Town Rankings / California

The Best Golf Courses in Truckee

Truckee is where Lake Tahoe's golf grew up. The old money around the lake built its courses in another era; Truckee, the railroad town on the interstate, got the modern wave, big public and semi private courses cut through Sierra pine forest, at altitude, in a season that snow shortens at both ends. When the courses open, they open into some of the cleanest air in American golf.

All four courses on this list are plays on the same raw material: tall pines, mountain light, thin air that flatters your distances and your ego in roughly equal measure. The ranking turns on what each architect did with that material, and on the difference between a course built to host professionals and courses built to host your group of twelve. Golf first, as always. The setting is a tiebreaker here because the setting, honestly, is a tie.

1Old Greenwood Golf Course

Old Greenwood hosted a PGA Tour alternate event, the tournament played opposite a bigger one where the next tier of tour players went looking for a win, and that fact sets the terms. This is a championship scale course, built to examine professional golf, and it examines yours with the same questions at shorter range. Of Truckee's courses it is the most complete test: length where length belongs, bunkering with intent, greens that require the approach to be played from the correct side rather than merely on line.

The concession is that complete tests are not always charming ones. Old Greenwood can feel like business, especially next to the more romantic forest golf below it on this list, and players who come to the mountains for atmosphere sometimes leave respecting it more than loving it. Rankings are not love letters. The best examination in Truckee sits first, and this is it.

2Gray's Crossing Golf Course

Gray's Crossing is Old Greenwood's sibling across town and the subtler of the two, a course that works the same pine country with a lighter hand and a more natural feel off the tee. Plenty of Truckee regulars prefer it, and their argument is coherent: it asks similar questions with less severity, and the walk through the trees is the better walk.

We keep it second on the championship evidence, not on charm, where it might well win. Its concession is that sibling status cuts both ways. It lives in the comparison, and in the comparison it is the slightly lesser test. On any given Saturday, though, choosing it over the course above is a defensible act.

3Coyote Moon Golf Course

Coyote Moon is Brad Bell's course in the tall pines, and the pines are the point. It is the most scenic round on this list in the opinion of a lot of people who have played all four, a layout that drops and climbs through forest so dense the holes feel discovered rather than built, each one a separate room with the door closing behind you.

The concession is consistency. The drama comes in stretches, and the golf between the dramatic stretches is a step below the two courses above it. Coyote Moon gives you the best photographs and several of the best holes in Truckee. A ranking, though, counts all eighteen, and on all eighteen it finishes third, close enough to annoy its loyalists, which in Truckee is a loud group.

4Northstar California Golf Course

Northstar is the ski resort's course, and it plays like a resort course in the honest sense: a tale of two nines, meadow golf and mountain golf, built to entertain vacationers between other activities. There is nothing wrong with that job. There is also no way to rank it above courses built with championship intent or a singular setting.

Fourth, then, as the convenient option, the course you play because you are staying at the resort and the first tee is there. Truckee's other three courses are destinations. This one is an amenity, and it knows it.

In October the season ends the way it always ends here, a forecast, then a front, then snow on greens that were perfect a week earlier. Play these courses while the window is open. Truckee golfers do not take a single round for granted, and after one summer here, neither will you.