County Rankings / California
The Best Golf Courses in Orange County, California
Orange County golf splits cleanly in two. Along the coast sit the resorts and the old private clubs of Newport Beach, built on some of the most expensive golf land in America. Inland, the canyon courses work with arroyos, creek beds, and elevation the beach towns never had. The best list in this county is an argument between Fazio polish on the bluffs and Golden Age bones in Santa Ana, and the honest answer is that the county's top spot belongs to the course that used its land most completely.
1Shady Canyon Golf Club
Tom Fazio routed this 2002 course along the natural contours of Shady Canyon in Irvine's Turtle Rock area, par 71 and 7,012 yards through boulders, arroyos, and rock formations, with the front nine around Shady Creek and the back nine following East Shady Creek. It sits inside a 300 acre nature preserve, membership is by invitation only, and Golf Digest ranks it among California's best. Fazio gets criticized for manufacturing courses. Here the land did the shaping and he followed it, which is why it tops this list.
2Ocean North Course, Pelican Hill
Fazio again, a generation earlier. The Ocean North at Pelican Hill plays par 71 at 6,945 yards through canyons and valleys above Newport Beach, designed in the early 1990s on 400 acres of coastal land, with Fazio returning in 2005 to oversee enhancements. It is open to the public at premium resort rates beside the preserved Irvine Ranch Land Reserve, and it is ranked among California's best by Golf Digest. The ocean views do real work here rather than decorating weak holes, and it is the best round in the county that anyone can actually book.
3Newport Beach Country Club
William Bell designed this course in 1953 along Pacific Coast Highway, and it has hosted the Hoag Classic since 1996, the longest tenured host on PGA Tour Champions. From 2027 it hosts the Senior Players Championship, a senior major, and its winners list runs through Hale Irwin, Bernhard Langer, Nick Price, Fred Couples, Ernie Els, and Padraig Harrington. The tournament has raised over $25 million for local charities. A private club that keeps earning championship weeks for three straight decades has nothing left to prove.
4Santa Ana Country Club
The oldest golf club in Orange County, founded in 1901, and the best story on this list. After stops in Peters Canyon and Newport Beach, the club settled on its current site with a John Duncan Dunn course opening in 1924 and 1925. Jay Blasi then rebuilt it completely as a Golden Age styled layout, reopening in November 2016 after removing hundreds of trees and restoring sprawling 1920s style bunkers. Al Geiberger, later Mr. 59, won the 1956 SCGA Amateur here. Old bones, new teeth, and a membership that owns its history. It concedes the top spots on scale and setting, not on character.
5Big Canyon Country Club
Robert Muir Graves designed it in 1971 in Newport Beach's Big Canyon, John Harbottle III renovated it in 1998, and it plays par 72 at about 6,981 yards over hilly terrain with five lakes on seven holes and roughly 80 bunkers. It hosted the 2000 U.S. Women's Mid-Amateur, won by Ellen Port, and the 2014 U.S. Senior Amateur, the first USGA championship in Southern California since 2008 at the time. Hilly, private, and harder than its yardage suggests.
6Mesa Verde Country Club
William F. Bell's course opened in January 1959 on Costa Mesa farmland, intended to be public until demand forced it private. It hosted the PGA Tour's Orange County Open from 1959, won by Jay Hebert, Billy Casper, and Tony Lema, whose 1962 victory celebration with free champagne for the press earned him the nickname Champagne Tony. LPGA winners here include JoAnne Carner, Nancy Lopez, and Pat Bradley. Par 71, 6,726 yards, member owned since 1975, and still the county's best living link to the postwar tour.
7Ocean South Course, Pelican Hill
The second Fazio at Pelican Hill, par 70 and 6,580 yards, shorter than the North with more dramatic elevation change, running through coastal canyons and eucalyptus groves to ocean facing bluffs. It loses the sibling argument on length and variety, and wins plenty of visitors over anyway with the stronger scenery per hole.
8Arroyo Trabuco Golf Club
The best public value near the top of this list. Tom Lehman and Casey O'Callaghan designed it in 2004 along Trabuco Creek, 240 acres inside the Ladera Open Space Reserve where development is prohibited, so no houses line the holes. Par 72, 7,011 yards, with the scenic stretch running from the 7th through the 12th through a rugged canyon. Public golfers who want canyon golf without a membership start here.
9Oak Creek Golf Club
Tom Fazio's 1996 Irvine course, par 71 with tapered fairways, eucalyptus lined corridors, and heavy bunkering. The par 3 11th, nicknamed The Great Depression, plays to a stadium style green, and the practice facility was voted the county's finest by Southland Golf readers. A polished public option that concedes scenery to the canyon and coastal courses and beats most of them on conditioning.
10Monarch Beach Golf Links
Robert Trent Jones Jr.'s links styled course on the Dana Point bluffs, par 70 and 6,645 yards with small rolling greens and tight fairways. The par 4 3rd plays along the ocean and rates among the toughest holes on the course. It closes the top ten on setting. The back of this county list, Marbella, Black Gold, Strawberry Farms, Talega, and Tustin Ranch, is good ordinary Orange County golf, well kept and fairly interchangeable, a tier below the ten above. For the state frame, see the California state ranking.
The county's golf ends, as its days do, on the bluffs at Dana Point and Newport, with the Pacific doing the closing argument no architect can match.