Town Rankings / Florida
The Best Golf Courses in St. Augustine
Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus spent thirty years as the two poles of American golf, rivals in everything except, it turned out, design collaboration. They co designed exactly one course together. It is not at a major venue or a famous resort. It is at World Golf Village, off the interstate outside St. Augustine, next to where the World Golf Hall of Fame used to be. The Hall of Fame has since closed its doors here and moved on. The golf stayed, which is the correct order of things.
St. Augustine golf is really World Golf Village golf plus the solid public golf of St. Johns County around it. Two resort courses carry the names and the stories, and two working public courses carry the locals. We score the golf first, then the day, then access and value, and the Palmer Nicklaus one off takes the top spot on the strength of the back nine its co designers argued into shape.
1World Golf Village King & Bear
The King & Bear opened in 2000, public and resort access, par 72 and over 7,200 yards from the back tees. The name is the two nicknames, Palmer the King, Nicklaus the Bear, and the local telling of the design has Palmer's Florida lakes style shaping the front nine and Nicklaus's parkland hand on the back. Whether or not the split is that tidy, the course does play like two minds meeting: water and width early, structure and demand late. It hosted the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf on the senior tour, which fits, a course built by legends mostly played in competition by them.
The case for No. 1 is partly the golf and partly the singularity. There is no other Palmer Nicklaus course to compare it against, and a collaboration that could have been a photo opportunity turned out to be a real test at full yardage. The concession: resort golf pacing and pricing apply, and purists will tell you the design smooths both men's sharper instincts into something more commercial than either would have built alone. Some of that is true. The back nine still asks questions neither man would have apologized for.
2World Golf Village Slammer & Squire
The second course at World Golf Village is named for Sam Snead, the Slammer, and Gene Sarazen, the Squire, and Bobby Weed designed it with both men consulting. It opened in 1998, two years before its famous sibling, public and resort access like the King & Bear.
Weed built the more playful course of the pair. The Slammer & Squire is known for risk reward short par 4s and greens guarded by water, the kind of holes that tempt a visiting golfer into the shot he will describe either way at the bar. It has hosted regional professional and amateur events and holds up as a full round, not a warm up act. It ranks second because the King & Bear is longer, sterner, and stranger in the best way, not because the Slammer lacks anything a resort course needs. Plenty of groups quietly prefer it. On a trip where fun counts double, flip these two and we will not fight you. On the golf alone, the order stands.
3St. Johns Golf and Country Club
Clyde Johnston designed St. Johns Golf and Country Club, opened in 2001, public and semi private, out in the county near World Golf Village. This is the tournament workhorse of the area, a popular venue for the competitive calendar in St. Johns County, and the round local players book when the resort courses are full of visitors or priced for them.
That role suits the golf. Johnston built a course that can be set up honestly for a qualifier and played happily by a Saturday fourball, which is a harder trick than it sounds. It concedes the obvious: no legends attached, no hall of fame next door, no story to tell a non golfer. What it offers instead is the best combination of test and public pricing in the corridor after the Village pair, and for a resident golfer it might be the most played good course in the county.
4Royal St. Augustine Golf and Country Club
Royal St. Augustine is the fourth spot and the shortest write up, because that is its place in the local order. It is the other public option in town, the round you take when the tee sheets elsewhere are jammed or the budget for the day is smaller, and it fills that role for St. Augustine golfers without apology.
The honest concession runs the other way here. Nothing about Royal St. Augustine argues with the three courses above it on design, conditioning ambition, or event pedigree, and we will not manufacture a case. But a town's golf is also the Tuesday round that costs what a Tuesday round should, and St. Augustine is better for having one.
The Hall of Fame left and the interstate traffic kept coming, and golfers still exit for World Golf Village to play the one course Palmer and Nicklaus ever built together. Buildings close. A back nine that two rivals shaped between them does not.