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The Best US Golf Vacations — And What They Actually Cost You
Every golf buddy trip starts in a group chat, and every group chat goes the same way. Somebody drops a course they saw in a highlight reel. Somebody else counters with a place their cousin went once. Actual prices don't come up until somebody's already emotionally committed to a destination, and by the time real numbers show up, half the group has quietly checked out of a trip they were excited about a week ago.
For most crews, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina is still the smartest answer — more courses within a short drive than you could play in a month, and the golf package as a concept was practically invented there. If your group wants one true bucket-list round instead of a whole trip built around value, Bandon Dunes and Pebble Beach earn every bit of the hype — but only as a once-every-few-years splurge, never your annual trip.
That's the short version. Here's the honest long version: I haven't personally played all nine of the trips below — nobody has, unless golf travel is their actual job. I've played a decent number of rounds over 25 years of weekend golf, and I've spent real time digging into what these golf buddy trips actually cost, what golfers who've done them keep saying afterward, and where the marketing copy quietly skips the real number. That's the honest basis for everything below — part personal golf experience, mostly research done properly instead of skipped, and none of it dressed up as more than it is.
What I do know, from playing enough golf and reading enough trip reports, is the real problem isn't a shortage of good destinations. It's that nobody separates "looks incredible in a highlight video" from "worth what you're each about to spend," and those are genuinely different questions. A course can be gorgeous and still be the wrong trip for your group's actual budget. So this is my honest breakdown, built around what I'd actually want to know before committing my own money — not architecture awards, but what you get for the price and whether the trip holds up if a group did it again next year. I care less about which destination photographs best and more about which one is worth planning a whole trip around.
How I'm Actually Ranking These (Not by Course Snobbery)
Every other "best golf vacations" list ranks the same way: course architecture, slope rating, how many times a place has hosted a major. That's a fine list if you're trying to impress people who read golf magazines for the course reviews. It's a fairly useless list if you're trying to figure out whether twelve guys should fly to Wisconsin or drive to Alabama.
Here's what actually matters when you're the one splitting the bill: how much golf you get for the money, how easy it is to book as a group instead of a single member with connections, whether there's enough to do so nobody's bored by day two, and — the part nobody puts in the marketing copy — whether golfers who've actually gone keep saying they'd do it again. A trip that's incredible once but financially painful rarely becomes the annual thing. A trip that's great and reasonable does. This whole corner of the site exists around exactly that question, which is why the golf vacations section is built the way it is instead of just another "top courses" list.
I've put together the nine destinations below on that basis — mixing what I've played myself, what golf travel writers and trip reports consistently say, and what shows up repeatedly when golfers compare notes on these trips. Not "best courses in America." Best trips, for a guy paying his own way, based on the best information I could actually gather.
Before the individual breakdowns, here's the honest shape of it: US golf trips break into four real price tiers, and which tier fits your group matters more than which specific course you pick.
So, Where Should You Actually Go?
Nine destinations, ranked the way I'd actually rank them for my own group — not the order a glossy travel spread would use.
1. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina — The Correct Default Answer
If your group can't agree on anything else, agree on this one. Myrtle Beach has more than 80 courses along roughly 60 miles of coastline, which means you could book a genuinely different round every single day for a week and never repeat a layout, at price points running from surprisingly cheap to nice-but-not-painful. The golf package itself — bundling tee times, lodging, and the logistics headache into one call — was basically invented in Myrtle Beach, which tells you how long this place has been solving exactly your problem. You can browse what's currently available directly through the destination's own golf planning page before you call anyone.
The real strength for a buddy trip specifically is flexibility. Build a week around big-name layouts from designers like Nicklaus, Palmer, and Fazio, or fill in cheaper rounds between them and keep the group's average per-round cost sane. Non-golfers in your crew, or the ones who'll bail after nine holes, have an entire beach town to disappear into, which solves the "half the group wants to golf, half wants to do literally anything else" problem better than almost anywhere else on this list.
It's also the trip that comes up most often when golfers compare notes on group trips — ask around any crew that's done a few of these and there's a decent chance Myrtle Beach is already on the list, often more than once.
The honest downside: it's not going to be anyone's most memorable golf of their life. Nobody's still talking about a specific hole from Myrtle Beach a decade later the way they talk about a hole at Bandon or Pebble. For the trip you actually run every year or two, though, that's a fair trade.
The verdict: book it, especially for a first trip or a group of eight or more. It's the safest correct answer on this list, and there's nothing wrong with the safest correct answer.
2. The Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail, Alabama — The One Nobody's Group Chat Suggests First
Eleven stops, 26 courses, all built under one architect's name across the entire state of Alabama, and most rounds land somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 to $125. That's, bluntly, the best pure value in American golf, and almost nobody I know outside serious golf circles has ever played it. The Trail's own site lets you build a route across the stops before you even call anyone about lodging.
The Trail was built by the state's own retirement fund in the early '90s specifically to put Alabama on the golf map, and it worked — Alabama's public-course rankings are dominated by Trail stops. What that means for your trip: you can string together five or six genuinely different, genuinely good layouts across a week — mountain terrain up north, coastal-adjacent courses near Mobile down south — without your group's total bill looking anything like a Myrtle Beach or Scottsdale trip.
From what I've read, golfers who've actually done the Trail can rarely agree on which stop was best — Capitol Hill and Ross Bridge both have loud fans — and that kind of disagreement is usually a sign the trip is working exactly as intended.
The tradeoff is logistics. You're driving between stops instead of working from a single home base, and outside of the golf itself, the entertainment thins out fast. This is a trip for a group that actually wants to golf, not a group looking for a beach town with golf attached.
The verdict: yes, and it should be higher on more groups' radar than it is. If your crew genuinely cares about playing good golf without spending much, do this before you do Myrtle Beach a second time.
3. Bandon Dunes, Oregon — Worth the Reputation, If You Time It Right
Bandon is the trip serious golfers put on a list and then talk themselves out of for five years over the price tag. Here's the part almost nobody mentions: that price tag moves enormously by season. Book peak summer and you're paying premium rates that make it a genuine splurge. Book the same courses in winter, and the rate can drop to less than half — closer to what you'd pay for a nice-but-not-extravagant round almost anywhere else on this list.
Every course at the resort is walking-only, which sounds like an inconvenience until you realize it's the entire point — no cart paths, no engine noise, just you, a caddie if you want one, and some of the best links-style golf built in this country in the last thirty years. Golfers who've done it consistently mention the same thing afterward: walking five rounds on sand-based turf in three days is a real physical ask if your usual Saturday game involves a cart, and you'll likely feel it for a couple of days once you're home.
The catch is getting there. It's remote, on the Oregon coast, a genuine drive from the nearest airport, which means this isn't a trip you tack onto a business trip or squeeze into a long weekend. It's a dedicated trip, and it should be treated like one — which is also exactly why a golf trip on a budget and a "worth splurging on" trip aren't actually opposites here, if you pick your season right.
The verdict: worth it, especially if your group is willing to travel in the off-season. Go in July expecting a bargain and you'll be disappointed. Go in January with reasonable expectations and it's one of the best-value serious-golf trips in the country.
4. Scottsdale and Phoenix, Arizona — The Winter Play
Desert golf in the Phoenix area solves a problem Myrtle Beach and Bandon don't: it's excellent exactly when most of the country is buried under snow. Hundreds of courses across the Valley, resort-level conditioning even at mid-tier price points, and enough course density that you're never driving more than twenty minutes between rounds.
The catch is the calendar cuts both ways. Book January through March and you're paying peak desert-season rates alongside every other group that had the same idea. Push the trip to late spring or early fall and the same courses can cost noticeably less — you're just gambling a little on the heat.
If your group is genuinely torn between this and Myrtle Beach for a single trip, I've made the full head-to-head case elsewhere — the honest Myrtle-vs-Scottsdale breakdown covers it round by round. Short version: Scottsdale wins on scenery and winter warmth, Myrtle Beach wins on total value and group logistics.
The verdict: excellent, but book it like you mean it — shoulder season, not peak season, unless price genuinely isn't a factor for your group.
5. Pinehurst, North Carolina — The History Trip
Pinehurst is about as close as American golf gets to a birthplace, and the Sandhills region around it packs more than 40 courses into about a fifteen-mile radius. That density is the real strategic opportunity: Pinehurst No. 2 and the resort's marquee layouts run into the hundreds of dollars a round — No. 2 specifically requires staying on property and can run well past $400 depending on season and package — but you can fill the rest of your week with genuinely good Sandhills courses in the $45–$90 range and let the average even out.
Treat it the way you'd treat a museum with one famous painting: you go for that one room, but you don't spend the whole visit standing in front of it. Play your marquee round mid-trip, not the first morning off a flight, and build the rest of the week around the area's deep bench of quality, reasonably priced golf.
The verdict: worth it once as a milestone trip — a group's tenth-anniversary trip, not its typical Saturday-adjacent weekend. Budget for one splurge round and stay disciplined on the rest of the week.
6. Hilton Head, South Carolina — The Compromise Pick
Hilton Head solves a specific problem: the trip where half your group golfs seriously and the other half is coming for the beach, the bikes, and the restaurants. Harbour Town is the name everyone's heard of, and it's genuinely worth playing once, but the island's real value is the depth of solid mid-tier courses around it plus an entire vacation town's worth of things to do when someone's spouse or kid is along for part of the trip.
It's also the destination on this list where a non-golf day is the easiest sell — nobody has to fake enjoying themselves waiting around a golf shop when there's an actual island to explore. Book the shoulder season — spring or fall — and you'll dodge both the summer humidity and the winter chill that can make the coastal wind unpleasant, with rates that come down noticeably from peak summer weekends.
The verdict: good, not great, as a pure golf trip — but the best pick on this list if your trip needs to double as a family vacation with golf attached, rather than a golf trip that tolerates family along for the ride.
7. Florida (Orlando to Naples) — Good If You're Already Going
Florida has an enormous amount of golf — more courses than any other state, spread from Orlando's theme-park corridor down through Naples and the southwest Gulf coast — but it's a harder state to rank as a single "golf trip" destination because it's so large and the golf scene so fragmented across it. Orlando gives you golf alongside full family-vacation infrastructure, useful if non-golfers are along. Naples and the southwest coast lean toward higher-end resort golf. Streamsong, out on its own in the middle of the state, is a genuinely special modern destination that probably deserves its own dedicated trip rather than a stop on a broader Florida swing.
The honest read: Florida is rarely the best choice if the trip's entire purpose is golf value — Myrtle Beach and the RTJ Trail beat it on pure dollars-per-round almost everywhere in the state outside the Panhandle. But if your group is already headed to Florida for another reason — a wedding, a family trip, an excuse to see actual sunshine in February — there's no shortage of good golf to fold into it.
The verdict: fine, sometimes very good, but rarely the reason to plan the trip. Let Florida be where you golf when you're already there, not the destination you build a dedicated buddy trip around.
8. Kohler, Wisconsin (Whistling Straits and Blackwolf Run) — Worth It Once, Budgeted Carefully
The Straits Course at Whistling Straits has hosted multiple PGA Championships and a Ryder Cup, and the green fee reflects it — realistically $400 to $650-plus depending on season, on top of a caddie fee that's close to mandatory given the walking-only setup. That's a genuine splurge round by any definition.
The move that makes a Kohler trip actually work for a regular group: the Straits Course is one round of a longer stay, not the whole trip. The Irish Course, the River Course, and Blackwolf Run's two courses are all excellent and priced meaningfully lower. Play your splurge round once, fill the rest of the trip with the property's more reasonable options, and the week's average cost comes back down to something a normal group can actually justify.
The verdict: worth it, once, with a plan. Don't book four days intending to play the Straits Course every morning — budget for one big round and build the rest of the trip around its more reasonable siblings.
9. Pebble Beach and Monterey, California — The Actual Bucket List
Here's the number, since nobody in the group chat ever wants to say it first: the green fee at Pebble Beach Golf Links is $675 to $695 this year, plus a cart fee, and if you want to book more than 48 hours out, you're required to stay at least two nights at one of the resort's own properties, which start well over $1,000 a night. All in, a single round with the minimum required stay runs well past $2,500 a person before anyone's bought a beer.
I'm not going to pretend that's a reasonable golf trip the way Myrtle Beach or the RTJ Trail are reasonable golf trips. It isn't. What it is: the single most famous public golf course in the country, on a stretch of coastline that genuinely looks the way it does in every photo, and a round that people who've never picked up a club still recognize by name. That's worth something. Play it once, and you've earned a story you get to tell for the rest of your golfing life — not because you shot well, but because you were actually there.
The verdict: do it once in your life if the money is ever genuinely there, and treat it as exactly that — once. Nearby Spyglass Hill is the honest backup for a group that wants Pebble Beach's neighborhood without Pebble Beach's bill, and it's the smarter call for the actual group trip than trying to force everyone's budget around one round at Pebble.
What About Texas, New Mexico, and the Rest of the Map?
This list isn't exhaustive by design — I picked the destinations that actually earn a dedicated trip, not every state that happens to have golf courses. A couple of honest notes on the ones that didn't crack the main nine, since I know some of you came here looking for them specifically.
Texas Hill Country has a real, growing golf scene — enough good courses clustered around and west of Austin that a regional trip is genuinely worth considering, especially for a group that doesn't want to fly. It's not yet a destination on the level of Myrtle Beach or the RTJ Trail in terms of sheer course density, but it's worth watching, and worth doing if you're already in the state.
New Mexico is the honest miss on this list. There's decent golf there, but not enough concentrated, buddy-trip-worthy golf in one place yet to justify building a dedicated trip around it the way you can in Alabama or South Carolina. If you're in New Mexico for another reason, play a round. Don't build the annual trip around it. If your group's actual priority is keeping the whole trip's cost down regardless of destination, the broader breakdown of budget-first trip options digs into more of those choices directly.
The Costs Nobody Puts in the Brochure
Every destination above has a headline green fee, and every one of them also has a handful of costs that show up after you've already emotionally committed to the trip. I've written about the real, full cost of a buddy trip elsewhere on the site, but the golf-specific version of that problem deserves its own mention here.
Resort fees are the big one — a daily charge, separate from the room rate, that a lot of golf resorts add on and that rarely shows up clearly until checkout. Mandatory caddie programs at walking-only courses like Bandon or Whistling Straits add real money per bag before the tip, which isn't optional in any practical sense. Cart fees at munis and value courses are usually a minor add-on; at resort courses they can run $50 or more on their own. And the single biggest lever in this entire article — bigger than which destination you pick — is timing: the same course, the same room, six weeks apart can be half the price or double it, depending on the season.
It's a near-universal complaint in trip reports and golfer reviews of these places — the number on the initial quote is rarely the number on the final bill. Check the fine print before you book, not after.
💰 The Costs That Show Up After You've Already Committed
- 🚫 Resort fees are often separate from the green fee — ask directly, don't assume it's included
- ✅ Confirm minimum-night stay requirements before you fall in love with a course
- 💰 Caddie fees at walking-only courses add real money before the tip, which isn't optional in practice
- ⭐ Off-season and shoulder-season rates can cut the same round's price in half
How Do You Actually Decide, As a Group?
Ranking aside, the right destination for your specific group depends on a few questions nobody asks early enough. How wide is the skill gap in your group, because a genuinely mixed-skill group needs a destination with enough easier tee options that the 20-handicapper isn't miserable by hole six. Is anyone's spouse or family tagging along, which points you toward Hilton Head or Myrtle Beach over Bandon or the RTJ Trail. And — the question that actually ends most group chat arguments — how do you pick without it turning into a fight, since the honest answer is usually a vote weighted by whoever's paying the most, not a pure democracy.
Once you've settled on a destination, the planning problems are the same regardless of which one you picked. How to actually plan a buddy golf trip without it falling apart covers the logistics side, and if you're headed somewhere walking-only like Bandon, packing without overpacking matters more than it does at a cart-based resort.
Whichever one you land on, it's worth planning a full year ahead for — the best trip is never really the last one, there's always another one worth building toward.
What to Tell the Group Chat
🎯 The Short Version
- ✅ Myrtle Beach and the Alabama RTJ Trail are the safest bets for most groups' money
- ⭐ Bandon Dunes in the off-season is a better deal than most groups realize
- 🚫 Don't build the annual trip around a splurge course — save that for a once-in-a-few-years add-on
- 💡 Pick the destination that fits your group's actual budget conversation, not the one that photographs best
FAQ
What's the best value golf vacation in the US?
For most groups, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail in Alabama offer the best combination of course quality, variety, and price. Both let a group play a genuinely different course every day of a week-long trip without the total bill creeping toward what a single splurge round at a bucket-list course would cost. Between the two, the RTJ Trail generally wins on pure dollars-per-round; Myrtle Beach wins on having more to do when someone's not golfing.
Is Myrtle Beach or Scottsdale better for a golf trip?
It depends on timing and priorities. Myrtle Beach wins on total value, course variety, and group logistics, while Scottsdale wins on scenery and dependable winter warmth when the rest of the country is under snow. If your whole group is torn between the two, the honest move is picking based on the time of year you're actually traveling, not which one looks better in photos.
Is Bandon Dunes worth the money for a regular golfer?
Yes, especially if your group is willing to travel in the off-season, when the same courses can cost less than half of peak summer rates. It's a serious, walking-only golf experience that's genuinely different from resort golf elsewhere on this list, and it's one of the few "bucket list" destinations that can also be a legitimate value trip if you time it right.
What about golf trips to Texas or New Mexico?
Texas Hill Country has a real and growing golf scene worth considering, especially for a group that wants to drive rather than fly. New Mexico has decent golf but not enough concentrated, trip-worthy courses in one area yet to justify building a dedicated golf vacation around it — play a round if you're there for another reason, but it's not a destination trip on the level of Alabama or South Carolina.
How far in advance should you book a golf vacation?
For anywhere with a resort-stay requirement — Pebble Beach, Whistling Straits, Pinehurst's marquee courses — book six to twelve months out, since tee times at the marquee course are tied to the room reservation. For value-focused trips like Myrtle Beach or the RTJ Trail, two to four months out is usually enough, though peak-season weekends fill faster.
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More Before You Lock In the Dates
- How to Survive Sharing a Room With a Snoring Buddy
- The Unwritten Rules of a Buddies Golf Trip
- How Many Rounds a Day Is Too Many on a Trip
- The Trip Tradition That Made Ours Stick
Johnny is a 25-year weekend golfer who's double-booked tee times, forgotten his clubs an hour from the course, and made pretty much every other trip-planning mistake there is — so you don't have to. Guided by The Golfeaser Manifesto, he started Golfeaser.com to prove that weekend golfers are a special, funnier breed who improve the experience, not just the scorecard. He's also the guy behind The Weekend Golfer's Social Playbook — a three-step system for finding your people, running trips that actually come together, and earning the right to brag at the 19th hole.
