Town Rankings / California

The Best Golf Courses in Palm Springs

A small geography confession first. Indian Wells is its own city, a few miles down the valley from Palm Springs proper. But golfers do not experience the Coachella Valley in municipal boundaries, and the resort there functions as the centre of gravity for the whole area's visitor golf. It belongs on this page for the same reason it fills the hotel rooms: when people say they are going to play golf in Palm Springs, this is usually where the tee times are.

The town itself is the valley's original article, mid-century and mountain backed, the wind picking up most afternoons through the pass. Its golf divides cleanly: big resort operations built to host thousands of winter visitors, and a handful of courses with actual personality. The ranking rewards personality more than the brochures do, though not enough to ignore the best resort test in the area.

1Indian Wells Golf Resort Players Course

The Players Course is the strongest test on this list. It plays long and honest through the resort's grounds, demanding driving and full shots rather than the target golf doodling that gives desert design a bad name. Of the two Indian Wells courses it is the one a low handicapper should choose, and the gap is not small: where the Celebrity charms, the Players examines.

The concession is atmosphere. A resort course, however good, carries the resort with it: conferences, outings, the sense that golf is one amenity among several. The Players Course overcomes most of that with the quality of its questions, and on a valley trip built around one serious round, this is the tee time to protect.

2Escena Golf Club

Escena is the Palm Springs round with a sense of design about the whole day, not just the golf. It is a Nicklaus layout under the mountains, and the clubhouse is a mid-century piece that understands exactly what town it is in. The golf itself is playable rather than punishing, routed to keep the mountain views in front of you, the kind of course where the score matters less than the light in the late afternoon.

Why not first? Because the Players Course is simply more course. Escena concedes the examination and wins the afternoon. For a lot of golfers on a winter trip, that trade is the right one, and a ranking that cannot admit it would be lying about how golf trips actually work. Play the Players in the morning if you can get both. Argue about which was better over dinner. Reasonable people land on Escena more often than the handicaps suggest.

3Indian Wells Golf Resort Celebrity Course

The Celebrity is the prettier sibling: lush, flower lined, water in view, the resort course as postcard. Where the Players tests, the Celebrity flatters, and flattery is a legitimate design brief for a course that hosts a steady traffic of vacation golfers and corporate groups. It is kept beautifully, and a round here never feels like work.

That is also the limit. The Celebrity's holes blur together in memory in a way the Players' do not, and lushness in the desert reads, to a certain kind of golfer, as money spent against the landscape rather than with it. Third place, gladly played, rarely argued about at dinner. Not every course has to start an argument. This one ends them by being pleasant, which is its own ranking problem on a list like ours.

4Tahquitz Creek Golf Resort

Tahquitz Creek is Palm Springs' public workhorse, two courses' worth of municipal golf under the mountains at prices that undercut the resorts. The setting does heavy lifting: the San Jacinto backdrop makes even an ordinary hole feel like it is somewhere. The golf is serviceable, the pace and polish vary with the season and the budget, and locals who play every week are its real constituency.

Fourth here is a verdict on ceiling, not usefulness. A town's ranking needs its Tahquitz Creek: the affordable, available round that keeps residents in the game while the resorts sell the valley to visitors. If you live here, it may be the course you play most. If you are visiting with two tee times to spend, spend them above it, and tip your cap on the way past.