Best golf courses in Alabama for 2024-25

By: GOLF's Course Raters and Ran Morrissett, Architecture Editor December 16, 2024

The Links course on the RTJ Golf Trail at Grand National.

Courtesy

As part of GOLF’s rigorous ratings process for our newly released Top 100 Courses in the U.S. and Top 100 Courses You Can Play rankings, our fleet of 100-plus expert panelists identified the best golf courses in every state.

You can check out the links below to browse all of our course rankings, or scroll down to see the best courses in Alabama. And if you’re looking to create your own trip in the future, you’d be wise to let GOLF’s new Course Finder tool assist you. Here, you can toggle all of our lists — Top 100 public, best munis, best short courses, best par-3s and more — or filter by price to create the perfect itinerary for your next trip.

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The best golf courses in Alabama (2024/2025)

SYMBOL GUIDE
# = Top 100 Course in the U.S.
Y = Top 100 You Can Play in the U.S.
V = Top 100 Value Course in the U.S.
P = Public/Resort

Ed. note: Some courses were omitted from our rankings because they did not receive enough votes.

1. Wicker Point (Alexander City)

2. Shoal Creek (Shoal Creek)

3. CC of Birmingham – West (Mountain Brook)

4. Mountain Brook Club (Birmingham)

5. Turtle Point Yacht & CC (Killen)

6. RTJ Golf Trail at Grand National, The Links (Opelika) [Y, V, P]

Nitpickers might point out that “links” is a misnomer, and they’d be right. It’s the wrong term for a course that features sylvan fairways and carries over marshes to soft, receptive greens. But never mind the monikers. The conditioning is pure, the vistas are sublime and the course, the strongest layout on the Robert Trent Jones Trail, is a delightful, varied test. If you time the visit right, you can follow up your round with another top-notch form of outdoor entertainment: the Auburn football stadium is nearby.

7. Kiva Dunes (Gulf Shores) [V, P]

8. Country Club of Mobile (Mobile)

9. Old Overton Club (Vestavia Hills)

10. The Ledges (Huntsville)

How we rank our courses

For our newly released Top 100 U.S. and Top 100 You Can Play lists — a process that helped us create 50 best-in-state rankings — each panelist was provided a ballot that consisted of 609 courses. Beside the list of courses were 11 “buckets,” or groupings. If our panelists considered a course to be among the top three in the U.S., they ticked that first column. If they believed the course to be among Nos. 4-10, they checked that column, followed by 11-25, 26-50, and so on out to 250+ and even a column for “remove.” Panelists were also free to write in courses that they felt should have been included on the ballot.

Points were assigned to each bucket; to arrive at an average score for each course, we divide its aggregate score by the number of votes. From those point tallies, the courses are then ranked accordingly. It is an intentionally simple and straightforward process. Why? Because it historically has produced results that are widely lauded. Like the game itself, there’s no need to unnecessarily complicate things or try to fix something that already works so well.

The key to the process is the experience and expertise of our panel. Hailing from 15 nations and all the worldwide golf meccas, each of our 127 handpicked panelists has a keen eye for architecture, both regionally and globally. Many of our panelists have played more than 1,000 courses in 20-plus countries, some over 2,000. Their handicaps range from +5 to 15.

Because the nature of course rating is so intensely subjective, no one opinion carries the day. The only way, then, to build meaningful consensus is to incorporate this diversity of panelists and experiences into one ranking.

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