# The Best Golf Courses in Teton Village

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-teton-village-wy/

[The Course Rankings](/)

Town Rankings / Wyoming


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

Teton Village is not really a town. It is the base of a ski mountain in Jackson Hole, a cluster of lifts, lodges, and expensive roofs sitting twelve miles from Jackson, with the Tetons rising straight out of it. Golf here means golf built for that audience, on ranch land, in a short season, at altitude. Two courses anchor the list, and they are not really rivals. One belongs to the village. The other belongs to the valley next door and gets pulled into every Teton Village conversation anyway.

We will rank what is here and say plainly that the bench is two deep. We score the golf first, then the day, then access, and in Teton Village access and money shape everything. There is no municipal course at the base of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. There never will be.

## 1Shooting Star Golf Club

Shooting Star is No. 1, and the record explains why in one sentence: a Fazio design at the ski mountain's base, built on a ranch with re-routed creeks and Teton frontage. Tom Fazio is the defining resort and private club architect of the last forty years, and this is his kind of commission. Take ranch ground, move water where the golf needs it, frame every hole against the mountains, and condition it to a standard that makes members feel the dues were rational.

Re-routed creeks is the detail to hold onto. This is manufactured golf, openly, skillfully, and at great expense, in a place where the natural setting is already spectacular. Some golfers prefer their courses found rather than built. In a valley floor at a ski base, built was the only honest option, and Fazio built it about as well as it gets done.

The concession is cost and access, and it is not small. This is a private club at a luxury ski village. Initiation at this level in Jackson Hole runs, by estimate, well into six figures, and that figure is an estimate since clubs do not publish it. Most readers will see Shooting Star from the outside, if at all.

Within the village, though, there is no argument about the top. It is the course here built to a national standard, and it plays like it.

## 2Teton Pines Resort and Country Club

Teton Pines comes second, with an asterisk worth stating out loud: it sits in Wilson, down the road from the village, and it appears on this list because visitors staying in Teton Village play it as part of the same trip. Its claim is a strong one. It is the Palmer design from the valley's group of courses, with direct Teton views, and crucially it carries a resort door that a guest can actually walk through.

That access point is why some travelers will rank it first, and we concede the logic. A course you can book beats a better course you can only look at, on any given vacation. Palmer's design gives a visitor room to play, views to remember, and enough trouble on the approaches to keep a good player honest. As a holiday round, it may deliver more than a guest round at a private club where you spend the day afraid of breaking a rule you were never told.

It ranks second only because this list rewards the golf itself first, and Shooting Star's build, conditioning, and setting at the mountain's base set a ceiling Teton Pines does not reach. Second in Jackson Hole is still a ranking most courses in Wyoming would take without blinking.

Two courses, one valley, one mountain doing most of the talking. Stay in the village, play Teton Pines on your own booking, take the Shooting Star invitation the second it is ever offered, and do not spend the gondola ride up arguing about the order. The mountain already settled the scenery contest. The golf argument is the only one left, and it is a good one.

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