Architect Rankings
The Best Tom Weiskopf Golf Courses in America
Tom Weiskopf designed golf the way he played it: the ball on the ground, the options open, the golfer thinking instead of surviving. Forty of his courses sit in our dataset across 15 states, and the pattern is a 16 time PGA Tour winner building for the golfer he used to be: drivable par 4s, reachable par 5s, greens you can run the ball onto. Arizona is his home ground, running from Flagstaff to Sedona, with an Oregon outlier at Bend. These are the eight that carry the argument.
1Canyon Course, Forest Highlands
The premier course in Arizona by many raters' account, and the top of this list. Designed with Jay Morrish and opened in 1988 among ponderosa pine, oak, and aspen at 7,000 feet south of Flagstaff. Par 71, about 7,007 yards. It sat on Golf Digest's America's 100 Greatest list from 1991 to 2014, hosted the 1996 U.S. Junior Amateur and the 2006 USGA Mid-Amateur, and it did all that at altitude, where the ball flies and the design has to defend with contour instead of length. The first course at a 1,100 acre private community, and still the one the rest of the state gets measured against.
2Black Desert Resort
The last chapter, and one of the best. Black Desert was Weiskopf's final design, finished by Phil Smith after his death in 2022 and opened in May 2023 in Ivins, Utah, through a 600 acre black lava field with red rock backdrops, about 30 miles from Zion National Park. Nineteen holes including a bye hole, playing about 7,200 to 7,400 yards. It hosted the PGA Tour's Black Desert Championship in October 2024, the first PGA Tour event in Utah since 1963, then an LPGA Tour event in May 2025, making it one of the few venues to host both tours in a season. Golf Digest put it No. 2 among public courses in its 2023 Best New Courses rankings. A career that started in Scottsdale desert ended in Utah lava, still taking the Tour with him.
3Troon Country Club
Where it started. Troon Country Club in Scottsdale, established in 1986, was Weiskopf's first design effort, with Jay Morrish, and Golf Digest named it the best new private course in America that year. It held a place on the 100 Greatest list for ten years, 1989 to 1998. Par 72, 7,041 yards, slope 146, sitting at 2,400 feet below Pinnacle Peak. The telling detail is the playability: golfers can run the ball up onto many greens, while wide fairways are guarded by cactus filled desert. His whole philosophy, options at the green and trouble at the edges, was present in the first attempt.
4Seven Canyons Golf Club
Sedona's red rock entry, designed with Phil Smith and opened in 2003, par 72 winding among jagged bluffs in the Coconino National Forest, bordered on three sides by vermillion cliffs at about 4,600 feet. The defense is old fashioned on purpose: deep bunkers with steep faces and greens as the main obstacle, in a layout given an early 20th century feel. Weiskopf and Smith returned for a comprehensive renovation completed in 2024, his last site visit before his death. Private, with guest access through the nearby Enchantment Resort.
5Monument Course, Troon North
The public flagship. Designed with Morrish and opened in 1990 below Pinnacle Peak, par 72 and about 7,070 yards, named for the giant boulder in the fairway of the par 5 third. Regularly ranked among the top public courses in Arizona by Golf Digest and Golfweek, and reworked in Weiskopf's 2007 renovation, which swapped and rerouted holes between Monument and its sibling Pinnacle, generally the tougher of the two. If a public golfer plays one Weiskopf, this is the consensus pick, and the boulder on the third is the most Weiskopf image in golf: a hazard the land provided, kept.
6Stadium Course, TPC Scottsdale
The famous one. Designed with Morrish and opened in 1986, home of the WM Phoenix Open since 1987, the most attended tournament on the PGA Tour, par 71 at about 7,261 yards. The par 3 sixteenth, enclosed by stadium grandstands in tournament week, is the loudest hole in golf. Golfweek ranked it No. 3 among Arizona public courses in 2026. It sits sixth here because fame and architecture are different categories: the Stadium Course is a very good course with an unmatched stage, and the five above it are better golf.
7Silverleaf Club
His home club in north Scottsdale, designed solo and opened in 2002. Par 72 and 7,322 yards weaving through Horseshoe Canyon in the McDowell Mountains, five tee sets from 5,059 yards up, a rating of 74.7 and slope of 149. Ranked No. 10 best in state in Arizona by Golf Digest. The par 4 thirteenth holds the only water hazard on the course, with a Camelback Mountain backdrop. The name comes from a mining claim filed on the property in the late 1800s. An architect's home club is where he plays his own ideas weekly, and tour pros including Jon Rahm practice there, which is its own review.
8The Rim Golf Club
The Morrish partnership's last word. Designed with Jay Morrish, their final collaboration, opened in 1999 at about 4,700 feet below the Mogollon Rim in Payson, among ponderosa pines and rock formations. Weiskopf said holes 7 through 18 are the twelve finest consecutive holes he and Morrish ever designed. Golfweek has ranked it No. 2 in Arizona. Architects' claims about their own work deserve a discount, but the closing stretch at The Rim is the pair's full vocabulary in one run, and it closes this list the way it closes a round there.
The concession: Weiskopf's resort work can go soft at the edges, and a few of the 40 are real estate golf wearing a famous name. His best work needs no apology. A drivable par 4 with three honest ways to play it is harder to build than a 480 yard brute, and nobody in his generation built more of them, or better. The lava fields of Utah got the last, and nearly the best, of it.