County Rankings / Florida
The Best Golf Courses in Miami-Dade County, Florida
Miami-Dade County has 21 courses on our bench and the strangest access profile in Florida: the best golf course in the county sits on a man-made island almost nobody can enter, and the second-best is a county-run municipal on Key Biscayne that anybody can book. We score the golf first, then the day, then what it costs you. The statewide picture is in the Florida state ranking. The county, best first.
1Indian Creek Country Club
William Flynn's 1928 design on an island village in Biscayne Bay, private at the highest tier of exclusivity in American golf. Andrew Green restored the Flynn design in a major rebuild completed in 2022, and the standout hole is the long par-3 12th, played from a high tee over a cove of water. Flynn built the routing on a man-made island and made it feel inevitable. Nothing else in the county is close as pure golf, and almost nobody reading this will ever play it. Both facts belong in the ranking.
2Crandon Golf at Key Biscayne
The best municipal course in Florida and the county's gift to public golfers. Bruce Devlin and Robert von Hagge opened it in 1972 inside Crandon Park, it hosted the senior tour's Royal Caribbean Classic for years, and the golf runs through mangroves with the downtown Miami skyline across the bay. County-run access at premium muni pricing, which is the correct trade: this is a championship setting the public can actually buy, and it is widely ranked among America's best municipal courses for a reason.
3Biltmore Golf Course
Donald Ross, 1925, built alongside the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables and restored by Brian Silva in 2007 to Ross character. Canals and mature banyan and oak corridors shape play, and the course carries University of Miami golf history. Resort access at premium Coral Gables pricing. Ross in Florida is its own genre, flatter and more water-bound than his Pinehurst work, and the Biltmore is the county's surviving example with its hotel still standing guard.
4Trump National Doral Blue Monster
The county's most famous tournament address, the Doral headliner that hosted the PGA Tour for decades and made water-guarded Florida golf a television genre. We rank it fourth on résumé and recognition rather than on the everyday round: the Blue Monster is a test built for tour fields, and the resort's other three courses (Golden Palm, Red Tiger, Silver Fox) fill out the property below it on this list. Famous is not the same as best, and on pure design it trails the three above it.
5La Gorce Country Club
Private Miami Beach, opened 1927 to a Herbert Tippet design, reworked by Robert Trent Jones Sr. in the 1950s and by Jack Nicklaus in the 1990s and again in 2015-17. It plays par 71 at 7,005 yards, hosted the Miami Open in 1952, and carries the local footnote that Nicklaus played junior golf in Miami with La Gorce in his orbit. A layered, much-edited course that kept landing on its feet.
6Deering Bay Yacht & Country Club
Arnold Palmer's 1990 design in Coral Gables on Biscayne Bay, private, with water in play on every hole and mangrove and bayfront golf throughout. It hosted the FSGA Mid-Senior Four-Ball (South) in 2018. Palmer's Florida work is usually resort golf; Deering Bay is his private-club entry in this county, and the every-hole water is either thrilling or exhausting depending on your handicap and your ball supply.
7Normandy Shores Golf Club
A municipal course on Normandy Isle with a 1928 Flynn and Toomey lineage, renovated by Arthur Hills in the 2000s, water on 12 of 18 holes, and a co-hosting role in the annual South Beach International Amateur. Flynn bones under a city tee sheet is a combination this county does twice (see Indian Creek) at opposite ends of the access scale.
8Miami Beach Golf Club
The old Bayshore course from 1923, redesigned by the von Hagge group in 2001, par 72 at 6,813 yards, municipal access at premium Miami Beach pricing. Water and skyline views, and the Beach's everyday public round at a standard the original Bayshore never reached.
9Miami Springs Golf & Country Club
Opened in 1923, by local account the first 18-hole course in the Miami area, a Langford & Moreau design that hosted the Miami Open on the early PGA Tour circuit. Mature, tree-lined parkland by Miami standards, municipal access at moderate rates, and a longtime home to local amateur championships. The connoisseur's pick of the county's munis.
10Country Club of Miami
Thirty-six holes by Robert Trent Jones Sr. in the Hialeah area, run by the county: the West Course at par 72 and 7,017 yards hosted the 1991 Senior PGA Tour National Qualifying School, the East plays par 70 at about 6,450. Arnold Palmer played here in his early pro years, per local history. Volume, history, municipal pricing.
11Fisher Island Club
Nine holes by P.B. Dye on Fisher Island, par 35 at 3,100 yards, reached by ferry, with the par-4 7th running along the shipping channel. As golf it is a curiosity; as a setting, an island club with a seaplane base and marina, it is unmatched in the county. Private in the fullest sense.
12Palmetto Golf Course
Dick Wilson's 1960 county course in Palmetto Bay, par 70 at 6,648 yards, water on 10 holes, a 435-yard par 4 as its signature. Flat, tree-lined South Dade golf at municipal rates. Honest, ordinary, useful.
The tail of the county is working golf: Granada, the nine-hole Coral Gables municipal from 1923 by Langford & Moreau, compact and walking-friendly among the Merrick-era homes; Greynolds in North Miami Beach, a nine-hole county layout built on a former rock quarry; Riviera in Coral Gables and Shula's Senator course in Miami Lakes; the remaining Doral courses; and Turnberry Isle's two in Aventura. One name belongs in a different category entirely: Melreese Country Club, the city's championship course by the airport with the par-4 14th called Heartbreak Ridge, closed permanently in March 2023. It would have ranked in the top half of this list for fifty years. Now it is the county's reminder that even municipal land is not safe in Miami. The headline stands: Flynn's island first, the county's own course on the bay second, and public golf holding two of the top eight spots in the richest county in Florida golf.