Town Rankings / California

The Best Golf Courses in Newport Beach

South of Newport Beach, on a headland above the Pacific, a resort built thirty six holes of Tom Fazio golf into the bluffs and charged the whole coast for the view. Pelican Hill is the reason visiting golfers know this town. The locals know a different Newport: two private clubs and a tournament course near the harbor where the Champions Tour plays every spring. Both Newports make this list. The ranking sorts out which one matters more.

Four courses: the Fazio pair, one tournament tested private club, one canyon private club. We score the golf first, then the day, then access and value. Value takes a beating in Newport Beach generally, and we will not pretend otherwise at any point below.

1Pelican Hill Golf Club Ocean North Course

The Ocean North is the stronger of the two Fazio courses at Pelican Hill, 36 holes of his work draped over the coastal bluffs, and the North gets the nod for the better balance of ocean holes and inland strategy. Fazio in this mode is a landscaper with a bulldozer and a genius for framing: every tee seems to aim at the water, every green sits against the horizon, and the conditioning runs at a standard most private clubs cannot match.

The concession is price and a certain sameness of spectacle. At the top of the market, a course should occasionally surprise you, and the North prefers to impress you continuously instead, which can blur by the back nine. It still takes first comfortably. If a visitor plays one round in Newport Beach, the town's whole sales pitch is on this course.

2Pelican Hill Golf Club Ocean South Course

The Ocean South hugs the water more tightly than its sibling, with holes that play directly along the bluffs and the Pacific in your face for long stretches. Players who rank scenery above strategy will put it first, and on a clear day, with Catalina Island visible across the channel, their argument makes itself.

We put it second, by a little, because the South's ocean holes do some heavy lifting for a middle stretch that asks less of your game. It is a ranking quibble between two courses at one address. Visitors should play both if the budget survives it, and if it survives only one, the choice says more about the golfer than the golf.

3Newport Beach Country Club

Newport Beach Country Club hosts the Champions Tour's Hoag Classic, which makes it the rare private club on this coast that the public sees tested on television every year. The golf is classic Orange County country club: compact ground near the harbor, mature trees, greens that the senior professionals have to respect, and a tournament history the members cite with justification.

Third because tournament history is not the same as tournament difficulty at the highest level, and the Fazio pair outguns it on land, conditioning, and variety. Its counterargument is real: this is a members' club with a soul, not a resort with a rate card, and as a day of golf it may be the warmest on the list. An invitation here beats a tee time at Pelican Hill as a social matter. As golf, third is right.

4Big Canyon Country Club

Big Canyon is the other private Newport, routed through the canyon country inland from the harbor, quieter, more traditional, and thoroughly removed from the coastal spectacle the town sells. The golf is solid club golf in a handsome natural setting, and the membership prefers the removal. That is rather the point of the place.

Fourth, because solid club golf finishes fourth when the list includes two Fazio courses on an ocean bluff and a tour venue. No dishonor in it. Big Canyon was never competing for the visitor's dollar, and judging it by that contest is our imposition, not its failure.

A final word on the two Pelican Hill courses, since most readers of this list are really choosing between them. Play the North if you keep a serious card. Play the South if the day is clear, the group is mixed, and the round is partly an excuse to stand on a bluff above the Pacific with a drink waiting at the end. Both answers are defensible. Only one of them is a ranking.

Newport Beach golf is expensive, gated, or both, and this list will not apologize for the town. The bluff at Pelican Hill on a clear evening, island on the horizon, is worth what they charge. Once.