Who doesn’t love a bargain?

Golfers certainly do. But with the game in higher demand than ever (hurrah!) and inflation persisting, good values have become increasingly harder to find.

That in mind, GOLF’s course raters and editors set out to compile a list of 18-hole golf courses in the United States that represent exceptional bang for the buck. Our criteria were simple: To qualify for our list, courses needed to be (1) accessible to the public, (2) the kind of golf experience you’d recommend to a friend and (3) offer peak-season weekend walking rates that do not exceed $100.

This fee requirement was a hard line, and at times a painful one to be bound by. Take Rustic Canyon, a fantastic design north of Los Angeles, where green fees max out at $104. Or Stoatin Brae in Michigan, designed by the principals of Renaissance Golf Design.

This open, linksy course generally costs less than $100 save for a few prime weekend tee times. Still, we had to omit both courses as we had to establish a cut off, and $100 felt like a nice round number.

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What you’ll find below is not a ranking but rather our first attempt at identifying the country’s best affordable golf courses by region (Southeast, Northeast, Heartland and West). To compile the list, we sourced recommendations not only from GOLF’s raters and editors but also from course experts from around the industry and even you, our loyal, golf-loving audience.

Sand Creek Station (Newton, Kans.) Russell Kirk/USGA
As you’ll see, the Heartland leads the way in quantity; more land and fewer residents means lower fees. This area of the country also is blessed with great diversity of landforms well suited to golf.

Generally, everything costs more around population centers, but we still found a handful of low-cost gems in major metropolitan areas, like George Wright outside of Boston, CommonGround just east of Denver and Bethpage State Park not far from New York City, where of its quartet of courses only the fees at the fabled Black creep north of three digits.

A couple of other Big Apple-area courses also made the cut: the revamped Francis A. Byrne and Hendricks Field courses, both of which are in New Jersey’s Essex County Parks system. Both designs now feature classic architectural features for which Charles Banks became famous, including Redan, Biarritz and Road Holes. Strategic golf, we believe, is the game’s most addictive form of design, and these courses embody that fundamental.

Happily, our list is chock full of courses designed by great architects, including A.W. Tillinghast, Donald Ross, Stanley Thompson, Robert Trent Jones Sr., Pete Dye, Tom Fazio, Tom Doak, Jack Nicklaus and Coore & Crenshaw. Talk about star power! There also are a couple of former major-championship sites in the mix, namely Cedar Crest in Texas (1927 PGA Championship) and Tanglewood in North Carolina (1974 PGA Championship).