Architect Rankings
The Best Tom Fazio Golf Courses in America
Tom Fazio is the architect developers call when the land is difficult, the budget is serious, and the course has to be great on opening day. His best work in our dataset runs from a reclaimed coal strip mine in Indiana to a steep hillside in Arkansas, and the through line is control: Fazio shapes ground until the holes feel inevitable. Critics say his courses can feel manufactured rather than found. Sometimes they are right. These seven are the ones where the shaping produced something no one could have found, because the land had to be remade before golf was possible on it.
1Caves Valley Golf Club
Fazio opened Caves Valley in 1991 on 962 acres of rolling hills, pastures, woods, and wetlands outside Baltimore. It hosted the 2002 U.S. Senior Open, won by Don Pooley over Tom Watson in a five hole playoff, the 1995 U.S. Mid-Amateur, NCAA championships in 2005 and 2009, the Palmer Cup in 2007, the inaugural LPGA International Crown in 2014, and BMW Championships in 2021, won by Patrick Cantlay over Bryson DeChambeau in a six hole playoff, and in 2025, won by Scottie Scheffler. An extensive 2023 renovation led by Fazio rebuilt every green complex and changed par from 72 to 70 for the 2025 BMW. Membership is capped at 600 and invitation only. No Fazio course has been asked to host more, by more different bodies of golf, over more decades. It keeps answering.
2Victoria National Golf Club
Opened in 1998 on the reclaimed Peabody Coal Victoria strip mine near Newburgh, Indiana, where Fazio followed corridors between overgrown spoil mounds and about 40 acres of lagoons formed when the shovels hit the water table. Named Best New Private Course of 1999 and ranked No. 1 in Indiana by Golf Digest, it has hosted the Korn Ferry Tour Championship since 2019. The final five holes are known as The Gauntlet, water is in play on 16 holes, and the course plays par 72 at about 7,242 yards with a rating of 77 and a slope of 148. A strip mine turned into Indiana's hardest and best course is the strongest single argument for Fazio's whole philosophy.
3The Alotian Club
Warren Stephens founded Alotian in Roland, Arkansas in 2004, and Fazio moved more than 1.5 million cubic yards of earth on steep land with 100 feet of elevation change to build it. It debuted at No. 14 on Golf Digest's America's 100 Greatest in 2011, the highest debut in ranking history at the time, and it remains the first and only Arkansas course to make that list. It hosted the 2013 Western Amateur and the 2019 Arnold Palmer Cup, and it is home to the Stephens Cup collegiate event. The name comes from Stephens's golf trips, called America's Lights Out Tour, whose players called themselves Alotians. Earthmoving as destiny: without the 1.5 million yards, there is no course on that hillside at all.
4Flint Hills National Golf Club
Founded in 1997 by Tom Devlin, who made his fortune founding Rent-A-Center, and designed by Fazio with Dennis Wise in wooded hills east of Wichita, a rarity for Kansas golf. It debuted at No. 43 on Golf Digest's America's 100 Greatest, hosted the 2001 U.S. Women's Amateur, the 2007 U.S. Senior Amateur, and the 2017 U.S. Junior Amateur, and repeats as host of the Trans-Mississippi Amateur. Par 71 at 7,080 yards, rating 75.4, slope 144, with a 31 acre practice facility. Kansas is not supposed to produce a wooded, rolling, top 50 Fazio. That is the point of it.
5Fallen Oak Golf Club
Opened in 2006 on the edge of DeSoto National Forest in Mississippi, exclusively for guests of the Beau Rivage Resort and Casino in Biloxi. Ranked No. 1 in Mississippi by Golf Digest and the No. 2 casino course in the country by Golfweek, behind only Shadow Creek. It hosted PGA Tour Champions events from 2010 to 2021, plays par 72 to 7,487 yards on 510 acres, and is named for a 300 year old live oak with a fallen limb that Fazio kept on the 18th fairway. Keeping that tree, in the middle of his most polished resort production, is the most un-Fazio detail on this list and the one that makes the course memorable.
6Spring Hill Golf Club
Fazio opened Spring Hill in 1999 in Wayzata, about 20 minutes west of Minneapolis, and it is described as one of his most natural designs, using the existing rolling topography with little earthmoving. Golf Digest rated it the fifth best new private course in the country in 2000 and ranks it No. 2 in Minnesota. Par 72 at about 7,020 yards, slope 150, with holes isolated by thick forest and marshland edges. After five courses of moved mountains and reclaimed mines, Spring Hill is the control case: given good land and told to leave it alone, Fazio built one of his hardest and best courses anyway.
7Atunyote Golf Club
Fazio's Atunyote opened in 2004 at Turning Stone Resort in Verona, New York, a parkland course of par 72 and 7,315 yards with a 13 acre lake along three fairways. It hosted the PGA Tour's Turning Stone Resort Championship from 2007 to 2010 and the borrowed B.C. Open in 2006, with winners including Matt Kuchar and Dustin Johnson, and it is listed among the best courses in New York. It takes seventh here as the best of his resort work in the dataset, the Fazio a traveling golfer can actually book, which we cover alongside its Turning Stone siblings in our Verona town ranking.
The concession: Fazio's weaker courses repeat a polished formula until the holes blur, and his name on a development course guarantees nothing beyond conditioning and framing. The seven above escape the formula because their land demanded invention: a strip mine, a steep hillside, a valley system, Kansas woods. Give Fazio an impossible site and a serious budget and he is as good as anyone who ever practiced the trade. Give him a flat field and a housing plan and you may get the brochure version.
His best known New York work gets a full profile in our look at Atunyote Golf Club, the Turning Stone course that shows his tournament ambitions plainly.