Are you looking for the best public access golf courses in Los Angeles? You can find several public-access courses that are ranked on Golfweek’s Best ranking of the top layouts for each state if you’re willing drive a little.
It’s not easy to pull up our state by state rankings. They list California courses which could be a day’s drive from Los Angeles. We chose courses within reasonable driving distance, even if they may require golfers to spend some time in their cars.
We limited the driving time for this exercise to two hours from Los Angeles International Airport. Why two hours of driving? Two hours seemed reasonable because it takes a long time to travel anywhere in Los Angeles.
Why LAX? The airport offers a good starting point for a variety of courses in the north, east, and south. We did not include any courses that are located in San Diego, to the south, or in the eastern areas of La Quinta. These could be reached within two hours if the traffic is good at off-peak time.
Google Maps was used to calculate the drive time. We chose LAX at a mid-afternoon when there were no noticeable traffic delays. Take all of these drive times in Los Angeles with a pinch of salt as they can be quite long.
In a city like San Francisco, where golf prices can be high, especially for private courses, it’s important to note that two of the courses listed are great bargains. Rustic Canyon’s peak green fee is $104 at weekends. However, there are much better offers during the week or off-peak hours. The municipal Soule Park offers peak weekend tee time for just $49 to walkers.
There are plenty of other great places to play in Los Angeles. players can check out Goat Hill Park, south of Los Angeles. This course narrowly missed our list of the top California courses. This list is intended to show which Los Angeles courses are among Golfweek’s Top 30 in California.
This list includes a map that shows where you can find each of these courses. The map below shows the number of each course on the list. Scroll down to see them.
Each course’s position on Golfweek’s Best public access list is also included. The positions of any courses that appear on our other popular ranking lists are also included.
- Find out where to play golf in the Chicago area, New York City or the Phoenix/Scottsdale region
Background: Our course-rating panel, which consists of hundreds of members, continuously rates courses on the basis of 10 criteria. The points are assigned on a scale of 1-10. Each course is also given a single overall rating. These ratings are then averaged out to create our Golfweek Best Course rankings.
These courses are open to the public in one way or another, whether it’s through standard green fees per day, a resort, or an affiliated hotel. There’s no need to be a member if you want to play golf.
(Google Earth/Golfweek)
