Architect Rankings
The Best William Flynn Golf Courses in America
William Flynn built golf courses the way the land told him to, and the proof is the range on this list. Our dataset holds 26 Flynn courses across nine states, Colorado to Florida to Illinois to Massachusetts, and the work runs from a municipal course on a Miami Beach island to the most guarded private rooms in American golf. He died in 1945, with his final design, the Naval Academy course, reopening the year before. What follows is the best eight of his courses in our records, ranked on the golf, and it starts where American golf itself more or less started. Brookline's full local field is in our Brookline course ranking.
1The Country Club Main Course, Brookline, Massachusetts
The Country Club was founded in 1882, one of the five charter members that founded the USGA in 1894, and it has hosted 17 USGA national championships, more than all but one other club. Its U.S. Opens of 1913, 1963, 1988, and 2022 include the 1913 playoff won by amateur Francis Ouimet, the result that began the American golf boom. The Main Course runs over the Clyde and Squirrel nines of an original racetrack property, first laid out by members in 1893 and expanded by Willie Campbell, with Flynn's hand in its championship form and Gil Hanse restoring it from 2019. The championship composite, 15 Main holes plus three from the Primrose nine, hosted the 2022 Open won by Matt Fitzpatrick. First on this list on history, on difficulty, and on the simple fact that American golf keeps coming back here to settle its biggest arguments.
2Cherry Hills Country Club, Colorado
Flynn's western monument, founded in 1922 on 272 acres south of Denver. Cherry Hills hosted the 1938 U.S. Open, the first held west of the Mississippi, then 1960 and 1978, plus PGA Championships in 1941 and 1985. The 1960 Open is the one that lives: Arnold Palmer drove the par 4 first green in the final round and shot 65 to win his only U.S. Open. Jack Nicklaus won the 1993 U.S. Senior Open here, making Cherry Hills, with Augusta National, one of only two courses where both Palmer and Nicklaus won a major. Tom Doak restored the Flynn work from 2008. It ranks second here and first on most days in the memory of anyone who watched that 1960 charge.
3The Kittansett Club, Massachusetts
Flynn planned the route at Marion in 1923 while founding member Frederic C. Hood built it, out on a point in Buzzards Bay where the layout begins and ends at the unprotected ocean end. Kittansett hosted the 1953 Walker Cup, won by the United States, and its par 3 14th over a salt marsh is the hole the guides keep naming. Golf Digest has ranked it No. 5 in Massachusetts and No. 89 in its 100 Greatest. Wind, marsh, and a Flynn routing that uses both without decoration.
4Indian Creek Country Club, Florida
Flynn on a man made island in Indian Creek Village, 1928, inside one of America's most exclusive private clubs. Andrew Green restored the design in a major rebuild completed in 2022, and the standout is the long par 3 12th, played from a high tee over a cove of water. Indian Creek is the Flynn course the fewest golfers will ever see, and the restoration suggests the membership knows exactly what it is guarding.
5US Naval Academy Golf Club, Maryland
Flynn's last design. Hired in 1942, his reconfigured Annapolis course reopened in May 1944, a year before his death. Andrew Green's restoration of about $7 million reopened in August 2020, the course plays par 70 with views over the Severn River, and Golf Digest put it at No. 13 in Maryland on its ranking debut. A service academy's course carrying an architect's final work, restored properly: fifth here, and rising.
6Atlantic City Country Club, New Jersey
One of America's oldest clubs, in Northfield, semi private in recent years, with bay views and marsh holes on the back nine. Club and USGA telling credit an Atlantic City shot of 1899 or 1900 with the birth of the term birdie, and Flynn's work, later touched by Tom Doak, sits inside that long history rather than replacing it. The most accessible famous Flynn on this list, with the Miami Beach ranking covering his other public doorway below.
7Pine Meadow Golf Club, Illinois
The people's Flynn: a 1929 course on former seminary land at St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, built for the Archdiocese, public in Lake County on a large wooded estate. Pine Meadow was a longtime winner of Golf Digest era rankings for Illinois's best public course. Flynn for the public golfer, at full parkland scale, is a rarer thing than Flynn behind a gate, and it earns its place here on that alone.
8Normandy Shores Golf Club, Florida
Flynn and Howard Toomey's 1928 municipal on Normandy Isle in Miami Beach, renovated by Arthur Hills in the 2000s, with water in play on 12 of 18 holes and the annual South Beach International Amateur on its calendar. A city course holding a Flynn and Toomey lineage is a civic asset most cities paved over long ago.
The honest concession: Flynn's name now gets attached, loosely, to courses he revised rather than created, and his reputation leans heavily on a few championship rooms while much of his everyday work sits private and unvisited. The top of this list needs no inflation. A man whose courses hosted Ouimet's playoff and Palmer's charge, and who finished his career rebuilding a naval academy's golf above the Severn, built enough. The island 12th at Indian Creek, played over the cove with the restored Flynn ground falling away beneath it, is where this list ends: his least seen hole, and one of his best.