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

Dom Furore

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.

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

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.

Bandon Dunes

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.

Inverness Club

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.

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

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

Medinah No. 3

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 No. 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.

Whistling Straits (Straits)

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.

Pinehurst No. 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 No. 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 No. 2 is pretty straightforward off the tee, pins tucked toward the edges of greens will require precise approach play to avoid testy chips.

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 No. 4 course, the Tom Doak No. 10 course or the soon-to-open Coore and Crenshaw-designed No. 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 No. 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.

Eugene Country Club

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: Champion

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.

Joann Dost/Courtesy of Scottsdale National

Scottsdale National

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.

Hamilton Farm Golf Club (Highlands)

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Using riveting flyover footage, Gil Hanse goes hole-by-hole of perhaps the most influential course in American golf architecture,

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

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

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