15 courses we’d love to see host the PGA Tour’s match-play Tour Championship

There’s a lot to dissect out of Tuesday’s news about the new-look PGA Tour. For many of us, the most exciting piece of news was that the Tour Championship would be determined by match play, and after 2027, the event would consist of a “rotation of prestigious courses, many of which the PGA Tour would play for the first time,” PGA Tour CEO and newly named commissioner Brian Rolapp said.

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Initial reports stated courses like Pine Valley and Cypress Point as possibilities, which might be a little far-fetched. We decided we’d apply a little realism to the exercise and help identify some courses we’d love to see the tour consider for the new match-play edition of the Tour Championship.

Scroll down for our list of courses, and click into each course to see reviews from our experts and bonus photography. Leave your own comments under each course page on the courses you’ve played.

Ohoopee Match Club

Dom Furore

We’re not sure how tour players would react to the unconventional nature of this built-for-match-play venue. But we’d love to see it. Three holes are listed on the scorecard, perhaps whimsically, as par 4½ instead of par 5s, and members and their guests can play different 18-hole routings across this 22-hole design. Of course, the club is super private, and we’re not sure they’d be game to host a tour event … but Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth have both talked about their epic trip to Ohoopee with a few other tour pros during COVID. So hopefully they’ve passed along the word that this would be the ideal venue for a match-play Tour Championship.

false Private Ohoopee Match Club Cobbtown, GA 4.8 18Panelists

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From Golf Digest Architecture Editor emeritus Ron Whitten: I’ve been told Gil Hanse had first examined the site of Ohoopee Match Club as far back as 2006 considered it ideal for golf: gently rolling terrain with no severe elevation changes, and beautiful sandy soil deposited by the nearby Ohoopee River, perfect for drainage and firm, fast conditions. The ground around tiny Cobbtown, Ga., is also perfect for growing onions—it’s just northeast of Vidalia, world-famous for the Vidalia onion. Indeed, Ohoopee’s logo is a freshly picked onion, although if you look closely, its roots are three writhing snakes. Any symbolism pertaining to match play is uncertain; perhaps it simply suggests the sort of putts one will face. What’s the composition of a course meant for match play? One might think it would contain lots of penal hazards, because a triple bogey on any particular hole would not be fatal in match play. Perhaps the targets would be smaller than normal, to level the playing field between big hitters and short-but-accurate golfers. That’s not the composition of the 7,325-yard championship course at Ohoopee. Hanse did produce dramatic visuals in this sandy locale that hark back to portions of Pinehurst and Pine Valley, from long expanses of sandy rough dotted with native plants to deep, foreboding pits of sand, but they’re mostly on the far perimeter of holes.

Read our entire review here.

View Course Bandon Dunes

Stephen Szurlej

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Though the beloved six-course resort along the rugged Oregon coast has hosted numerous USGA championships, we concede it would be a bit of a logistical challenge to host a top tour event. That said, if we approach a match-play tournament at Bandon as a made-for-TV spectacle rather than one with thousands of fans lining the fairways, the intrigue becomes clear. The format and course combinations to be used are endless. Mix it up. Perhaps mix in rounds on Bandon Dunes, Pacific Dunes and Bandon Trails. Hell, we’ve got a tie to break? Head over to The Preserve, a wild par-3 test typically reserved for sunset booze matches among the common folk.

We’re torn on which course takes the match play honors, but the drivable 16th hugging the coast at Bandon Dunes might tip the scale in the original layout’s favor. The PGA Tour match play isn’t supposed to be like any other week, and sending it out to Bandon and getting creative with the format would reenergize the tournament and showcase arguably the best golf resort in the country.

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Chicago recycled-products mogul Mike Keiser took a gamble when he chose then-tenderfoot architect David McLay Kidd to design a destination daily fee on the remote southwestern coastline of Oregon. But the design Kidd produced, faithful to the links-golf tenets of his native Scotland, proved so popular that today Keiser has a multiple-course resort at Bandon Dunes that rivals Pinehurst and the Monterey Peninsula—or perhaps exceeds them, given that all five Bandon courses are ranked on our 200 Greatest, four in the top 100. None of that would have happened if McLay Kidd hadn’t produced a great first design that drew golfers into its orbit. View Course Inverness Club

Fred Vuich/USGA

An old-school Donald Ross design that can tip out at 7,700 yards, Inverness Club provides a compelling modern test on a historic layout that was restored by Andrew Green. Studying Ross’ original drawings and early photography, Green repositioned some putting surfaces, reworked bunkers and added three new holes that eplaced ones designed by George and Tom Fazio in the 1970s. The result is a design that better reflects Ross’ vision and makes creative use of the unique topography, with humps and hollows creating plenty of interesting shots.

false Private Inverness Club Toledo, OH 4.7 32Panelists

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Inverness is considered a classic Donald Ross design. In truth, it’s one of his best remodeling jobs. Some Ross fans were outraged when the course was radically altered by George and Tom Fazio in preparation for the 1979 U.S. Open. The uncle-nephew duo eliminated four holes (including the famous dogleg par-4 seventh), combined two holes to make the par-5 eighth and created three modern holes on newly acquired land. In 2018, golf architect Andrew Green replaced the Fazio holes with new ones more in the Ross style, relocated greens on two other holes and added new back tees everywhere. The club will host the 2026 U.S. Women’s Open and a slew of other USGA events, including the 2045 U.S. Open. View Course

The four-time U.S. Open host is ready to test the next generation of tour pros, having most recently held the 2021 Solheim Cup, which proved the layout’s match-play merits and saw impressive fan turnout north of 100,000 people. It’ll also host the 2033 U.S. Amateur and the 2045 U.S. Open—proving the trust already bestowed upon the historic club ranked 62nd in our most recent ranking of America’s 100 Greatest Courses.

Trinity Forest Golf Club

false Private Trinity Forest Golf Club Dallas, TX 3.9 23Panelists

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Once a drab, treeless, 165-acre tabletop city dump perched above the tree-lined Trinity River, Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw transformed it into one of the most interesting designs in modern architecture. When Coore first saw the site, he ignored the abandoned refrigerators and scattered tires to focus on the flow of the land. It was a series of ridges and ripples formed as parts of the closed landfill settled over time. “It needed a good ironing,” Coore joked. In the end, his construction crew, though capping the site with a thick layer of sand in which to grow grass and create wasteland roughs, took pains to preserve every dip, trough, hump and hollow. It hosted the 2019 and 2020 AT&T Byron Nelson. Trinity Forest was night and day from any other venue on tour. As Curt Sampson wrote for Golf Digest, Trinity Forest “was night and day from any other venue on tour—this windswept, nearly treeless expanse of dunes, waving prairie grass, and fast, undulating turf, the new place has every attribute of a links except cawing sea birds and an ocean.” Not too many players embraced the cerebral, pinball-ish ground game offered to access some of these greens and navigate the interesting humps and bumps here. Of course, tour winner turned architect Geoff Ogilvy: “I love it,” Ogilvy said. “Strategically, it’s so interesting. It’s got everything that’s missing from modern architecture. There are ways to challenge golfers besides long rough and narrow fairways.” There are also architectural marvels like a double green, great short par 4s and short par 3s. It’s too bad the tour won’t return to Trinity Forest, but golfers lucky enough to get an invite will continue to enjoy it. View Course

One of golf’s great modern courses with a ton of width, options and strategic architecture can be found at Coore and Crenshaw’s Trinity Forest. It had a brief stint of hosting the AT&T Byron Nelson, but extremely hot weather in Dallas in May and a lack of sufficient infrastructure doomed the event. Perhaps a better time of year, and an event requiring a smaller footprint is the right combination to bring Trinity Forest back to the PGA Tour.

Evan Schiller/Medinah Country Club

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Medinah #3

false Private Medinah Country Club: No. 3 Medinah, IL 4.6 29Panelists

The evolution of golf course architecture—and how courses change to suit the demands of the times—can be mapped directly on top of Medinah’s No. 3 course. It was built in the 1920s within the fields west of Chicago on land that was part farmland and partly wooded. It became a major championship site when it hosted the 1949 U.S. Open, putting it on a track of perpetual improvements to toughen it up to keep pace with tournament demands. To whit, the old 17th hole, a par-3 over water, shifted and morphed several times between 1986 and 2005, and the greens and bunkers have undergone remodels ahead of each event, from Opens, to PGA Championships to Ryder Cups. But when No. 3 was blistered to the tune of 25-under during the 2019 BMW Championship, which coincided with a plunge in our rankings from 53rd to 93rd, the club knew it was time to adapt again. They took a swing and hired the Australian firm of Ogilvy, Cocking and Mead to overhaul the design with the notion of making the course look and play like it might have in the 1920s. That meant removing much of the dense forest surrounding the holes, revamping the bunkers in more naturalistic forms, enlarging the greens and adding internal contour, eliminating two of the three redundant par 3s that played over Lake Kadijah and building several new holes, including the drivable 16th over the lake. The radical shift has put the fun, firmness and variety back into a design that had become one-dimensional, predictable and soft, and the result is a jump of 19 spots in the ranking. View Course

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The venerable Chicago design might be auditioning for the new Tour Championship when it hosts the 2026 Presidents Cup. Geoff Ogilvy, Mike Cocking and Ashley Mead’s work at Medinah #3 earned Golf Digest’s Best Transformation honors for their work—reinstituting Medinah as one of our nation’s great championship tests. The work included three entirely new holes and the reinstitution of more angles and options with fewer trees to better challenge decision-making, which would once again make it a great match-play layout, as it was for the 2012 Ryder Cup.

Carlos Amoedo

Whistling Straits (Straits)

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Pete Dye transformed a dead flat abandoned army air base along a two-mile stretch of Lake Michigan into an imitation Ballybunion at Whistling Straits, peppering his rugged fairways and windswept greens with 1,012 (at last count) bunkers. There are no rakes at Whistling Straits, in keeping with the notion that this is a transplanted Irish links. It has too much rub of the green for the comfort levels of many tour pros, which is what makes it a stern test for top events, such as three PGA Championships, the 2007 U.S. Senior Open and the 2021 Ryder Cup. View Course

Pete Dye’s bold, in-your-face design philosophy lends itself to the risks and rewards of match play, especially at Whistling Straits, as shown with the entertaining—if uncompetitive—2021 Ryder Cup. Remember that insane Jordan Spieth hacking flop shot from 12-feet below the green at the par-3 17th? It’s these recoveries that the Straits course—with its dramatic fall-offs and rugged bunkering—allows for, especially when players take on a little more trouble than they ordinarily would in stroke play.

Dom Furore

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Pinehurst #2

The Sandhills of North Carolina is one of the most popular golf regions in the country and is deserving of a regular tour stop. Sure, Pinehurst’s famed #2 is one of the USGA’s anchor locations for its U.S. Opens, hosting five over the next quarter-century—including in 2024—but we’re greedy and want to see the world’s best navigate the diabolical tabletop greens on a regular basis. A strong match-play course presents plenty of risk-reward opportunities, and while Pinehurst #2 is pretty straightforward off the tee, pins tucked toward the edges of greens will require precise approach play to avoid testy chips.

false Public Pinehurst #2 Pinehurst, NC 4.7 53Panelists

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In 2010, a team led by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw killed and ripped out all the Bermudagrass rough on Pinehurst #2 that had been foolishly planted in the 1970s. Between fairways and tree lines, they established vast bands of native hardpan sand dotted with clumps of wiregrass and scattered pine needles. They reduced the irrigation to mere single rows in fairways to prevent grass from ever returning to the new sandy wastelands. Playing firm and fast, it was wildly successful as the site of the 2014 Men’s and Women’s U.S. Opens, played on consecutive weeks, and produced an even more exciting Open in 2024 when Bryson DeChambeau beat Rory McIlroy on the final hole. It’s the rare course that a wide variety of resort players can enjoy and play quickly one day, and be a test for tour pros the next by essentially just quickening the greens. A new favorite of the USGA with a headquarters in town, Pinehurst #2 will host Opens again in 2029, 2035, 2041 and 2047. View Course More From Golf Digest

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We’ll take it a step further: We’d love to see an LPGA match-play event contested the same week on any of the other venues: either the revamped #4 course, the Tom Doak #10 course or the soon-to-open Coore and Crenshaw-designed #11 course. With fans being able to move from one course to the other, it would be a great opportunity to showcase both tours and arguably the two best Sandhills courses. Remember way back in 2014, Pinehurst #2 successfully hosted the U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open in back-to-back weeks, so they’ll have a head start on logistics.

John Giustina

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Eugene Country Club

false Private Eugene Country Club Eugene, OR 4.2 16Panelists

Eugene was the site of one of golf’s most profound renovations in 1965 when Robert Trent Jones reversed the direction of each hole on the H.C. Egan design, building long tee boxes, all new greens and stylized bunkers that pinch targets and turn doglegs—turning Eugene Country Club into one of the most challenging in the Pacific Northwest. The 2021 renovation wasn’t so radical, but the changes initiated by Tim Jackson and David Kahn have made the course more thought-provoking through the shifting of tees, remodeling of bunkers, the expansion of greens that bring more hole locations into play and a renewed emphasis on using the unique ground contours and swales as more strategically influential factors. The towering Douglas fir trees still frame each hole and influence much of a golfer’s strategy from tee to green. View Course

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Scottie Scheffler helped his Texas Longhorns to the finals of the NCAA Championships in 2016, so we’re betting he wouldn’t take issue with this idea. Oregon won that week, in what was a wild finish with the raucous home crowd, and overall, the course was praised for providing a fair and challenging test. A 2021 renovation made the course more thought-provoking through the shifting of tees, remodeling of bunkers, the expansion of greens that bring more hole locations into play and a renewed emphasis on using the unique ground contours and swales as more strategically influential factors. The towering Douglas fir trees still frame each hole and influence much of a golfer’s strategy from tee to green.

PGA National Resort

PGA National Resort: Champion

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One of five courses at PGA National, the Champion Course has a vast championship history—hosting the 1983 Ryder Cup, 1987 PGA Championship, the Senior PGA Championship from 1982 through 2000, and now the annual host of the Cognizant Classic. Originally designed by Tom and George Fazio for tournament play, Jack Nicklaus redesigned the course in 2014, creating the infamous three-hole stretch aptly named “The Bear Trap.” Routinely one of the toughest courses on tour, The Champion is a true ball-striking test. View Course

The Cognizant Classic has been a question mark on the PGA Tour schedule in recent years, and if that remains the case (though it’s confirmed for 2027), we’d love to see a return to match play at PGA National, site of the 1983 Ryder Cup. The layout would make for compelling matches in modern times–with the cliche but challenging Bear Trap providing some tough pars while also offering birdie holes at the start and middle of the routing. It’s worth noting the resort has a new Match course, too, which might not work strategically but could make for some fun playoff solutions.

The 18th hole at The Other Course at Scottsdale National.

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Joann Dost/Courtesy of Scottsdale National

Scottsdale National

false Private Scottsdale National Golf Club: The Other Course Scottsdale, AZ 4.2 5Panelists

The Other Course, built by David Kahn and Tim Jackson, is the second 18-hole course at Scottsdale National. Owned by PXG founder Bob Parsons, the course is one of the new century’s most exciting, creative design expressions—golf presented as a physical and psychological journey—though very few people have seen it due to the extremely private nature of the club. View Course

Former Fazio associates Tim Jackson and David Kahn devised a fun routing with three par 5s, three par 4s and three par 3s on each nine—a perfect setup for match play. A ton of width and variety offers options off the tee, but precision is required into these undulating green complexes at the very private club owned by PXG founder Bob Parsons. To really spice things up: The tour could add a few holes (maybe for playoff purposes) on the bastardly Bad Little Nine.

The Lido

One of the most highly anticipated course openings of the modern era, The Lido will have course aficionados clamoring to play the recreation of the world-renowned Long Island course built by C.B Macdonald. And what a thrill it would be to watch the world’s best tackle this strategic test. Tom Doak recreated every hump and bump from the legendary links by studying old imagery and capturing it in 3-D thanks to golf historian Peter Flory. Bringing a tour event here would shine the light on everything that makes course design such a fascinating pursuit and to Sand Valley, a destination helping to put Wisconsin at the top of any enthusiast’s bucket list.

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RELATED: Why the return of The Lido matters

Dana Fry

Hamilton Farm Golf Club (Highlands)

false Private Hamilton Farm Golf Club (Highlands) Gladstone, NJ 4.4 14Panelists

Dana Fry designed and built this course in 2001 with then partner Dr. Michael Hurdzan, and in 2022 came back to do a renovation with current partner Jason Straka. The original design featured elaborate MacKenzie-inspired cape-and-bay bunkers, now replaced by what might be considered a more traditional, or New England, style of shaping with less formality. Their placements have also been adjusted, as have tees, while some fairways were re-graded and hundreds of trees were removed to better show off the 730-acre estate’s surrounding pastures and woods. View Course

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It’s clear the PGA Tour wants to get back into the NYC-metro area, and we’d like to see a regular tour stop return to this golf-hungry market. Hamilton Farm, about 50 miles west of Manhattan, might be unknown to some, but the Dana Fry- and Michael Hurdzan-designed Highlands course hosted the LPGA Tour’s match-play event from 2010-12. A 2022 renovation removed hundreds of trees to better show off the hilly 730-acre property, which would make a great test for the world’s best. Our money would be on Liberty National being the go-to for the PGA Tour, but for match play specifically, Hamilton Farm would be a fun option.

Courtesy of Shadow Creek GC

Shadow Creek

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Shadow Creek has the reputation of being one of the most expensive courses built in America, a reported $47 million at the time, which translates to roughly $120 million in today’s dollars. Designer Tom Fazio said that a budget was necessary at Shadow Creek to perform what he now calls “total site manipulation,” creating an environment where none existed by carving rolling hills and canyons from the flat desert floor north of Las Vegas and pumping in plenty of water. Alas, this once-in-a-lifetime dream design has been too successful, triggering many equally expensive, but inferior, imitations. View Course

Shadow Creek has hosted a few big-time match-play events recently—the first edition of The Match between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson for that massive $9 million payday. The LPGA Tour also visits the jaw-dropping Tom Fazio design for its only match-play event. It’s a course that settles big-money wagers on a daily basis for the high-rollers of Vegas, with a great risk-reward par-5 16th, the picturesque par-3 17th and another par-5 finisher—so it’d be a proper host of a PGA Tour event, too, like it did in 2021 for the CJ Cup.

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We’ve given our realistic hopes for where the tour could send its match-play event, now indulge us in a little wishful thinking.

Carlos Amoedo

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Cypress Point

We said at the top that a PGA Tour event here would be a little far-fetched. Is the iconic Alister MacKenzie coastal California layout long enough to host a tour event? Probably not. The course doesn’t sniff 7,000 yards, but in match play, does it really matter how deep the pros are taking it? (For the record, the most recent match-play host, Austin Country Club, plays only 7,100 yards at its longest and surrenders birdies by the dozen.) And PGA Tour committee members were certainly paying attention to the 2025 Walker Cup, which sufficiently challenged the best amateurs in the world who hit it miles. Here’s how our architecture emeritus, Ron Whitten, defends the course to naysayers who argue distance gains have rendered it defenseless.

“Certainly one way to play Cypress is the full-bore, take-dead-aim, grip-it-and-rip-it, bomb-and-gouge approach. But it’s also a course where finesse still matters, where course management is still rewarded. Yes, long bombers can go low at Cypress Point these days, but so can short-hitting, thoughtful players, who much like sailors in a storm tack their way around bunkers, trees, dunes and ocean coves. And when the winds come up, as they often do at Cypress, it’s the latter approach that’s likely to be more successful.”

A match-play event is our best (and only) chance to see the top players compete on one of our nation’s greatest courses, and though the exclusive private club might object to such exposure, it would help give the event the unique allure it needs to justify its place on the tour schedule. Wind blowing, sun setting, match on the line heading to the 233-yard par-3 16th, perhaps the most famous hole in golf? Decent TV.

Carlos Amoedo

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National Golf Links of America

Sure, the criticism of Long Island golf fans has been loud since the conclusion of the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills. But please, please … consider bringing the PGA Tour’s match-play Tour Championship back to eastern Long Island and one of the nation’s most historic layouts. C.B. Macdonald set out to build a course that would not just take inspiration from the great courses of the U.K. and Europe but rival them. The result is a group of template holes—Road Hole, Eden, Redan and Sahara among them—that prove comparable, if not superior to their Old World originals. Though the course, tipping out just over 6,900 yards, is not long enough by tour standards, it did hold up in hosting the 2013 Walker Cup. Throw in the coastal breeze on this exposed links, and we’re confident it would provide a strong match-play test.

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Courses Cypress Point like you’ve never seen it: Exclusive drone footage of all 18 holes

In the below video, world renowned golf architect Gil Hanse takes a closer look at National Golf Links of America: