# The Best Golf Courses in San Diego

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-san-diego-ca/

[The Course Rankings](/)

Town Rankings / California


A leading golf course in California. Photo: WilliamFMeyer, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In June 2008, on a broken leg, Tiger Woods limped around Torrey Pines for five days and won the U.S. Open in a playoff on the fifth. The course where it happened is a municipal. San Diegans book it with a resident card, visitors enter a lottery of advance bookings, and the cliffs above the Pacific at La Jolla hold the strangest arrangement in American golf: the city's best courses belong to the city, and the city's argument is about which of the two on the same headland is better.

That argument, plus a ferry ride's worth of local golf across the bay, is this list. San Diego proper is a municipal golf town at heart, whatever the resort courses in the county's north are doing. We score the golf first, then the day, then what it costs you, and the munis do very well out of that order.

## 1Torrey Pines Golf Course South Course

The South is the championship course: the Farmers Insurance Open's home, a U.S. Open venue twice over, and the longest, hardest walk on this list. It plays big. The fairways run along the cliff tops, the rough in tournament season is a genuine hazard, and the closing holes ask for full shots with the ocean on your left and nowhere to hide. The 2008 Open made it immortal. The course underneath the memory is a heavyweight test that earns its reputation the weeks the tour is not there, too.

The concessions are price and pace for visitors, and a routing that some architects find more brawny than clever. Inland stretches play away from the cliffs, and the design's subtlety is not its selling point. Fair. The South Course is not trying to be subtle. It is trying to identify the best ball striker in a national championship field, at a municipal address, and a town list that put anything else first would be showing off.

## 2Torrey Pines Golf Course North Course

The North is the locals' brief against its sibling: prettier in stretches, friendlier in yardage, and the round more San Diegans actually want on a Saturday. It runs out toward the canyon edges and the ocean views come more often than the South's routing allows, and a good score feels possible here in a way it never quite does next door. If the South is the examination, the North is the game.

It loses the top spot on ceiling, honestly stated. The North does not test the long game at championship pitch, and on a list that scores the golf first, the harder and more proven course wins. But we will say what the regulars say: measured in pleasure per dollar and per hour, the North beats the South for most golfers most weeks. Rankings are about the best course. Trips are about the best day. Know which one you are planning.

## 3Coronado Municipal Golf Course

Across the bay, under the bridge, Coronado is the local's flat, cheap, harbour side loop, and those three adjectives are praise. The course plays on the flat by the water with views of the bridge and the downtown skyline, in a setting where the hardest part of the round is finding a reason to hurry. Visitor rates stay sane, residents do better, and the whole operation understands that golf by the bay on a mild afternoon does not need to be difficult to be good.

Third place reflects the test, not the affection. Coronado's golf is straightforward, and a strong player will finish underwhelmed by the questions while entirely won over by the place. That trade is the course's whole identity. San Diego keeps a championship test, its friendlier sibling, and this: the easiest good time in city golf, one bridge away.

## 4Riverwalk Golf Club

Riverwalk sits in Mission Valley, where the hotels and the freeways are, and serves the visitor and the after work crowd with a central, convenient round along the San Diego River. It is the course you play when the Torrey tee time did not happen and the trip needs golf anyway, and it fills that role with good grace and a setting greener than the valley around it suggests.

Convenience is Riverwalk's case and its ceiling. Nothing here matches the headland courses for golf or Coronado for charm, and a local with a free day drives past it toward the water. As the valley's utility player, though, it earns its place on the list. Not every round on a golf trip is the headline round.

## 5Mission Bay Golf Course

Mission Bay closes the list as the town's short course: a compact layout by the bay, built for the quick round, the beginner, the evening game after the beach. It is San Diego golf at its most democratic, the first course many residents ever played, kept running in the middle of the city's playground.

Fifth is its honest slot, and the list is better for having a bottom rung this likeable. A golf town is a ladder, and San Diego's runs from a little course by the bay to a U.S. Open venue on the cliffs, all of it public. Hold that thought the next time a private club town tries to impress you.

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