Tiering 2026 PGA Tour Venues

We’re back! It’s golf season. They can take Kapalua away from us, but they can’t stop us from recognizing this week as the official start of the golf season anyway.

Each year at this time, I publish my favorite annual exercise: grading and categorizing PGA Tour venues based on the quality of their design and how effectively each course tests professional golfers.

Before we get into this year’s tiers, my criteria for evaluating a professional golf test remain consistent:

1. Consequences for errancy – There should be some penalty for a narrow miss and a severe penalty for a wide miss. If you can’t get into any real trouble, it’s not a good test of professional golf.

2. Shot variety – Players should be required to hit more than stock high fades.

3. Ground interaction – Strategic intrigue shouldn’t evaporate once the ball hits the ground.

I should probably add a fourth criterion: variety in hole design (length, direction, style, the types of shots required, etc.). Criterion I will not be adding is ample room for tournament infrastructure so fans can buy $12 hot dogs and the pampered f***s receive TIO relief any time they miss a fairway by five yards with a 580cc driver. That standard exists solely on the PGA Tour’s report card.

Without further ado, here is the official tiering of PGA Tour venues for 2026:

Augusta National is the only staple of the professional golf schedule that satisfies all three of my criteria. Yes, I understand it isn’t really a PGA Tour venue. The scope of this exercise is limited to annual Tour stops, which means omitting three of this year’s major championship venues. If I were to tier them: Shinnecock would likely deserve its own row between the top two tiers; Aronimink would land somewhere in the middle, maybe slightly lower; and I haven’t made up my mind on Royal Birkdale just yet.

I would suggest blowing up TPC Twin Cities entirely, but doing so would endanger the lives of the thousands of suburban Minnesotans living in houses woven throughout the golf course. Those people have already been through enough, having to look out their windows at that monstrosity of a golf course every day. Also, J.J. McCarthy.

In all sincerity, the “Good Test, Ball-Knowers Know” tier represents some of the most compelling venues on the PGA Tour – four unique venues that vary stylistically and present distinct challenges. I take some heat for my affinity for TPC San Antonio, but it stands as one of the last true ass-kickers on the PGA Tour. Tune into the Valero Texas Open on a windy day if you long for when shooting par actually meant something.

Had it remained on the schedule, Kapalua would’ve likely moved from the fourth tier to the fifth tier this year. It is an outstanding, iconic golf course that would be thought of much differently if we weren’t living through the Fargiveness Era.

Doral is one of the few additions to this year’s graphic, as it is set to host the Cadillac Championship in May. It is also the golf course about which my opinion is most loosely held. My current impression is pretty negative – it’s just long and narrow with a bunch of water – but I’m open-minded and happy to adjust its position following the tournament in May.

Two Wyndham Championships ago, Trevor Immelman noted on CBS that Aaron Rai had just casually carried a bunker off the tee that nobody dreamed of challenging during Immelman’s playing days. Your Honor, Team Rollback rests its case.

If Lanny Wadkins’ renovation of TPC Craig Ranch improves the course enough for me to elevate it even just one tier, Wadkins is unquestionably the greatest living architect on planet Earth. Let him do Fields Ranch East next.

Memorial Park is a wonderful golf course. It’s a shame the Tour overseeds it in the name of Masters preparation instead of leaning into the challenge of Bermuda grass. They also now overseed PGA National, as well, though that seems more about not wanting to provide a real test to players coming off the physical ruin of playing consecutive weeks of golf on the West Coast. God forbid! As a result, Jake Knapp shoots 59 on a course that players once feared. I digress. Anyway, despite its current suboptimal presentation, Memorial Park features one of the best sets of greens on Tour and absolutely rocks when the wind kicks up.

It isn’t a recurring venue, so it escaped scrutiny in this exercise, but I regret to inform you that Bellerive is hosting the BMW Championship this year. Brian Rolapp, there’s still time to move this tournament to a serious venue.  

The last three years I’ve done this exercise, I’ve grouped Bay Hill alongside Quail Hollow, TPC Southwind, and East Lake. It’s finally where it belongs, or perhaps still too high. Bay Hill is truly just frictionless, glassy greens, thick rough, some trees, and water. Over and over. I made my first in-person visit in 2024 with low expectations, and it somehow shattered them in the wrong direction. Standing near the sixth tee, surveying the flat, banana-shaped fairway that wraps around the second of eight ponds you’ll ultimately encounter, an elderly patron turned to me and said, “Isn’t it just beautiful?” Sometimes in life, you must decide between telling someone the truth or letting them enjoy the rest of their day under the spell of blissful ignorance. Unfortunately, I am not a liar.