Town Rankings / Oregon
The Best Golf Courses in Redmond
Redmond is Bend's working neighbor, twenty minutes north in the same high desert, and its golf reflects the relationship. Bend got the famous architects and the resort money. Redmond got 63 holes at one resort address, a city course in the junipers that locals will defend against courses three times its price, and a short course where half the town learned to play. The Cascades are on the horizon here too. The attitude is different.
This is a value town's bench, and we rank it without importing Bend's standards. The golf first, then the day, then what it costs, which in Redmond is not a footnote. It is half the argument.
1Juniper Golf Course
Juniper is the city course John Antonini built in the junipers, and it takes the top spot in Redmond because it is the most distinctive round in town at a municipal price. The course plays through high desert scrub and lava outcroppings on the south side of Redmond, dry and firm, with the mountain views Bend charges resort rates for and a routing that uses the rough ground instead of hiding it. Antonini's design has more ideas per hole than a city course is supposed to have, and local golfers know it, which is why Juniper's reputation travels further than its budget.
The concession is conditioning, some weeks. Municipal money is municipal money, and Juniper can show it in late summer when the desert is winning. Eagle Crest's resort polish, ranked just below, will look better in photographs almost any day of the year. We will take the more interesting golf course over the better photographs, which is the whole philosophy of this site in one sentence.
2Eagle Crest Resort Ridge Course
Eagle Crest gives Redmond 63 holes, and the Ridge Course is the best of them: the championship layout of the resort, playing along the rim country west of town with the biggest views and the longest test on the property. Resort golf is supposed to flatter, and the Ridge mostly does, wide targets, scenery doing heavy lifting, but it has enough length and enough exposed holes in the desert wind to keep a good player awake.
It finishes second because its ambitions are a resort's ambitions. The Ridge wants you happy at dinner, and it trims its questions accordingly, where Juniper asks a few it has no business asking at its price and is more memorable for it. For a visiting group based at the resort, the Ridge is the main event and a perfectly good one. It is the best resort round in Redmond. It is just not the best round.
3Eagle Crest Resort Resort Course
The second course at Eagle Crest, listed in the resort's own plain language as the Resort Course, is the gentler sibling: shorter, friendlier, routed for the golfer who is here for the week and playing four times. Every resort with multiple courses has this course, and Eagle Crest's version does the job with better scenery than most, the same desert and mountain frame as the Ridge at a lower volume.
Third in a four course town is where it belongs. It does not pretend to the Ridge's test or Juniper's character, and judged as what it is, a second round of the day that will not wreck your handicap or your mood, it is entirely successful. Rankings punish that kind of modesty. Golf trips reward it. Both things are true and only one of them is this list's job.
4The Greens at Redmond
The Greens at Redmond is the short course, the beginner's door, an executive layout where kids, new golfers, and evening nine hole players get their reps without the price or the punishment of a full size round. By championship standards there is nothing to rank, and we will not invent any.
It closes the list because Redmond's golf story needs its first chapter. Towns lose their pipelines when the short course closes, and Redmond still has its, busy and cheap and unbothered. Fourth of four, and more secure in its role than half the famous courses we rank.
Dust, juniper, a city course outplaying the resort up the road. Redmond golf is the Central Oregon story with the marketing stripped off, and it holds up fine.