# The Best Golf Courses in Reno

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-reno-nv/

[The Course Rankings](/)

Town Rankings / Nevada


A deep sand bunker guarding a green. Photo: Santeri Viinamäki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The ball flies differently in Reno, and everybody who has teed it up at altitude knows the quiet fraud of it. A stock shot carries farther in the thin air below the Sierra, egos inflate by the third hole, and then the wind comes off the mountains and collects the debt. For 21 years the PGA Tour tested that equation at Montreux, home of the Barracuda Championship, in the pines above the city.

Reno golf is a split personality. Up the Mount Rose Highway it is private, forested and serious. Down in the valley it is public, windblown and priced for people who actually live here. Sparks, next door, adds the resort version. This ranking scores the golf first, then the day, then what access and value do to the argument. Altitude is the local constant. It flatters everyone equally, so it decides nothing here.

## 1Montreux Golf and Country Club

Montreux hosted the Barracuda Championship for 21 years, and that run is the strongest single credential any course in this town can show. A Tour stop that lasts two decades is not a courtesy booking. The course held up, the membership kept saying yes, and the format, the Barracuda's modified Stableford scoring, rewarded the aggressive play that altitude golf invites. Birdies paid. So did nerve.

The setting does real work too. Montreux sits in pines on the mountain side of town, which in Reno means it plays a different sport from the valley floor courses below it: cooler air, trees in play, elevation changing the questions from hole to hole. In a state better known for desert golf, this is mountain golf, and it is the only version of it in the Reno argument.

The concession is access, and it is not a small one. Montreux is private. Most golfers reading this will never play it, and a ranking that pretends that does not matter would be lying. It matters. It just does not outweigh 21 years of Tour golf and the best site in town. If you get the invitation, you take it, and you do not waste the drive up the hill talking about the one that got away in the casino the night before.

## 2Wolf Run Golf Club

Wolf Run is the best answer Reno gives a public golfer who wants a real test without a member sponsor. It sits on the south side of town where the valley starts to climb, and the golf is honest in the way good daily fee golf should be: the challenge is in front of you, the conditioning is usually the talking point among locals, and the round moves.

What keeps it out of the top spot is ceiling, not effort. Wolf Run does not have Montreux's site, its trees or its two decades of Tour Sundays. What it has is repeatability. Locals play it again and again, which is a different kind of credential, and in a town with plenty of transient visitors, the course the residents choose carries weight with us.

The concession: on a windy afternoon, and Reno has plenty, Wolf Run can feel exposed and a little severe for a casual round. Pick your morning. The course rewards it.

## 3Lakeridge Golf Course

Lakeridge is the old in town option, the course southwest Reno has played for generations while newer developments grew up around it. Its case rests on location and familiarity. It is close, it is established, and for a lot of Reno golfers it is simply their course, the one where they learned the game and where the regular game still meets.

That familiarity cuts both ways. Lakeridge does not surprise anyone, and in a ranking it suffers for being known. The golf is solid, parkland in feel, a gentler day than Wolf Run in most conditions. But solid and gentle is a third place argument in this town, behind a Tour proven private club and the public course locals rate as the sterner test. The concession we will make for it: if you have one afternoon and no connections, Lakeridge might give you the most relaxed round of the four. Relaxed is worth something. It is just not what this list pays for first.

## 4Red Hawk Golf and Resort Sparks

Red Hawk carries the Sparks side of the market, and its identity is in its name: resort. It is built for the visitor version of a Reno golf trip, the stay, the amenities, the full day taken care of. As a piece of hospitality it makes sense. As pure golf in this ranking, it lands fourth, because the golf itself has never separated from the pack the way the top three have in their different lanes.

The honest concession is that for a group trip, a wedding weekend, a guys trip built around the casinos with golf as one item on the list, Red Hawk may be the practical pick of the four. Practical is a virtue on a trip. It is not the same virtue as best.

Reno will always be a town golfers pass through on the way to Tahoe or stop in on the way to somewhere else. That is their loss. The last light on the Sierra, a ball hanging in thin air longer than it has any right to, is a scene worth staying for.

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