# The Best Golf Courses in Oklahoma City

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-oklahoma-city-ok/

[The Course Rankings](/)

Town Rankings / Oklahoma


A golf course in autumn foliage. Photo: Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Oklahoma City spreads, and its golf spreads with it. The old money plays in Nichols Hills. The new suburbs filled the northwest with upscale clubs. And the city itself runs a public system with roots in 1922, which tells you that OKC was building municipal golf when most American cities had barely started. Six courses make this list, more than any other town in this Oklahoma run, and the spread is the point: this is a capital city with a full golf ecosystem, private tradition at the top, public depth at the bottom.

We score the golf first, then the day, then access and value. The private clubs take the early places. The public courses make the stronger argument about what the city's golf actually is.

## 1Oklahoma City Golf and Country Club (Nichols Hills)

The establishment club, in the enclave where Oklahoma City's old families have always lived. Courses like this win rankings on accumulation: decades of member golf on a classic-era layout, conditioning held to a standard a public budget cannot touch, and the quiet confidence of a club that has never needed to advertise its position because the city already knows it. Nichols Hills is not a suburb that grew around a course. It is a community that treats its club as a birthright, and the golf has been cared for accordingly.

The concession is that establishment golf can coast, and a ranking should reward the course, not the zip code. We think the golf earns it anyway. This is the best combination of design pedigree, conditioning, and club seriousness in the city, and it has been for a long time.

## 2Gaillardia Golf and Country Club

Gaillardia is the Arthur Hills upscale in the northwest sprawl, and it is the modern counter-argument to Nichols Hills: bigger, bolder, built for the Oklahoma City that grew outward instead of inward. Hills gave it the full upscale treatment, a course designed to anchor a luxury development and to feel like an occasion. For golfers raised on the northwest side, this is their championship standard, and it is a legitimate one.

Where it loses to No. 1 is depth of history and the sense of a course tested by generations rather than delivered by a developer. That gap is narrower than the old guard admits. Gaillardia is a strong second, and on presentation alone, some days, it would win.

## 3Quail Creek Golf and Country Club

Quail Creek is the established north-side club that sits between the two poles above it: older than the sprawl courses, less storied than Nichols Hills. It has served its membership through decades of the city's growth and remains a serious golfers' club rather than a real estate amenity. Third place reflects that middle position honestly. The golf is respected, the club is real, and the ceiling is lower than the two above it.

## 4Lincoln Park Golf Course West Course

Now the public argument, and it is a good one. Lincoln Park gives Oklahoma City 36 city holes from 1922 roots, which means the city's public golf is a century old and still fielding two full courses. Of the pair, the West is generally the sterner test, the one local players name first. A muni that has been part of a city's life for a hundred years accumulates something no new course can buy: generations of golfers who learned the game on the same fairways.

## 5Lincoln Park Golf Course East Course

The East Course is the second loop at Lincoln Park, and second loops at munis usually mean the friendlier, quicker round. That is a role, not a failure. East takes the overflow, the beginners, the nine-after-work crowd that wants a few more holes, and it keeps the West from drowning in its own popularity. Ranked fifth because its sibling is the better test, it still beats most towns' best public option on history alone.

## 6Lake Hefner Golf Club

Lake Hefner plays by the reservoir on the northwest side, which gives it the one thing the Lincoln Park courses cannot offer: water in the picture and wind off it. It is the city's other public address, convenient to the suburbs that Gaillardia serves privately. Sixth here says more about this list's depth than Lake Hefner's worth. In most Oklahoma towns it would rank second.

Oklahoma City's golf, top to bottom, is a century of a city building for both its clubs and its citizens, and the bottom of this list is as much the story as the top.

**Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.