# The Best Golf Courses in Spearfish

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-spearfish-sd/

[The Course Rankings](/)

Town Rankings / South Dakota


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

Spearfish sits at the mouth of one of the prettiest drives in the northern plains, the canyon that carries its name, with limestone walls and a creek that stays cold in August. Golfers pass through on Black Hills trips, usually pointed at bigger names, and the local question is a modest one: with two courses in town, which round do you spend your Spearfish afternoon on?

Candor first, because this ranking needs it. This is a two course bench and neither course is a destination on its own. Spearfish golf is a reason to stop, stretch a trip by half a day, and play in canyon country, not a reason to fly to South Dakota. Within that honest frame, though, the two courses are genuinely different from each other, and the choice between them says something about what you want a vacation round to be. We score the golf first, then the day, then access and value, and in a town this size the day counts for a lot.

## 1Spearfish Canyon Golf Course

Spearfish Canyon plays up the scenic byway, and that setting is the strongest single asset any course in town owns. Canyon golf is a different sensory experience from prairie or foothills golf: enclosed, shaded in stretches, with the rock walls turning every sound and every gust into something local and unpredictable. A course routed through that corridor starts each hole with an advantage no architect can manufacture on flat ground.

That is why it takes No. 1, and the reasoning should be stated without dressing it up. Neither course in Spearfish is going to win a state architecture argument. When the golf is close, the setting breaks the tie, and the canyon is the best setting in this ranking by a distance. It is also the round that fits the reason people come to Spearfish at all, which is the canyon itself. Playing up the byway and then driving it, or the other way around, makes a day that feels designed rather than assembled.

The concession is that scenery can flatter a course, and regulars will say the canyon does some of the heavy lifting here. Granted. A player grading architecture alone, hole against hole on a blank site, might flip this order. But golf is not played on blank sites, and pretending location does not count would make the ranking tidier and less true.

## 2Elkhorn Ridge Golf Club

Elkhorn Ridge is the resort course in the Elkhorn Ridge development, and it represents the other Spearfish: the newer, planned, stay-and-play side of the northern Hills, where golf comes packaged with lodging and a community built around it. Resort development courses live by conditioning and convenience. The tee time is easy, the property is set up for visitors, and the round asks fewer logistical questions than almost any golf in the region.

On pure infrastructure for a travelling golfer, Elkhorn Ridge may actually be the simpler recommendation, and that is its honest concession in reverse. If your trip needs a base rather than a detour, this is the practical No. 1. It finishes second here only because this ranking puts the golf and the place ahead of the package, and a development course, however well kept, rarely gives you a hole you describe at dinner a week later. The canyon course can.

Play Spearfish Canyon for the day you will remember, Elkhorn Ridge for the base you will appreciate, and do not let anyone sell you Spearfish as a golf destination. It is a beautiful stop with two decent answers, and stops like that are what Black Hills trips are made of.

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