Los Angeles has a real claim to being the best big-city golf town in America, and it isn't close. In the 1920s, one gentleman architect — George C. Thomas Jr. — routed Riviera, Bel-Air, and the North Course at Los Angeles Country Club through the canyons and barrancas of the Westside, and a century later those three courses still set the standard for Golden Age design on the West Coast. The 2023 U.S. Open at LACC North and Riviera's standing date with the Genesis Invitational are just the modern proof of what LA golfers have always known.
This list ranks the ten best golf courses in Los Angeles on architecture and experience first, access second — which means the top of the board is dominated by private legends most of us will only ever walk as spectators. But this is not a list of unobtainables: four of the ten are daily-fee or municipal courses you can book this week, and one of them belongs in any serious conversation about the best public golf in California.
Consider this the master list. If you only care about courses you can actually play, start with our guide to the best public golf courses in Los Angeles; if you want the full story behind the gated gems, we've profiled the most exclusive clubs in LA and the George C. Thomas Jr. courses that anchor this ranking.
1. Riviera Country Club
The best course in Los Angeles is also one of the most storied in America. George C. Thomas Jr.'s 1926 masterpiece in Pacific Palisades — Hogan's Alley — has hosted a U.S. Open, two PGA Championships, and more than sixty editions of the Los Angeles Open, and it remains the annual home of the Genesis Invitational with the 2028 Olympic golf competition on the calendar. The par-71, 7,322-yard routing is a masterclass in strategy: the bunker-in-the-green par-3 6th, the drivable 10th, and the amphitheater 18th are studied by architects the world over. Private, and worth every favor you can call in.
2. Los Angeles Country Club (North Course)
Hidden between Beverly Hills and Century City, the North Course is Thomas's biggest and boldest LA canvas — a par-70 stretching 7,421 yards, slashed by native barrancas and sand-scarred bunkers. Gil Hanse's 2010 restoration reclaimed the 1928 design's rugged character, and the 2023 U.S. Open — won by Wyndham Clark at the club's first men's major — confirmed what architecture obsessives had argued for years: this is one of the finest championship layouts in the country. Strictly private.
3. Bel-Air Country Club
No routing in American golf moves like Bel-Air's. To connect holes stranded in separate ravines above Bel Air, Thomas and builder William P. Bell drilled tunnels through ridges, spanned barrancas with bridges, and installed an elevator in the hillside beneath the clubhouse — all in service of a 1926 par-70 whose famous Swinging Bridge carries you to the par-3 10th. A 2018 Tom Doak restoration revived Thomas's original ideas, and the Hollywood membership remains as legendary as the architecture.
4. Wilshire Country Club
Wilshire is proof you don't need acreage to build greatness. Norman Macbeth threaded this 1919 Golden Age gem across a compact 104-acre parcel in Hancock Park, using a meandering barranca that comes into play on more than half the holes — and its quartet of par 3s is celebrated by golf-architecture writers as a study in variety. A 2008 Kyle Phillips restoration brought back the jagged, natural bunkering Macbeth admired after playing Cypress Point, and the LPGA's LA Open called it home from 2018 to 2022.
5. Hillcrest Country Club
Founded in 1920 as LA's first Jewish country club when the city's other elite clubs excluded Jewish members, Hillcrest became the social home of Hollywood's comedians — Jack Benny, George Burns, and the Marx Brothers held court at its famous Round Table. The golf matters too: the original Willie Watson course hosted the 1929 PGA Championship, and a comprehensive 2019 rebuild by Kyle Phillips turned it into a modern 7,005-yard championship test framed by the towers of Century City.
6. Rustic Canyon Golf Course
The best golf course in greater Los Angeles that anyone can play. Gil Hanse, Jim Wagner, and Geoff Shackelford moved almost no earth building this 2002 minimalist landmark on the floor of Happy Camp Canyon in Moorpark, drawing openly on George Thomas's strategic ideas — and Golf Magazine now ranks it among the Top 100 courses you can play in America. Firm turf, huge contoured greens, a par of 72 at 7,044 yards, and a daily-fee price that makes it the single best value in Southern California golf.
7. Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles
Whatever you think of the name on the gate, no public course in LA County can match the setting: all 18 holes stare out at the Pacific from the bluffs of Rancho Palos Verdes. Originally a Pete Dye routing later reworked by Tom Fazio, the course reopened in 2006 after a bluff-stabilizing rebuild reportedly costing around $264 million — often cited as the most expensive course ever constructed. At 7,242 yards with a 74.6 rating and 144 slope in the ocean wind, it's as stern as it is scenic, and it's bookable by anyone.
8. Angeles National Golf Club
The only Nicklaus Signature course in Los Angeles County, Angeles National opened in 2004 at the mouth of Big Tujunga Canyon, framed by the San Gabriel Mountains at the edge of the Angeles National Forest. Two lakes, a winding creek, and more than fifty bunkers give the daily-fee layout genuine teeth — a 74.7 rating and 143 slope from the 7,141-yard back tees — and the fast bentgrass greens demand your best approach play.
9. Palos Verdes Golf Club
The Thomas–Bell partnership behind Riviera and Bel-Air also built this 1924 charmer on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, where fourteen of the eighteen holes offer Pacific views. It's the duo's philosophy in miniature — 6,433 yards, par 71, small well-bunkered greens, barrancas cutting the routing — and a 2013 renovation removed hundreds of trees to reopen the ocean vistas. The LPGA arrived in 2022 with the inaugural Palos Verdes Championship, confirming the little course's big pedigree.
10. Rancho Park Golf Course
Every list of LA's best should end at its beating heart: one of the busiest municipal courses in America, a William P. Bell design that opened in Cheviot Hills in 1949 and hosted the Los Angeles Open for the better part of two decades. Arnold Palmer carded a famous 12 on the 18th here in 1961 — there's a plaque — then won three LA Opens on the same course. Tree-lined, par 71, 6,839 yards, and city-owned: no course in America offers more history per dollar.
How to Pick Your Course
If an invitation to Riviera, LACC, or Bel-Air ever materializes, cancel whatever you had planned — those three are bucket-list golf, full stop. For the rest of us, the choice is happily simple: play Rustic Canyon for the architecture, Trump National for the ocean drama, Angeles National for a Nicklaus test in the mountains, and Rancho Park for a round steeped in LA Open history at a municipal price.
From here, go deeper: rank yourself against the hardest courses in Los Angeles, tour the city's oldest courses, or keep it cheap with the best municipal golf courses in LA.