Town Rankings / Georgia

The Best Golf Courses in St. Simons Island

St. Simons Island has more tour players than traffic lights. That is the hook people repeat about this place, and the strange part is how plausible it sounds once you spend a day here. Tour pros live on this island, train on this island, and raise kids on this island, drawn by the practice facilities, the weather, and a golf culture that treats elite players as neighbors rather than celebrities. The residents' golf has to be good enough for that crowd. Mostly, it is.

The island's golf divides by gate. At one end, a vast private Fazio built for members who play for a living or play like it. At the other, the resort golf club across the causeway that visitors can actually book, and a local island club for the people who live here year-round. We score the golf first, then the day, then access, and access is the only category where first place loses badly.

1Frederica Golf Club

Tom Fazio designed Frederica, opened in 2005, on a large former timber and plantation tract on the island's north end, some 300 acres of sandy soil and live oaks that Fazio shaped into a natural-looking course rather than a manufactured one. It is known, correctly, for its tour-player membership in the Sea Island area, and for a practice facility that is a calling card in itself, the kind of range and short-game ground that explains why professionals choose to base themselves here.

The concession is access, total and unapologetic. Frederica is private, and estimates put the cost of belonging in the highest tier, which in plain terms means this ranking's No. 1 course on St. Simons is one almost no visitor will ever play. We rank the golf first anyway. A Fazio at full scale, on sand, under oaks, maintained for players who can tell the difference between good and merely expensive, is the best golf on the island, and pretending the resort course outranks it because you can book it would corrupt every other ranking on this site.

2Sea Island Golf Club

Sea Island Golf Club is the resort engine of the Golden Isles, the club visitors book, where tour-event golf sits on the sound and the whole operation runs at a standard that makes other resorts defensive. Its courses take the wind off St. Simons Sound, the marsh, the tides, and the conditioning money can buy, and for a travelling golfer this is not second place in any practical sense. It is the round you will actually play, at premium Golden Isles pricing, and it is very good.

The concession is that resort golf, even at this level, is built to please a rotating cast of guests, while Frederica is built for a fixed cast of excellent players. That difference in audience shows up in the details: the practice ground, the turf, the tolerance for difficulty. Second here is a compliment most clubs in Georgia would frame. It only looks like a demotion because of what sits at No. 1 on the same small island.

3St. Simons Island Club

The St. Simons Island Club is the locals' end of the island's golf, the club for the people who wave at the tour pros in the grocery store and then go play their own round somewhere less scrutinized. Every golf town with a famous top end needs a place where the game is just the game, leagues and regulars and a Saturday competition nobody outside the island has heard of, and this is St. Simons' version.

The concession is straightforward. It does not have Fazio's acreage, the resort's conditioning budget, or a single tour player in its membership pitch, and in a ranking it cannot climb over either. Third on St. Simons is a specific kind of bronze medal, though: the island's floor is higher than most towns' ceilings, and the locals' club benefits from the standards its neighbors set. The pros get the traffic-light line. The members here get the island.

Somewhere on the north end, behind the oaks, a tour player is hitting balls on the best practice ground in Georgia while the island has dinner. St. Simons would not have it any other way.