# The Best John Fought Golf Courses in America

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-john-fought-golf-courses-in-america/

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A golf ball beside the hole on a green. Photo: PattayaPatrol, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

John Fought won the U.S. Amateur in 1977, played the tour, and then built a second career designing the kind of golf he liked to play: strategic, walkable in spirit, and quietly in love with the game's older forms. Our dataset holds 23 of his courses across eight states, from Arizona desert to Minnesota pasture to the Oregon high desert, and the list itself shows the range. He has restored a Donald Ross masterpiece, built a course that hosted Tiger Woods winning a world championship, and, in his seventies, designed a Seth Raynor tribute course in Minnesota. Few living architects have a stranger or more interesting arc. The best eight follow, with Phoenix context in [our Phoenix course ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-phoenix-az/).

## 1The Gallery Golf Club South Course, Arizona

Fought's championship peak. The South Course at The Gallery in Marana opened in December 2003, plays par 72 at 7,468 yards with a rating of 74.5 and a slope of 145, and hosted the WGC Accenture Match Play Championship in 2007 and 2008, won by Henrik Stenson and Tiger Woods. The Gallery is the only facility in Arizona where Woods has won a professional event. The routing is links-styled, with green surrounds the record compares to Pinehurst No. 2, set among thousands of giant saguaros in the Tortolita Mountain canyons, and it includes a 725-yard par 5 ninth, cited as the longest par 5 in North America. A course that gave match play two worthy champions and holds the continent's longest par 5 takes first place here on evidence, not sentiment. More on the area in [our Marana course ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-marana-az/).

## 2Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club, North Carolina

A shared credit, stated honestly. Pine Needles is a Donald Ross design, opened in 1928 in Southern Pines, host of the U.S. Women's Open in 1996, 2001, 2007, and again in 2022, and of the U.S. Senior Women's Open in 2019. Fought's role was the 2004 restoration of Ross features, later followed by Kyle Franz's work in 2017. He ranks this high on a Fought list because restoring Ross well is a design act, and because Peggy Kirk Bell's course, where she owned and taught for decades, needed a restorer who understood what Ross greens and Sandhills wiregrass were supposed to do. Fought did. Golfers who love Pine Needles are loving Ross first and Fought's stewardship second, and any ranking that blurred that order would be lying.

## 3Crosswater, Oregon

Bob Cupp designed Crosswater with Fought, opening in 1995 at Sunriver Resort: par 72, 7,683 yards at about 4,160 feet elevation, on 600 acres along the Deschutes and Little Deschutes rivers, crossing the rivers as often as seven times in a round. At its opening it was the longest course in the United States. It hosted the JELD-WEN Tradition senior major from 2007 to 2010 and the PGA Professional National Championship four times. Private, open to members and resort guests, and a genuine championship test at altitude. Length alone would not earn third. Length plus those rivers plus that event record does.

## 4Phoenix Country Club, Arizona

Fought with Tom Lehman redesigned Phoenix Country Club in 2002, preserving the elevated greens and strategic bunkering of a Harry Collis course whose 1921 routing remains unchanged. The club was founded in 1899, before Arizona statehood, hosted the Phoenix Open from 1932 to 1986, with champions including Palmer, Nicklaus, Hogan, and Johnny Miller, and now hosts the Charles Schwab Cup Championship, the PGA Tour Champions season finale. Par 71, a shade under 6,900 yards, small old-school greens with fall-off edges, and no tee times for members. Fought and Lehman understood that the assignment was conservation, not conquest, and the course's second life as a tour finale venue is their reward.

## 5Windsong Farm Golf Club North Course, Minnesota

The most charming entry on this list, and the newest. Fought designed the North Course at Windsong Farm, opened in the summer of 2024, making Windsong the first private club in Minnesota with two 18-hole courses. It is a par 70 of about 6,500 yards on 125 acres, deliberately different from the big South Course he built with Lehman in 2003, and it channels Seth Raynor openly, with Eden, Biarritz, Dell, Redan, and Cape template holes, a boomerang-shaped double green shared by the 13th and 16th, and rectangular bunkers with grass faces. An architect in his seventies building a love letter to Raynor, at 6,500 yards, as a deliberate counterweight to his own 7,500-yard course across the property, is a designer still arguing with himself. Good.

## 6Players Course, California

Fought's Players Course at Indian Wells Golf Resort opened in November 2007 on the old East Course footprint, a classic American layout with sculpted bunkering modeled on Riviera, Winged Foot, and MacKenzie's Melbourne courses. He kept stately mature trees from the original property so a new course would feel old, hosted Golf Channel's Big Break in 2011 and the Epson Tour Championship in 2024 and 2025, and later returned to refresh the course and build a new 18th. The par 4 sixth, doglegging tightly around a lake, is the signature. Municipal golf with this much design intent is rare, and [our Indian Wells course ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-indian-wells-ca/) shows how it anchors its town.

## 7Rush Creek Golf Club, Minnesota

Bob Cupp and Fought designed Rush Creek, opened in June 1996 in Maple Grove, developed by W. Duncan MacMillan of the Cargill family to give Minnesota a first-class public facility. It hosted the 2004 U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship and three LPGA Tour events, a Scottish-inspired par 72 through wetlands playing up to 7,125 yards. Public courses that host a USGA championship and tour golf while staying public are the backbone of American golf's better claims about itself. Rush Creek is Fought's best evidence in that category in the Midwest.

## 8Langdon Farms Golf Club, Oregon

Fought with Bob Cupp again, at a public course in Aurora, south of Portland, ranked No. 13 among Oregon public courses by Golfweek. A correction the record itself insists on: the course opened in spring 1995, not 1993, after the Langdon family farm was sold in 1994. It plays par 71 at 6,931 yards, and its signature par 4 eighth plays around the original Langdon barn, built in 1908 and deliberately kept inside the hole's design. The closing stretch from 13 to 18 is the noted run, the course hosted a local U.S. Open qualifier for years where the best score shot was 67, and since 2003 the Maletis brothers have run it as a family business under a Public Only motto. A barn from 1908 guarding a par 4 is the kind of specific, unrepeatable detail design rankings exist to celebrate.

The concession this list owes: Fought's name rarely leads the architecture conversation of his generation, partly because so much of his best work is shared, restorations, redesigns with Lehman, partnerships with Cupp, and partly because his courses sit in places the coastal critics visit last. Judged course by course, the record is better than the reputation: a WGC venue, a Ross restoration, the onetime longest course in America, and a Raynor tribute built in 2024. The through-line is a player-architect who never stopped studying older golf. Start at The Gallery's 725-yard ninth, where the saguaros stand like spectators who have seen everything, including Tiger.

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