There are 14,987 golf courses in the United States mapped in the Yardage course catalog as of the 2026 revision: 11,283 eighteen-hole courses and 3,704 nine-hole courses, spread across all 50 states. Florida has the most with 1,036, California is ten behind at 1,026, and Alaska brings up the rear with four.
That number is a count of courses, not facilities, and it counts what has been mapped for GPS, not every patch of grass with a flag on it. The National Golf Foundation keeps its own tally using a different method, and its figures run higher. Both are explained below, along with the full 50-state table, the split between 18-hole and 9-hole layouts, and what the numbers say about where American golf actually lives.
On this page
The short answer, and why there are two answers
Ask “how many golf courses are in the US” and you will see figures anywhere from about 14,000 to over 16,000. They are not all wrong. They are counting different things.
A facility is a place with a front door: one address, one pro shop, however many layouts sit behind it. A course is a single playable layout of nine or more holes. Bethpage State Park on Long Island is one facility with five courses. A 36-hole club counts as one facility and two courses. The National Golf Foundation publishes both numbers in its annual facilities report; its public explainer on the difference cites 14,613 facilities and 16,693 courses in the US, and NGF has reported that annual course closures have fallen for five straight years.
The 14,987 figure on this page is a course count from the Yardage catalog, the set of US courses with green locations mapped so an iPhone can show you a distance. It counts courses mapped in Yardage, not every course in America. Where a club has separate 18-hole layouts, each is a course. Where a club has three nines played in combinations, the catalog usually carries the nines or the combinations as the club publishes them. Expect this count to sit below NGF’s course figure because some private clubs, military courses and very short layouts have not been mapped yet, and expect it to sit near NGF’s facility figure by coincidence rather than design. You can browse every one of them in the course directory or read how the catalog is built in the golf course census.
All 50 states ranked by number of golf courses
The table ranks every state by total mapped courses. The per-100k column is courses per 100,000 residents, which is a very different leaderboard and gets its own page: golf courses per capita by state. The top city column shows the city with the most mapped courses in that state, which is usually not the biggest city.
| Rank | State | Courses | 18‑hole | 9‑hole | Per 100k people | Top city (courses) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Florida | 1,036 | 896 | 140 | 4.42 | Naples (56) |
| 2 | California | 1,026 | 804 | 222 | 2.61 | Palm Desert (35) |
| 3 | Michigan | 858 | 671 | 187 | 8.47 | Harbor Springs (13) |
| 4 | New York | 825 | 591 | 234 | 4.12 | Rochester (12) |
| 5 | Texas | 801 | 621 | 180 | 2.53 | Houston (50) |
| 6 | Pennsylvania | 721 | 558 | 163 | 5.52 | Beaver Falls (11) |
| 7 | Ohio | 717 | 572 | 145 | 6.02 | Cincinnati (28) |
| 8 | Illinois | 629 | 452 | 177 | 4.95 | Chicago (14) |
| 9 | North Carolina | 512 | 458 | 54 | 4.57 | Charlotte (24) |
| 10 | Wisconsin | 480 | 334 | 146 | 8.04 | Madison (12) |
| 11 | Minnesota | 447 | 279 | 168 | 7.67 | Duluth (14) |
| 12 | Georgia | 371 | 305 | 66 | 3.28 | Savannah (18) |
| 13 | Iowa | 358 | 127 | 231 | 11.05 | Des Moines (11) |
| 14 | South Carolina | 353 | 303 | 50 | 6.34 | Myrtle Beach (30) |
| 15 | Arizona | 346 | 295 | 51 | 4.54 | Scottsdale (50) |
| 16 | Virginia | 330 | 269 | 61 | 3.72 | Virginia Beach (16) |
| 17 | Indiana | 310 | 237 | 73 | 4.45 | Indianapolis (32) |
| 18 | New Jersey | 299 | 255 | 44 | 3.13 | West Orange (14) |
| 19 | Missouri | 292 | 200 | 92 | 4.66 | Saint Louis (20) |
| 20 | Massachusetts | 287 | 222 | 65 | 4.01 | Canton (6) |
| 21 | Washington | 285 | 212 | 73 | 3.56 | Seattle (12) |
| 22 | Tennessee | 261 | 208 | 53 | 3.57 | Memphis (16) |
| 23 | Colorado | 243 | 183 | 60 | 4.04 | Colorado Springs (18) |
| 24 | Kentucky | 240 | 175 | 65 | 5.21 | Louisville (27) |
| 25 | Alabama | 218 | 185 | 33 | 4.20 | Birmingham (20) |
| 26 | Kansas | 205 | 109 | 96 | 6.89 | Wichita (13) |
| 27 | Oregon | 192 | 144 | 48 | 4.49 | Portland (15) |
| 28 | Nebraska | 187 | 90 | 97 | 9.27 | Omaha (27) |
| 29 | Maryland | 182 | 158 | 24 | 2.90 | Baltimore (7) |
| 30 | Connecticut | 176 | 132 | 44 | 4.77 | Avon (8) |
| 31 | Oklahoma | 174 | 129 | 45 | 4.22 | Oklahoma City (15) |
| 32 | Arkansas | 134 | 94 | 40 | 4.30 | Fort Smith (10) |
| 33 | Utah | 123 | 88 | 35 | 3.48 | Salt Lake City (16) |
| 34 | Louisiana | 122 | 85 | 37 | 2.64 | Baton Rouge (8) |
| 35 | Nevada | 114 | 96 | 18 | 3.47 | Las Vegas (40) |
| 36 | Mississippi | 113 | 91 | 22 | 3.83 | Jackson (9) |
| 37 | Maine | 109 | 67 | 42 | 7.70 | Auburn (3) |
| 38 | West Virginia | 100 | 69 | 31 | 5.66 | Morgantown (5) |
| 39 | Idaho | 98 | 71 | 27 | 4.83 | Boise (7) |
| 40 | New Mexico | 96 | 60 | 36 | 4.52 | Albuquerque (26) |
| 41 | New Hampshire | 93 | 66 | 27 | 6.57 | Amherst (4) |
| 42 | North Dakota | 84 | 25 | 59 | 10.51 | Fargo (6) |
| 43 | Montana | 83 | 50 | 33 | 7.25 | Billings (7) |
| 43 | South Dakota | 83 | 34 | 49 | 8.88 | Sioux Falls (9) |
| 45 | Hawaii | 76 | 66 | 10 | 5.30 | Ewa Beach (8) |
| 46 | Vermont | 65 | 48 | 17 | 10.08 | Hinesburg (5) |
| 47 | Wyoming | 46 | 31 | 15 | 7.81 | Casper (5) |
| 48 | Rhode Island | 43 | 31 | 12 | 3.86 | Warwick (5) |
| 49 | Delaware | 40 | 34 | 6 | 3.77 | Wilmington (11) |
| 50 | Alaska | 4 | 3 | 1 | 0.54 | Fort Richardson (2) |
Every course in the table, whether nine or eighteen holes, is mapped the same way: a center point for each green, so an app can measure the distance from where you stand to the middle of the putting surface. That is the whole premise of Yardage, which puts one number, the live GPS distance to the center of the green, on your iPhone Lock Screen for the round. How the mapping works is covered in how golf courses are mapped for GPS.
What the table tells you
The first thing that jumps out is how top-heavy the map is. The five biggest golf states, Florida, California, Michigan, New York and Texas, hold 4,546 courses between them, which is 30.3% of the country. The top ten hold 7,605, or 50.7%. The bottom ten states combined have 617 courses, fewer than Illinois on its own.
The second thing is that the Sun Belt does not own this list the way you might assume. Florida is first, but Michigan (858), New York (825), Pennsylvania (721) and Ohio (717) all sit in the top seven. Those are states where the season runs roughly April to October, and they still out-build Arizona (346) and South Carolina (353) by a factor of two. Golf in America was laid out where people lived in 1920 and 1960, not where they retire in 2026.
Third, size matters less than you would think. Texas is the second-largest state by land and population and sits fifth in courses, with 801. Iowa, with a tenth of Texas's population, has 358. Nearly two-thirds of Iowa's courses are nine-holers, which is the real story of the Plains and gets its own treatment in states with the most 9-hole golf courses.
Eighteen-hole vs nine-hole courses
Of the 14,987 mapped courses, 11,283 are 18-hole layouts and 3,704 are nine-hole layouts. That makes nine-holers 24.7% of the national count, roughly one course in four. The share swings wildly by state. In North Dakota, 59 of 84 courses are nines (70.2%). In North Carolina it is 54 of 512 (10.5%). Florida has 140 nine-hole courses, more than 19 states have courses of any kind, but they are only 13.5% of its total.
If you play a lot of nine-hole golf, the Upper Midwest and Plains are where your options are densest, and nine-hole golf is a different rhythm: two hours, walk it, home before dark. If you want 36 holes in a day at a resort with four layouts, that is Florida, Arizona and the Carolinas.
Courses per person: a different leaderboard
Rank the states by courses per 100,000 residents and the list flips. Iowa leads at 11.05, followed by North Dakota (10.51), Vermont (10.08), Nebraska (9.27) and South Dakota (8.88). Florida, first by raw count, is 29th per capita at 4.42. California is 48th at 2.61 and Texas 49th at 2.53, ahead of only Alaska.
Per capita is the number that predicts whether you can get a Saturday morning tee time without planning your week around it. A state with a thousand courses and 22 million residents is busier, hole for hole, than one with 358 courses and 3 million. The full ranking and the caveats (Florida's winter population is a lot bigger than its resident count) are in golf courses per capita by state.
Where the courses cluster: cities
State totals hide how concentrated golf is. Naples alone has 56 mapped courses, more than Delaware and Alaska combined. Scottsdale and Houston have 50 each, Las Vegas 40 and Tucson 38. Those are retirement and resort markets, not the biggest cities. Los Angeles has 17 mapped courses, Chicago 14, and New York City does not appear in the top 50 at all.
The top 50 cities, with links to each city's course list, are in US cities with the most golf courses. Florida's own city ranking is in Florida's golf cities ranked by course count.
How this count compares with NGF and other sources
If you need a number for a business plan or a school paper, use NGF's. It is the industry standard, it is updated every year, and it is built from facility surveys rather than from GPS mapping. The NGF figures of 14,613 facilities and 16,693 courses come from its own published explainer on facilities versus courses; the exact totals move a little each year as courses close and open.
If you want to know how many courses you can walk onto with a yardage in your pocket, use the catalog number. The two will never match because the methods differ: NGF counts every layout that reports to it, whether or not anyone has drawn its greens on a map; the catalog counts only what has been mapped. Neither counts driving ranges, par-3 layouts under nine holes, or simulator bays. When another site quotes a number without saying which method it used, assume it copied one of these two.
Using the numbers
For trip planning, the state pages are the practical tool. Florida, Arizona and South Carolina are the winter destinations with the densest resort golf; Michigan and Wisconsin are the summer equivalents and far less crowded. Each state page lists its cities, and each city page lists every mapped course with its hole count.
For the state-level deep dives, there are separate pages on Florida, Texas, California and Arizona, and a broader look at the states with the most golf courses. Whichever state you land in, the game is the same: find the number to the middle of the green, pick the club, and aim for the center. There are 14,987 places to practice that.
Questions
How many golf courses are there in the United States?
The Yardage course catalog maps 14,987 golf courses in the US as of its 2026 revision: 11,283 eighteen-hole and 3,704 nine-hole layouts across all 50 states. The National Golf Foundation, which counts by surveying facilities, has published figures of 14,613 facilities and 16,693 courses. The two numbers differ because the methods differ, not because one is wrong.
Which state has the most golf courses?
Florida has the most golf courses with 1,036 mapped in the Yardage catalog, just ahead of California at 1,026. Michigan (858), New York (825) and Texas (801) round out the top five. Together those five states hold 30.3% of all mapped US courses.
Which state has the fewest golf courses?
Alaska has the fewest with four mapped courses, three of them 18-hole layouts. Delaware (40), Rhode Island (43), Wyoming (46) and Vermont (65) are next. Small course counts do not mean bad access: Vermont ranks third in the country for courses per 100,000 residents, and Wyoming ranks eighth.
What is the difference between a golf facility and a golf course?
A facility is a location, one address with a pro shop, that may contain several courses. A course is a single layout of nine or more holes. NGF's example is Bethpage State Park: one facility, five courses. That is why NGF's facility count (14,613) is lower than its course count (16,693), and why any headline number should say which one it is.
How many 9-hole golf courses are in the US?
The Yardage catalog maps 3,704 nine-hole courses in the US, which is 24.7% of the 14,987 total. The share varies enormously by state: nine-holers are 70.2% of North Dakota's courses and 64.5% of Iowa's, but only 10.5% of North Carolina's and 13.5% of Florida's. New York has the most nine-hole courses by raw count at 234.
Is the number of golf courses in the US going up or down?
It fell for most of the 2010s as courses built during the 1990s boom closed, but the National Golf Foundation reports that annual closures have declined for five straight years, with 2024 closures at their lowest level in two decades. New construction is modest, so the total is roughly stable rather than growing quickly.