How this is built
Ranking within a state is each course's position on the source list: Golf Digest's best public courses for NC, SC, FL, AZ and NY, Golfweek's public-access list for NJ, and Golfweek's Best 2025 courses-you-can-play lists for the other 44 states. Golfweek lists run 5 to 30 courses per state, and "T" ties share a number. Golf Digest pages list courses in panel order without printed ranks, so treat close positions as ties. A few Top 150 courses missing from their Golfweek state list are added at the end of that state. "Top 150" is the composite rank from your Golf Trip Guide spreadsheet, which merges the Golf Digest, GOLF and Golfweek top-100 lists into 146 courses.
Rates are peak-season 18-hole public rates. Top 150 courses use the Rates tab of your spreadsheet (* marks resort-stay or variable pricing). The rest were researched in October 2026: 92 come from course sites or booking listings, and the other 331 are estimates, shown with ~ and in grey. Hover a rate to see its source. Resort-only courses list the guest rate.
Distance and drive time are straight-line miles from Roselle, NJ, scaled by 1.2 and 62 mph, so they run a little optimistic in cities. Anything past 10 hours shows as a flight. Map pins sit at the town, not the clubhouse.
Sources: Golf Digest NC , SC , FL , AZ , NY ; Golfweek NJ ; Golfweek's Best 2025, every state . Town locations for those states come from the Census Bureau place gazetteer.