Architect Rankings

The Best Tom Jackson Golf Courses in America

Tom Jackson built his career where American golf actually tees off: the Carolinas, Florida's resort coast, and the public and private courses in between. The dataset holds 23 of his courses across four states, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia, running from a 1973 resort original at Sandestin to a 2009 mountain club at Highlands. No major championship defines him and no single course carries his name into trivia contests. What the record shows instead is range: state park golf, tour-adjacent private clubs, resort courses that run from a bay to a beach, and at least one design the architect himself ranks at the very top of his own work. His Southern Pines entry connects to our Southern Pines ranking. The best eight:

1Prestonwood Country Club, Highlands Course

Cary, North Carolina. Prestonwood is a private 54-hole club, and it hosts the PGA Tour Champions SAS Championship, held at the club since 2001, which makes it the most publicly examined golf in Jackson's catalog. The Highlands course plays par 72 at about 7,080 yards, and Rick Robbins renovated the green complexes across Prestonwood's three courses, with the Highlands work finished in September 2011. A senior tour event does not stay at a club for over two decades out of courtesy. The Highlands carries Jackson's No. 1 spot because it has been tested, on television, by professionals, for a generation.

2Magnolia Greens Golf Course

Leland, North Carolina, 1998, a 27-hole public facility near Wilmington whose three nines are named Magnolia, Camellia, and Azalea, the Magnolia and Camellia championship combination playing par 72 at 7,031 yards. The decisive fact is the architect's own verdict: Jackson has said Magnolia Greens ranks at the top of all the courses he has designed. Architects are not neutral judges of their work, but when a man with 23 courses in one dataset names his favorite, and it is a public 27-hole facility rather than a private showcase, that tells you what he values: a course ordinary golfers can play, built to his full standard. We rank it second, and his own ranking is most of the reason.

3Cheraw State Park Golf Course

Cheraw, South Carolina, 1992, public state park golf in the Pee Dee sandhills, and one of only two courses in the South Carolina state park system. Par 72 at 7,001 yards, rating 73.6, slope 142, figures that announce a real test, inside a park developed by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1934 on the shore of Lake Juniper. The signature 13th is a 496-yard par 4 doglegging left to a green protected by the lake. The course is a Certified Audubon International Wildlife Sanctuary. State park golf is supposed to be modest. Cheraw, at 142 slope with a lake-guarded 496-yard par 4 as its signature, did not get that memo, and Jackson's catalog is better for it.

4Rock Barn Country Club, Jones Course

Conover, North Carolina, 2003, private, at a two-course club whose grounds hosted the Greater Hickory Classic, a PGA Tour Champions event, for 13 years. The Jones Course plays par 72 at 7,169 yards with Lyle Creek winding through the layout. Its signature is the par-3 third, and its hardest hole is the tree-lined par-4 11th, its green cut in half by a deep swale. A green split by a swale is a two-putt negotiation even from close range, and it gives Rock Barn the most distinctive putting problem in Jackson's top eight.

5Old Edwards Club

Highlands, North Carolina, 2009, Jackson's latest work in the dataset and his mountain statement: a private club in Highlands known for conditioning and mountain views, where access runs through membership or a stay at the Old Edwards Inn. Second-home and inn-guest play is the model, and the course's reputation rests on presentation, mountain golf kept immaculate for golfers who arrive expecting exactly that. It is the polished end of Jackson's range.

6Hyland Golf Club

Southern Pines, North Carolina, 1979, public sandhills golf, formerly Hyland Hills. Par 72 at 6,934 yards from the back tees, rated four stars by Golf Digest in its Best Places to Play guide. Southern Pines is crowded with famous neighbors, and a public Jackson design holding a four-star rating in that company since 1979 is the value entry in his catalog: the sandhills game, at public prices, a short drive from courses with far larger reputations and far larger fees.

7Baytowne Golf Club at Sandestin

Miramar Beach, Florida, 1984, renovated by Jackson himself in 2005, one of four courses at Sandestin and the only one that plays to the Gulf beach area, running from the bay to the beach across the resort. Family resort golf is a real discipline, and Baytowne's distinction inside a four-course resort, the beach routing, keeps it booked. An architect returning to renovate his own course twenty years on is also a small mark of standing: Sandestin called the original designer back.

8The Links Golf Club at Sandestin

The original Sandestin course, Jackson in 1973, a resort layout along Choctawhatchee Bay with five bayfront holes, and the value course of the Sandestin four. It closes the list where his career in this dataset begins. Fifty years of Florida resort golf later, the oldest Jackson here still holds its place in a four-course rotation on the strength of its bayfront holes.

The concession: Jackson's work gets called dated by golfers raised on the modern minimalists, and the criticism lands on his resort courses, where the brief was families and fun rather than architectural argument. But a senior tour venue held for two decades, the architect's own favorite at a public facility in Leland, and a 142-slope state park course in the sandhills add up to a catalog with more substance than its reputation suggests. Jackson designed for the golfers who were actually coming. The tee sheets, from Cary to Cheraw, graded him kindly.