THE BEST STATES FOR A GOLF VACATION

We pride ourselves on knowing what our customers care about. And while we’d hope that most golfers would spend a golf shopping spree on a new set of clubs, it turns out that 38 percent of respondents would go on a golf vacation, if given a few thousand dollars to splurge.

So, where would they go?

Well, we don’t know. Unfortunately, the surveyors didn’t ask that question — but we can tell you where you should go to get the most bang for your buck, based off of the cost of the trip, the climate, how crowded the courses are, and of course how good the courses are.

So in the event that you’re ever given $3,000 to spend on a golf trip (the amount from the survey), we went ahead and pulled data from half a dozen sources to objectively rate each state by which ones are the best states for a golf getaway.

That’s right, a data-focused review without a “golfiness” score or personal opinions. Here are your top ten:

Rank
State
Cost Rank
Course Rank
Weather Rank

1
Kansas
2
19
7

2
Minnesota
1
13
20

3
Florida
27
2
12

4
California
41
1
6

5
North Carolina
18
6
19

6
Iowa
6
3
24

7
Arizona
35
11
1

8
Wisconsin
3
5
32

9
Idaho
14
28
9

10
Michigan
15
20
17

We go into detail about our methodology and rankings in the next section; if your state isn’t in the top ten, you can see the full chart with all of the ranking categories further down to find where you should spend your next tax refund.

And we also have a little callout to the worst states for a golf trip too.

How we objectively chose the best states for a golf trip

We wanted to come up with a metric that looked at what you’d actually care about when you decide to secure that green time and book that flight: the cost of the trip and the likelihood that you would actually enjoy your time on the links.

We selected nine factors and gave them a multiplier of one, two, or three dependent upon how important we thought they’d be to a person booking a trip. We gave factors affecting the cost the most value :

• Average cost of green fees, from the Economic Census
• Cost of roundtrip flights to the state
• Number of 100 best public courses in each state
• Number of days with no rain

Less value went to things we thought would affect your playing, such how crowded the course would be and, again, the weather:

• Hours of sunshine
• Total number of courses in each state
• Number of courses per capita

The least value went to how easy it would be to pick up equipment and souvenirs:

• Golf stores per capita
• What percentage of their sales were for golf products

Less value went to things we thought would affect your playing, such how crowded the course would be and, again, the weather:The least value went to how easy it would be to pick up equipment and souvenirs:

So, we didn’t really care about things like how many pro golfers come from the state, how many top 100 private courses there are, or even how many sets of clubs we ship to a given state.

And of course, no “golfiness” score based off of how much we at Carl’s associate a given state with golf.

But first, a special shout-out to Michigan

Number of top ten public courses: 5

Course number rank: 4

Tenth place in this ranking isn’t too shabby, but there should be an asterisk next to the Wolverine State. You see, the state of Michigan doesn’t provide Economic Census data, for some reason, and to combat bias we placed it in last place for all of the categories it didn’t provide.

In spite of the artificially low rankings from lack of data, Michigan’s massive golf community enjoys some of the finest courses in the country and significantly cooler summer weather, making it worth some special attention for anyone looking to take a golf vacation this year.

1. Kansas

Round-trip flight cost: $279

Green fee rank: 7

Did anyone see this one coming?

Kansas gets a big boost from having the cheapest round-trip flights in the country and the seventh cheapest green fees, but it also fairs pretty well in every other category (except top public courses).The weather’s good, the courses are plentiful, and you can afford to play pretty much anywhere.

2. Minnesota

Courses per capita: 5,271

Round-trip flight rank: 5

Even though it doesn’t rank high on many sites’ “golfiness” metrics (and we don’t use one at all), Minnesota has a high one on paper. With three top public courses, tons of golf stores, and a surprisingly high number of courses, Minnesota also benefits from low cost flights and green fees.

3. Florida

Number of courses: 1.024

Green fees rank: 45

It’s no surprise to see Florida on this list, even though you might be surprised that it’s not number one or two. It’s got powerful rankings in every category except for the cost to play in its thousand-plus courses and five top 100 public courses.

4. California

Clear days each year: 146

People-to-courses rank: 4

Take what I said about Florida and you basically have the same story for California. Not only does it have beautiful weather and the fourth most top 100 public courses, but it also has a massive number of courses and enough flights to keep costs surprisingly low. But supply and demand doesn’t seem to affect the amount it charges for green fees.

5. North Carolina

Number of top 100 public courses: 7

Course number rank: 9

The Land of the Pine and home of Pinehurst is host to a surprisingly strong nexus of golf, with mountain courses only a three-hour drive from beach courses. North Carolina made it into the top five by performing fairly well in every category and pretty well in quite a few.

What it takes to be a great state for a golf vacation

For starters, you’ll see the the states in the top ten for golf vacations were generally in the top ten in at least two categories.

Notably, only one of the usual golf powerhouses of California, Florida, and Arizona in the top three of this ranking, with super-cheap travel and green fee costs boosting several states in the Midwest into our rankings.

And the opposite is true when we look at the states that make up the worst states for golf vacations.

these states rank pretty badly across the board, and with the exception of Vermont the main culprit seems to be expensive flights and bad weather most of the year being the factors that clinch it.

Complete rankings for the best states for a golf getaway

Rank
State
Cost Rank
Course Rank
Weather Rank

1
Kansas
2
19
7

2
Minnesota
1
13
20

3
Florida
27
2
12

4
California
41
1
6

5
North Carolina
18
6
19

6
Iowa
6
3
24

7
Arizona
35
11
1

8
Wisconsin
3
5
32

9
Idaho
14
28
9

10
Michigan
15
20
17

11
Nebraska
5
4
43

12
Colorado
37
16
4

13
South Carolina
17
38
16

14
Virginia
25
27
15

15
Arkansas
31
15
14

16
Georgia
40
10
13

17
Illinois
23
8
36

18
Indiana
12
7
42

19
Kentucky
7
17
38

20
Massachusetts
20
23
29

21
Hawaii
32
29
23

22
Wyoming
4
50
11

23
Missouri
29
25
22

24
Nevada
45
37
2

25
South Dakota
13
41
18

26
Connecticut
19
22
41

27
Maine
21
24
34

28
Mississippi
36
18
21

29
Ohio
11
21
45

30
Oregon
24
14
44

31
Oklahoma
43
40
5

32
New Hampshire
10
44
40

33
Delaware
26
33
30

34
Pennsylvania
28
26
37

35
North Dakota
16
39
27

36
Rhode Island
9
49
31

37
Texas
49
31
10

38
Alabama
44
12
28

39
New York
33
9
47

40
New Mexico
47
47
3

41
Montana
30
42
35

42
Utah
39
46
8

43
Maryland
48
32
26

44
Louisiana
46
30
25

45
Tennessee
38
35
33

46
Vermont
8
48
46

47
New Jersey
42
34
39

48
Washington
34
36
49

49
West Virginia
22
45
48

50
Alaska
50
43
50