Lee County's quiet reputation. A Nicklaus in the preserve, a USGA venue, and a Ross muni inside one county line is a hand most Florida counties cannot play.