Best golf courses near St. Louis, MO

One gets the impression, playing St. Louis Country Club, that C.B. Macdonald was perplexed about how to route a course on such a tight piece of property. After all, his previous design efforts were spacious. But at St. Louis C.C., Macdonald must have felt squeezed, for he installed back-to-back par 3s at the second and third holes, placed his Redan par 3, the 16th, near the entrance road, then had players walk back to the 16th tee to play the 17th. Those quirks aside, St. Louis C.C. is a sublime, hilly museum of golf. It has so many enormous, unique landforms, it’s like playing golf through a dinosaur graveyard. The short par-4 18th is Macdonald’s version of the 17th at Prestwick, the Alps, and features a blind approach over a ridge into the green. If you miss a 30-incher on this punchbowl green, remember Sam Snead did, too, to lose the ’47 U.S. Open.

Old Warson was a staple on the America's 100 Greatest Courses ranking from the late 1960s through much of the 1990s. The 1954 Robert Trent Jones design in St. Louis was among the first wave of significant post-World War II modern designs, an open countryside course with broad fairways that floated into elevated greens, many protected in the front by Jones' freeform bunkers. Today, as age and the suburbs have ingested it, it's evolved into a treelined parkland design, its fairways much skinnier, its once robust putting contours conceded to current green speeds. The routing remains a strong point with the first nine playing off a ridge that runs through the eastern side of the course and the second nine circling a chain of lakes highlighted by the 12th, one of RTJ's great par 5s with a creek that crosses the fairway then doubles back in front of the green.

Forest Park is a 27-hole public facility located just minutes from downtown St. Louis. The three nine-hole layouts can be played in a variety of combinations. Despite its metropolitan setting, the parkland course has a serene feel and is an enjoyable walk. Back in 1929, Forest Park hosted the U.S. Amateur Public Links.