The Golf Course Census

Ask how many golf courses the United States has and you get a paywalled industry report or a Wikipedia list of famous ones. Neither tells you where the courses actually are, or what they are called, or how many towns have exactly one. We had a dataset that could, so we counted.

Yardage is a golf GPS app that shows one number, the distance to the center of the green. For that to work on a course, every green on it has to be mapped, and the current app build ships 14,987 courses in all 50 states with a mapped green center on every hole. That catalog is the census. It is not an official registry of every course in the country, and this page never claims to be one. What it is: a per-state and per-city count with the method written down.

Key findings

1. Florida has the most mapped courses: 1,036, ahead of California (1,026).

   The top five states (Florida, California, Michigan, New York, Texas) hold 30.3% of the 14,987 courses in the catalog. See the chart

2. Per person, Iowa leads with 11.1 courses per 100,000 residents; Alaska has the fewest at 0.5.

   Nationally there are 4.4 mapped courses per 100,000 residents, or one course for every 22,805 people (population: U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2025 Population Estimates (July 1, 2025)). See the chart

3. About 1 of every 4 mapped courses is a nine-holer (24.7%), and in North Dakota nine-hole courses are the majority (70.2%).

   States where nine-holers outnumber 18-hole courses: North Dakota, Iowa, South Dakota, Nebraska. North Carolina has the smallest nine-hole share (10.5%). See the chart

4. The Midwest has 31.0% of the courses but 20.4% of the people.

   The South has the most courses of any region (4,987, 33.3%) with 39.0% of the population. See the chart

5. Naples, FL is the city with the most mapped courses: 56.

   The catalog spans 7,593 cities and towns; 4,980 of them (65.6%) have exactly one course. See the chart

6. "Country Club" is the most common name type (31.2% of courses), ahead of "Golf Course" (28.8%) and "Golf Club" (24.1%).

   The most common descriptive words are Hills (753), Creek (723), Valley (549), Lake (502), Park (462), Ridge (316). The most repeated full name is "Hillcrest Country Club" (14 courses). See the chart

7. 236,430 holes are mapped in total: 11,283 eighteen-hole courses and 3,704 nine-hole courses.

   Every course in the catalog has a mapped green center for each hole; that is what the Yardage app measures to. See the chart

How many golf courses are in the US?

Our count is 14,987 mapped courses: 11,283 with eighteen holes and 3,704 with nine. Together that is 236,430 holes, each with a green center a golfer can measure to. The courses sit in 7,593 cities and towns, and 4,980 of those places, two in three, have exactly one course.

How does that compare with the industry's number? The National Golf Foundation, which tracks course supply commercially, wrote in February 2026 that Americans played more than 500 million rounds in 2025 for the sixth straight year, with as many as 2,000 fewer courses than existed at the early-2000s peak, and a facility count down about 3 percent over the modern era. NGF's full counts sit behind its membership, so we cite what it published and stop there. Our catalog is a subset of the country's courses: the ones we have mapped and verified. Where we are short, it shows up in the numbers, and we say so below.

Courses by state

Florida and California are a coin flip at the top, 1,036 to 1,026, and then there is a gap. Michigan, with 858, is the surprise third: a state with a five-month season out-mapping Texas and New York. Pennsylvania and Ohio follow at 721 and 717, and Illinois is the last state above 600. The top five states hold 30.3 percent of the courses; the bottom five (Alaska, Delaware, Rhode Island, Wyoming, Vermont) hold 1.3 percent.

Raw count rewards big states, so the map below shades the same 50 states by courses per resident instead. Population is the Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 estimate of resident population on July 1, 2025, the most recent complete set when we built this.

Courses per capita

Divide by people and the Great Plains take over. Iowa has 11.1 mapped courses per 100,000 residents, one course for roughly every 9,000 people. North Dakota is at 10.5, Vermont 10.1, Nebraska 9.3, South Dakota 8.9. Every one of those states has a modest population, a lot of small towns, and a nine-hole course in most of them, which is the point of the next section.

At the other end sit the states everyone thinks of as golf states. Texas has 801 courses and 2.5 per 100,000 residents, 49th of 50. California, second in raw count, is 48th per person. Florida, first in raw count, is 4.4 per 100,000, almost exactly the national figure of 4.38. Alaska is last at 0.5, and here the caveat bites: we have four Alaska courses mapped, so that number says more about our coverage than about Alaska.

Nationally there is one mapped course for every 22,805 residents. We did not compute courses per square mile; that needs a land-area table we have not incorporated, and the per-capita figure already captures the pattern.

Nine-hole vs. eighteen-hole

3,704 of the 14,987 courses, 24.7 percent, are nine-holers. That is the national share. The state shares run from 10.5 percent in North Carolina to 70.2 percent in North Dakota, and the ranking is not random: it is a map of where golf is a town amenity rather than a destination.

Four states have more nine-hole courses than eighteen-hole courses: North Dakota (70 percent), Iowa (65 percent), South Dakota (59 percent) and Nebraska (52 percent). Kansas is close at 47 percent. These are the same states that lead per capita, and the two facts are one fact. A town of 1,500 people supports nine holes, a mower and a volunteer board. It does not support eighteen. Stack enough of those towns and a state ends up with a course for every 9,000 people, most of them short.

The lowest nine-hole shares belong to the resort and retirement states and the Sun Belt: North Carolina 10.5 percent, Maryland and Hawaii 13.2 percent, and Florida well under the national figure. If you like nine-hole golf, and there is a case for it in our guide to nine holes, you know which direction to drive.

Regions: where the courses are versus where the people are

The Census Bureau's four regions make the imbalance plain. The South has the most courses of any region, 4,987, which is a third of the catalog, but it has 39 percent of the population. The Midwest has 31 percent of the courses with 20 percent of the people; 6.7 courses per 100,000 residents against 3.4 in the West, which has more people than the Midwest and far fewer courses. The Northeast is the one region where the two shares match.

Go one level down to the nine Census divisions and the leader is West North Central (Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas), the division that contains every majority-nine-hole state, at 7.5 courses per 100,000. West South Central (Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas) is last at 2.8, just under the Pacific division's 2.9.

Cities with the most courses

City here means the postal city in the course's address, so this table measures mailing addresses, not metro areas. With that understood: Naples, Florida has 56 mapped courses, more than any other city in the country. Houston and Scottsdale tie at 50. Las Vegas has 40, Tucson 38, Palm Desert 35. Indianapolis, at 32, is the first city on the list where the golf is not a reason people move there.

Myrtle Beach and Hilton Head Island, the two South Carolina resort towns, have 30 and 28 between their postal addresses; the metro areas hold many more under other town names, which is the limit of address-based counting. Omaha, with 27, is the Midwest's entry, and it is not an accident that it sits in the region with the most courses per person.

What courses call themselves

Read 14,987 course names and a pattern shows up fast. "Country Club" is in 31.2 percent of them, "Golf Course" in 28.8 percent, "Golf Club" in 24.1 percent, and those three terms cover most of the catalog. Then a long tail: 669 courses are a "Golf & Country Club" (the ampersand appears in 1,186 names all told), 472 mention a resort, 292 say municipal or muni, and 269 call themselves links, whether or not the ground agrees.

"Country Club" is a naming choice, not a legal status, and it varies by state more than you would guess. In Louisiana 56.6 percent of course names contain it; in Vermont 53.8 percent; in Rhode Island, Mississippi, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, more than 46 percent. In Utah it is 8.9 percent and in Oregon 13.5 percent. A "country club" in Vermont is very often a nine-hole course with a shed.

Strip out the generic words (golf, club, course, country, and their friends) and the landscape words are left. Hills leads, in 753 names. Creek is in 723, Valley in 549, Lake in 502, Park in 462, Ridge in 316. Oaks (247) beats Pines (149), though Pine on its own adds 179 more. The most common two-word phrase that is not generic is State Park, on 59 courses; then Indian Hills (27), Hidden Valley (26) and Rolling Hills (26). If you have played a Rolling Hills, the odds you played the one you think you did are not great: there are 12 Rolling Hills Country Clubs and 10 Rolling Hills Golf Courses.

The single most repeated name in American golf is Hillcrest Country Club, 14 of them. Twin Lakes Golf Course appears nine times, Elks Country Club seven. Seventy-seven names begin with "The." The longest name in the catalog is Orange County National Golf Center and Lodge - Panther Lake, 59 characters, in Florida. The shortest is BOG, in Wisconsin.

What the numbers do not say

A count of mapped courses answers where golf is, not how busy it is or who can play it. The catalog does not record whether a course is public or private, what it costs, or how many rounds it hosts, so a state with many courses and few golfers looks the same here as one with few courses and a waiting list. Iowa's 11 courses per 100,000 people is a fact about supply, not demand; to argue that Iowa is under-golfed or over-golfed you need rounds data we do not have, and NGF does not publish it in the open.

The city table is the easiest one to over-read. Naples has 56 courses at addresses that say Naples; the postal city of a course on the edge of a metro can be a suburb with a different name, so Phoenix, Dallas and Chicago sit lower on the list than their metro areas would. Treat the city table as "places that put their name on a lot of scorecards," which is a real thing, just a narrower one.

Nine-hole share is sensitive to how a facility is recorded. A 27-hole club shows up as an eighteen and a nine, which nudges the nine-hole share up in states with many such clubs; a club that names its three nines separately would show as three nines. We record what the app presents, and the effect is small against the state-level gaps here, but a state at 24 percent versus 26 percent is not a finding.

And the name analysis is what names say, not what courses are. "Links" appears in 269 names, and most of those courses are inland parkland that borrowed the word. "Municipal" appears in 292, while the number of courses actually owned by a city, county or state is certainly higher, because plenty of public courses carry a place name and nothing else. The word counts are a portrait of how American golf talks about itself, which is interesting on its own terms: it talks about hills, creeks and valleys, and it calls itself a country club three times in ten.

Methodology

What is counted. One record per playable course in the Yardage catalog, identified by a stable id and a unique slug. A course is in the catalog when every hole has a mapped green center. Twenty-seven- and thirty-six-hole facilities can appear as separate entries (an eighteen and a nine, or two eighteens), because that is how the app presents them and how golfers play them. Driving ranges and practice facilities without holes are not courses and are not counted.

What "mapped in Yardage" means for the total. Our 14,987 is a floor for the number of golf courses in the United States, not the number. If a course is missing here it is because we have not mapped it, not because it does not exist. Coverage is thinnest in Alaska (four courses) and strongest in the large states. When a state's number looks low against your own knowledge, that is our gap, and there is a form on the directory page for telling us.

Versioning. Every figure on this page was computed from catalog revision 7f39c7f6 on 2026-09-24, and that revision string is printed under each chart. When the catalog changes, the numbers change, and the revision changes with them. Cite the revision.

Population. Courses per 100,000 residents use the U.S. Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 estimates of resident population on July 1, 2025, from the file NST-EST2025-ALLDATA (Population Division, released January 2026). The 50-state total in that file is 341,784,857; we exclude the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico because the catalog covers the 50 states. Regions and divisions are the Census Bureau's.

Cities. City is the postal city in the course's street address, as bundled in the app. Four records in the catalog carried a malformed city field; two were repaired mechanically from the address (a street number in the city field, a state and ZIP in the city field), and two, a blank and a web address, are grouped under "Other" in their state. All four are listed in the data file so nothing is hidden.

Names. Term counts are case-insensitive pattern matches on the course name as bundled. Terms overlap: a "Golf & Country Club" counts under Country Club as well. For the word list, generic words (golf, club, course, country, the, of, and, national, links, and similar) are removed and each word is counted once per course, so a course called Twin Lakes Golf Course adds one to Lakes, not two. Two-word phrases exclude generic words entirely.

Corrections. If a number here is wrong, we want to know. Email support@theyardageapp.com with "Census" in the subject and the state or course in question. Corrections to the catalog itself ship in app updates and flow into the next build of this page.

How to cite

You may cite these figures with credit to "The Golf Course Census by Yardage" and a link to this page. They are provided for reference and may not be complete.

What this data is for

We built the catalog so the Yardage app could show a golfer the distance to the middle of the green on any of 14,987 courses, without a signal and without an account. The census is a by-product, and a useful one: an open answer to where American golf lives. The short version is that it lives in more small towns than the coverage suggests, that a quarter of it is nine holes long, and that the Midwest is underrated.

If you want to see what the underlying app does with all those green centers, the demo is a drawn hole with a marker you can drag, and the number it shows is real. If you want the state pages, they start with the states with the most golf courses. And if you want a quiet kind of golf, the municipal courses in the catalog, 292 by name and many more in fact, are where to look.

Frequently asked questions

How many golf courses are in the United States?

Our catalog has 14,987 mapped courses across all 50 states: 11,283 eighteen-hole and 3,704 nine-hole. That is a count of courses mapped in Yardage, not a registry of every course. The National Golf Foundation reports that the country now has as many as 2,000 fewer courses than at the early-2000s peak, and we do not publish a total of our own.

Which state has the most golf courses?

Florida, with 1,036 mapped courses. California has 1,026, then Michigan (858), New York (825) and Texas (801).

Which state has the most golf courses per person?

Iowa, with 11.1 mapped courses per 100,000 residents, using the Census Bureau's July 2025 population estimates. North Dakota, Vermont, Nebraska and South Dakota follow. Alaska has the fewest per person, though our Alaska coverage is thin.

Where are nine-hole golf courses most common?

North Dakota, where 70 percent of mapped courses are nine-holers, then Iowa (65 percent), South Dakota (59 percent) and Nebraska (52 percent). Nationally the share is 24.7 percent.

Can I use these numbers and charts?

You may cite the figures with credit to "The Golf Course Census by Yardage" and a link to this page. They are provided for reference and may not be complete.

How often is the census updated?

Whenever the course catalog changes. Every chart carries the catalog revision it was built from, so you can cite a specific version.

Press: for a quote, a custom cut of the data or the full JSON with field definitions, see the press page or email support@theyardageapp.com with "Census" in the subject.