# The Best Golf Courses in San Diego County, California Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-san-diego-county-ca/ [The Course Rankings](/) County Rankings / California A golf course in autumn foliage. Photo: Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons San Diego County's golf runs on a strange engine: its most famous course is a municipal, and its 22 courses stretch from desert floor in Borrego Springs to cliffs over the Pacific. We score the golf first, then the day, then what it costs you. The statewide picture sits in [the California ranking](/blog/the-5-best-golf-courses-in-california/). The county, best first. ## 1South Course (Torrey Pines) The South Course at Torrey Pines is the county's signature: a municipal championship course on the La Jolla cliffs that has hosted two U.S. Opens, including Tiger Woods's 2008 playoff win on a broken leg, and hosts the PGA Tour every winter. Cliff-edge holes, coastal wind, a public tee sheet. No other muni in America carries this résumé. ## 2Rancho Santa Fe Golf Club The private heart of old Rancho Santa Fe, a Max Behr design from the game's classic era that has stayed deliberately quiet while everything around it got louder. Members' golf in the purest sense: no resort traffic, no events, just a revered routing in the county's most guarded community. ## 3The Grand Golf Club Tom Fazio's course at the Grand Del Mar, the county's luxury resort standard, through Los Peñasquitos Canyon with the full five-star apparatus behind it. For a decade it has been the private-feeling round a visitor can actually buy in this county, and its conditioning sets the local bar. ## 4Barona Creek Golf Club The county's best inland argument. Todd Eckenrode of Gary Roger Baird Design opened Barona Creek in 2001 on the Barona Indian Reservation, the first 18-hole course built on a California Indian reservation, a $12 million project routed around some 170 native oaks and boulder outcroppings with nearly 140 bunkers. Par 72 at 7,092 yards, a former Nationwide Tour Championship host, and a fixture of Golfweek's best-you-can-play lists for California. ## 5Aviara Golf Club Arnold Palmer's design on the edge of the Batiquitos Lagoon nature preserve in Carlsbad, part of the Park Hyatt Aviara Resort. Aviara has hosted the LPGA's Kia Classic since its inaugural edition in 2010, won by Hee Kyung Seo on a sponsor exemption. Water features run throughout, and the tournament course plays about 6,600 yards. ## 6Maderas Golf Club Johnny Miller and Robert Muir Graves opened Maderas in 1999 in the hills of Poway, and it sits on Golf Digest's list of America's 100 Greatest Public Courses. Par 72 at 7,115 yards around cliffs, creeks and forest with big elevation changes, three lakes and five waterfalls worked in. The most dramatic public round in the county's interior. ## 7Rams Hill Golf Club Out in Borrego Springs, in Anza-Borrego desert country, a Ted Robinson layout was redesigned into a single 18 by Tom Fazio, who called the site one of the most amazing pieces of desert he has worked with. Over 7,200 yards, 141 slope, 97 traps and seven lakes. Ranked by Golf Digest among California's top courses. The drive is the price of admission; the desert in winter is the reward. ## 8San Diego Country Club The county's classic private club in Chula Vista, a 1921 Billy Bell design that hosted early LPGA history and still guards its membership the old way. Flat, walkable, strategic golf from before the cart path, and a standing rebuke to the idea that a course needs elevation to have character. ## 9North Course (Torrey Pines) Torrey's North Course is the best second course at any municipal facility in the country, a full clifftop test that hosts tour rounds alongside the South during the Farmers Insurance Open. In most counties it would be the headline. Here it is the warm-up act, which says everything about its sibling. ## 10Del Mar Country Club Joseph Lee's 1991 design in a secluded Rancho Santa Fe valley three miles from the beach: par 72, 6,950 yards, 74.4 rating and 133 slope, with streams, lakes and waterfalls. Famous for a no tee time policy, members show up and play. Named Best Private Course by Ranch & Coast magazine, and one of the few area courses overseeding to rye for year-round surfaces. ## 11Coronado Golf Course Jack Daray Sr. built Coronado in 1957 on 120 acres of bay dredging fill on Glorietta Bay for $1 million, with residents donating 250 palm trees from their own yards. The opening exhibition foursome included Billy Casper, Gene Littler and Paul Runyan. Par 72 at 6,590 yards, flat and walkable, the skyline and the Coronado Bridge in view. Once named a top five national best value by Golf Digest, and as a pure pleasure per dollar, almost nothing in California touches it. ## 12Balboa Park Golf Course San Diego's oldest public golf, opened in 1915 with oiled sand greens and dirt fairways, grassed in the 1930s through a WPA project associated with William P. Bell. Sam Snead shot 60 here in 1943 while stationed in San Diego with the Navy, 28 on the front nine, and the scorecard still hangs in the clubhouse. Par 72 across rolling park terrain with views of downtown, Point Loma and the Pacific. Short by modern standards and completely unbothered by it. ## 13The Bridges at Rancho Santa Fe Robert Trent Jones Jr.'s private course in Rancho Santa Fe, named for the bridges crossing its arroyos. Bold, modern golf that divides opinion and never bores anyone. ## 14Fairbanks Ranch Country Club Twenty-seven holes by Ted Robinson Jr., designed with John Harbottle III, opened in 1984 on the site of that year's Olympic equestrian endurance event. The Olympic jumps still stand on the course as decoration. Three walkable nines, Valley, Lakes and Ocean, behind the gates of the Fairbanks Ranch community. ## 15Legends Course (Omni La Costa) Joe Lee completed La Costa's 36 holes by adding nine in 1973 and the final nine in 1984; this was the South Course before it became Legends. It shares La Costa's deep tournament history, the Tournament of Champions years, the WGC Match Play era and the Kia Classic, and was renovated in 2011 by Damian Pascuzzo with Steve Pate and Jeff Brauer. ## 16Arrowood Golf Course Ted Robinson Jr. in Oceanside's South Morro Hills, opened spring 2005: par 71, 6,721 yards through riparian habitat minutes from the Pacific. The closing four, dubbed The Quandary in 2019, are billed as North County's toughest finish. ## 17Mt. Woodson Golf Club Lee Schmidt and Brian Curley's 1991 target golf carved into Ramona's boulder-strewn mountain: par 70 at just 6,004 yards, defended by tight fairways and huge elevation changes. A 450-foot wooden bridge through the treetops links the 2nd and 3rd over a canyon, and the hole names tell the story: Drop Off, The Chute, Razor's Edge, The Plunge, Ledges. ## 18Rancho Bernardo Inn Golf Course William F. Bell Jr.'s 1962 resort course, par 72 at 6,667 yards, and the only San Diego course to host both the PGA Tour and the LPGA: the San Diego Open in 1964, won by Art Wall Jr., and the Honda Civic Classic from 1978 to 1980, with JoAnne Carner winning twice. Classic, gentle, historical resort golf. The tail of the county is honest mid-tier golf. The Crossings at Carlsbad is a modern municipal addition with coastal views. Steele Canyon is a 27-hole Gary Player design in Jamul with a loyal local following. Riverwalk, in Mission Valley, keeps a central public round alive. They are the county's depth, not its headline. The headline is a city course on the cliffs where Woods won a U.S. Open on one leg. San Diego's best golf starts there, in public hands. **Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.