Town Rankings / Florida

The Best Golf Courses in Panama City Beach

Panama City Beach sells the Gulf first and golf second, and its golf knows it. This is the Panhandle: white sand, flat water, beach traffic on the strip, and courses built for vacation weeks rather than bucket lists. The bench here is three courses deep, two of them halves of the same resort, and we will rank them without pretending the list is longer than it is.

That candor cuts in the town's favor, in a way. What Panama City Beach has is one genuine claim that no other town in northwest Florida can make, attached to a resort on St. Andrews Bay, plus a public course that has been serving Bay County since before the strip existed in its current form. We score the golf first, then the day, then value, and in a beach town the value column counts for more than it does in Palm Beach.

1Bay Point Golf Club Nicklaus Course

The Nicklaus Course at Bay Point is the only Jack Nicklaus design in northwest Florida. That is the resort's own telling and it holds up as the region's headline: the most famous design name in modern golf has exactly one course in this corner of the state, and it sits at Bay Point, a 36 hole resort facility on St. Andrews Bay. A golfer driving the Panhandle who wants to play a Nicklaus has one door to knock on.

The setting does quiet work here. Bay water instead of beachfront, the resort ground giving the round a sense of enclosure that the open Gulf strip never has. As one half of a 36 hole facility, credited across the property to Bruce Devlin's original work and the Nicklaus Design name, the Nicklaus Course is the half with the reputation, the one the resort leads with and the one visiting groups ask for by name.

The concession is that a name is not a round. Nicklaus Design courses exist by the hundred around the world, and this one's claim is regional rather than national: best in northwest Florida by signature, not a course that troubles any state ranking. Within this town, though, the argument ends quickly. The headline course at the headline resort is No. 1, and the only suspense in Panama City Beach starts at second place.

2Bay Point Golf Club Meadows Course

The Meadows Course is the other half of Bay Point's 36 holes, and it plays the role every resort's second course plays: the friendlier ask, the round for the day the group wants golf without a main event. Sharing the St. Andrews Bay setting and the resort's public access, it benefits from everything the facility does well while carrying none of the Nicklaus Course's weight of expectation.

The concession is identity. Ask a golfer a month later which Bay Point course had which hole and the Meadows half of the answer will come slower. That is the tax second courses pay everywhere, and it is not a reason to skip the round. Thirty six holes at one resort is exactly the right shape for a beach week, a championship name in the morning and an easier walk the next day, and golfers who book only the famous half are doing the trip at half strength.

3Signal Hill Golf Course

Signal Hill dates to 1962, a public course in Panama City that has been Bay County's everyday golf for over sixty years. No resort, no signature architect on the sign, no claim beyond showing up for local players decade after decade at public value prices. In a state where courses get bulldozed for condos on a regular cycle, a muni era survivor is worth a sentence of respect.

The concession is the ranking. Third of three, behind a resort's two courses, is where a modest public track belongs when the golf is scored first, and Signal Hill's regulars, who did not ask for a signature design in the first place, will lose no sleep over it. Play Bay Point for the name and the bay. Play Signal Hill because it is Tuesday, you are in Panama City, and golf that has lasted since 1962 does not need your permission to keep going.