California 100 · the trips

TRIPS

Weekends with friends: two or three courses from the hundred that sit within a short drive of one bed, with the airport to land at, where to sleep, and what the weekend is for. An itinerary is an opinion, not a claim — no check applies to it. Drives from the airport are estimates with no traffic; fees are the rows' own bands, summed, before carts, rooms and the 19th hole. Nothing here decides what has been played; the record does.

1. 

   2 nights · fly SJC · 50m to the first tee · 2h 00m from SF by car · green fees $650–773 a head

   The MacKenzie weekend

   Santa Cruz to the Monterey Peninsula without the Pebble bill

   Start where the good doctor lived. Pasatiempo was MacKenzie's home course — his house sat on the sixth fairway — and the 2024 restoration put his greens back the way he drew them, which means three-putts that make you laugh instead of swear. It is the one expensive round of the weekend. Then the drive everyone forgets is beautiful: Highway 1 along the back of Monterey Bay, strawberry fields and the Moss Landing stacks, to Seaside, where Bayonet is the old Fort Ord army course — tight, tree-lined, mean off the tee, the hardest round of the three and a fraction of what the peninsula courses charge. Sunday closes at Pacific Grove, the poor man's Pebble: the front nine is a warm-up through the neighbourhood, and then the back nine walks out into the dunes beside Point Pinos lighthouse with the Pacific on three sides for $66. Three courses, three architects' eras, and the whole thing costs less than one tee time next door.

   1. #2PasatiempoSanta Cruz · $465–515 · B value · 1h 35m from SF · 25 mi from SJCto play
   2. #16BayonetSeaside · $119–169 · B+ value · 1h 55m from SF · 28 mi from #2to play
   3. #57Pacific Grove Golf LinksPacific Grove · $66–89 · A+ value · 2h 00m from SF · 6 mi from #16to play

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2. 

   2 nights · fly MRY · 15m to the first tee · 2h 05m from SF by car · green fees $1,595–1,655 a head

   Pebble, once

   the splurge everyone owes themselves one time

   This is not a value trip and it is not trying to be. It is the one weekend where the group agrees in advance that the money is spent and nobody mentions it again. Pebble is Pebble: the cliff holes from 4 to 10 are the reason golf travel exists, and the walk up 18 with Stillwater Cove on your left is a thing you will describe to people for years. Spyglass is the harder course and the locals' favourite — Robert Trent Jones Sr. built the opening through sand and ice plant and then disappeared into the Del Monte Forest, where the greens are small and the par 3s are long. Poppy Hills is the sensible third: the NCGA's home course, rebuilt in 2014 with no rough and wide fairways, so it is the round where someone actually breaks 80. Stay inside the gate; the 17-Mile Drive at dawn with nobody on it is part of what you paid for.

   1. #1Pebble Beach Golf LinksPebble Beach · $695 · C+ value · 2h 00m from SF · 6 mi from MRYto play
   2. #3Spyglass HillPebble Beach · $550–610 · B- value · 2h 05m from SF · 1 mi from #1to play
   3. #14Poppy HillsPebble Beach · $350 · B- value · 2h 00m from SF · 1 mi from #3to play

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3. 

   2 nights · fly RNO · 40m to the first tee · 3h 25m from SF by car · green fees $761–934 a head · 1 of 3 played

   Truckee, at altitude

   three mountain courses and a lake to jump in

   At 6,000 feet the ball goes about ten percent farther, so every carry you do not trust at home you trust here, and for one weekend you are the long hitter you remember being. Coyote Moon is the course people come back for: granite outcrops, ponderosa pine, no houses, no road noise, a 250-foot drop on the 13th. Old Greenwood is Nicklaus at his most generous, wide and pretty with the mountains behind every green; Gray's Crossing is its sister across town, Peter Jacobsen and Jim Hardy, a little firmer and a little cheaper. Either is the Sunday round. The rest of the weekend is the lake: Donner is ten minutes from all three courses, cold and clear, and a swim after a round at altitude is the best thing in this list. Truckee's old town does dinner well and does not care how you played.

   1. #31Old GreenwoodTruckee · $303–364 · B value · 3h 25m from SF · 23 mi from RNOto play
   2. #44Coyote MoonTruckee · $165–225 · A- value · 3h 25m from SF · 3 mi from #31played
   3. #49Gray's CrossingTruckee · $293–345 · B+ value · 3h 25m from SF · 3 mi from #44to play

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4. 

   2 nights · fly RNO · 1h 15m to the first tee · 4h 15m from SF by car · green fees $378–503 a head

   The Lost Sierra

   five courses around a one-street town of four hundred people

   The list already calls this the mountain trip, and the tag is earned. Graeagle is a lumber town turned golf valley: red cabins, one general store, five courses within fifteen minutes, and almost nobody from outside the state has heard of it. Whitehawk Ranch is the best of them, meadow and pine along a creek, immaculate, with carts included in a fee that would not buy a cart alone on the coast. Grizzly Ranch is Bob Cupp's big mountain course, elevated tees and long views, the one that rates highest and plays hardest. The Dragon is the wild card — Robin Nelson built it along a ridge above the Feather River and it was once called the hardest course in California, then softened; it is still the round with the drama and the resort to sleep beside. The Lakes Basin is twenty minutes up the hill: Sardine Lake, Frazier Falls, a swim in a lake you have the whole of. Nobody here is in a hurry, including the greens.

   1. #23Whitehawk RanchClio · $129–159 · A value · 4h 15m from SF · 44 mi from RNOto play
   2. #34Grizzly RanchPortola · $150–185 · A value · 4h 05m from SF · 8 mi from #23to play
   3. #72The Dragon at NakomaClio · $99–159 · B+ value · 4h 15m from SF · 4 mi from #34to play

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5. 

   2 nights · fly PSP · 30m to the first tee · 7h 50m from SF by car · green fees $602–732 a head · 1 of 3 played

   The desert in season

   Pete Dye's island green, a muni that is not one, and a pool

   Winter golf in the desert is a Californian institution for a reason: it is 72°F, the sky is a lid, and the courses are as green as the mountains are brown. The Stadium course is the headline. Pete Dye built it in 1986 to be the hardest course in the country and the pros complained until the tour left; the island 17th is where Lee Trevino made the ace in the 1987 Skins Game, and the pot bunker on 16 is deeper than you are tall. Firecliff is the city of Palm Desert's own course and the best-conditioned muni in the state, Hurdzan and Fry through dunes and desert wash. SilverRock is the Arnold Palmer course that hosted the Bob Hope, big and wide against the Santa Rosas, the easiest of the three to score on and the one to open with. The rest of the trip is the pool, the mid-century houses, and arguing about who hit it closest on 17.

   1. #13PGA West — StadiumLa Quinta · $251–298 · C+ value · 7h 50m from SF · 19 mi from PSPplayed
   2. #26Desert Willow — FirecliffPalm Desert · $206–229 · A- value · 7h 50m from SF · 10 mi from #13to play
   3. #39SilverRockLa Quinta · $145–205 · A- value · 7h 50m from SF · 8 mi from #26to play

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6. 

   2 nights · fly SAN · 20m to the first tee · 8h 30m from SF by car · green fees $475–589 a head

   Torrey, both

   the US Open course, its friendlier sister, and a $54 muni with a skyline

   Torrey Pines is a municipal course on a cliff over the Pacific that has held two US Opens, and the city of San Diego still lets anyone play it. The South is the one you fly for: long, brutal in the rough, Rees Jones twice, with the par 3 third hanging over the ocean and the 18th where Tiger Woods made the putt on one leg. The North is the better morning — Tom Weiskopf's 2016 rebuild took it back toward the cliffs, it is cheaper, and the group will have more fun on it. Coronado is the Friday warm-up and the thing nobody expects: a flat, honest muni on the bay with the downtown skyline and the bridge behind every green, $54 to walk, and the Hotel del across the street for a drink after. It is 70°F in February. That is the whole pitch.

   1. #5Torrey Pines SouthLa Jolla · $258–322 · B+ value · 8h 20m from SF · 12 mi from SANto play
   2. #12Torrey Pines NorthLa Jolla · $163–204 · A- value · 8h 20m from SF · 1 mi from #5to play
   3. #62CoronadoCoronado · $54–63 · A++ value · 8h 30m from SF · 16 mi from #12to play

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7. 

   2 nights · fly BUR · 1h to the first tee · 6h 00m from SF by car · green fees $289–336 a head · 2 of 3 played

   Ojai, the A++ weekend

   two Gil Hanse courses at muni prices and a George Thomas original

   The two cheapest great courses in California are forty minutes apart, and both are Gil Hanse. Rustic Canyon is the one the architecture people make pilgrimages to: a 2002 minimalist course laid into a Moorpark canyon with huge greens, no water, no houses and a green fee under a hundred dollars — the record already holds it six times, and it is the course on this list to show a friend what golf can be. Soule Park is the county muni in Ojai that Hanse and Jim Wagner rebuilt in 2005 for almost nothing, and it is wide, fast, strategic and absurd value at $44 on a weekday. Ojai Valley Inn is the dessert: George Thomas, the man who built Riviera, in the orange groves under the Topatopas, cart included and the spa next door. Ojai itself does the rest — one street, a Sunday farmers' market, the outdoor bookstore, and the bluffs going rose at dusk.

   1. #7Rustic CanyonMoorpark · $65–90 · A++ value · 5h 50m from SF · 30 mi from BURplayed 6×
   2. #25Soule ParkOjai · $44–56 · A++ value · 6h 00m from SF · 22 mi from #7to play
   3. #43Ojai Valley InnOjai · $180–190 · A- value · 6h 00m from SF · 2 mi from #25played 2×

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8. 

   2 nights · fly SBA · 10m to the first tee · 5h 30m from SF by car · green fees $382–510 a head · 1 of 3 played

   The Central Coast, with wine

   an ocean cliff, a windswept beast, and dunes near Pismo

   Sandpiper is the course on this list that looks most like Pebble for a fifth of the price: Bill Bell on the bluffs west of Santa Barbara, with the 11th through 14th running along the cliff edge and the Channel Islands on the horizon. La Purisima, an hour north near Lompoc, is the opposite kind of day — Robert Muir Graves built a long, hilly, honest course in the oaks that the wind owns after noon, nobody is on it, and it is the hardest round of the three by a distance. Between them is the Santa Ynez Valley, the Sideways country, where Saturday afternoon is Los Olivos tasting rooms and a Solvang bakery. Monarch Dunes, further up at Nipomo, plays through real sand dunes a few miles from the beach, Damian Pascuzzo and Steve Pate, with the best par-3 course in the state beside it for the group's last hour. Then Pismo, the pier, and the long drive home.

   1. #33SandpiperGoleta · $175–210 · B+ value · 5h 30m from SF · 4 mi from SBAplayed
   2. #28La PurisimaLompoc · $82–125 · A+ value · 5h 00m from SF · 35 mi from #33to play
   3. #88Monarch Dunes — Old CourseNipomo · $125–175 · A- value · 4h 30m from SF · 25 mi from #28to play

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9. 

   2 nights · fly SFO · 20m to the first tee · 45m from SF by car · green fees $542–669 a head · 3 of 3 played

   Home game

   when the friends fly in: the city's three, no night away

   The trip for the weekend the friends come to you. Harding Park is the municipal course that hosted a Presidents Cup and a PGA Championship and still charges muni money to anyone with a city card; the finishing stretch along Lake Merced through the cypress is championship golf fifteen minutes from the house. The Presidio is the 1895 army course inside a national park, hilly and tree-lined with glimpses of the Golden Gate, the right afternoon round for a group that has just got off a plane. Half Moon Bay is the day out: Arthur Hills' Ocean course runs along the bluffs south of the harbour, links-ish and windy, and finishes with the 18th hard along the cliff edge to the Ritz-Carlton, where the fire pits and the bagpiper at sunset are the best 19th hole in the Bay Area. Three rounds, two drives, and everyone sleeps in their own bed — yours.

   1. #29TPC Harding ParkSan Francisco · $205–282 · B+ value · 15m from SF · 9 mi from SFOplayed
   2. #38Half Moon Bay — OceanHalf Moon Bay · $202–237 · B value · 45m from SF · 17 mi from #29played
   3. #42PresidioSan Francisco · $135–150 · A- value · 15m from SF · 22 mi from #38played

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