A step by step guide to planning the best golf trip
Most golf trips go sideways before anyone books a flight. The group picks dates, books a house, and then discovers that the course everyone wanted to play fills up months in advance and has been sold out since January. The tee times are gone. The trip is fine, but it isn't the trip.
The fix is straightforward: build a golf trip backward. Start with tee time availability at your target courses. Everything else — flights, lodging, side activities — fits around that anchor. It takes one extra step at the beginning and saves the frustration that ruins otherwise excellent trips.
Step 1: Choose Your Destination
The destination shapes every other decision, so think carefully before committing. The questions that matter most aren't about logistics — they're about what kind of trip your group actually wants.
Are you chasing elite course architecture, or is this a volume play? Bandon Dunes and Pinehurst are trips built around a small number of extraordinary courses. Myrtle Beach is built around playing as much golf as possible at accessible prices. Neither is wrong, but they are different trips, and the wrong choice for your group will produce complaints by day two.
Are you walking or riding? Several of the best destinations in the country — Bandon Dunes, Erin Hills, Arcadia Bluffs — require or strongly encourage walking. If half your group needs a cart, plan around it before you're standing on the first tee.
What's the off-course situation? Pure golf destinations like Bandon or Sand Valley have minimal nightlife. That's a feature for some groups and a dealbreaker for others. If your crew wants real restaurants and a bar scene after the round, Scottsdale, Myrtle Beach, and Las Vegas deliver. Bandon does not.
GTI's full trip rankings are organized by overall score, but filtering by cost tier, region, and stay type makes it easy to narrow to destinations that fit your group's specific criteria. Start there before you start a group text.
Step 2: Set a Realistic Budget
Golf trips have a well-documented budget creep problem. The initial estimate covers green fees and lodging. The final bill includes flights, rental cars, range balls, halfway house stops, dinner every night, the caddie you didn't plan on, and the extra round someone booked because the conditions were perfect.
Build the budget in five buckets: green fees, lodging, travel (flights, rental car), food and drinks, and incidentals (tips, range fees, anything that isn't golf). Then add 15 percent to whatever you come up with, because the first four buckets are always underestimated.
A rough framework for three to four days, excluding flights:
Budget tier ($700–$1,100/person): Myrtle Beach, the RTJ Golf Trail, Michigan in shoulder season. Championship-quality golf at accessible prices. You're sacrificing brand recognition and resort amenities, not course quality.
Mid-tier ($1,200–$1,800/person): Pinehurst, Scottsdale, Arcadia Bluffs in September. Excellent courses, strong resort experience, reasonable total cost with smart timing.
Premium ($2,000–$3,000/person): Sand Valley peak season, Kohler, Sea Island. Full resort experience at world-class destinations.
Bucket list ($3,000+/person): Bandon Dunes, Pebble Beach. The courses justify the cost; budget accordingly and don't try to do these on the cheap.
GTI's cost tier rating on each trip page reflects the realistic all-in estimate — not just the green fee. Use it as your starting calibration.
Step 3: Check Tee Time Availability Before Booking Flights
This is the single most important step, and the one most groups skip. Book tee times before flights. The tee times are the trip. Everything else is logistics.
Booking windows vary enormously by destination, and misunderstanding them is how you end up scrambling for backup options.
Bandon Dunes: Opens 12 to 24 months out depending on the course and season. Peak months (June through September) on the most sought-after courses — Pacific Dunes, Old Macdonald — fill quickly after the window opens. If you want a summer Bandon trip, you should be thinking about it a year to two years ahead. Off-peak (October through May) has considerably more flexibility, and the courses are excellent in those months.
Pinehurst: Pinehurst No. 2 requires a resort stay to access. Book the resort package — which locks in both the lodging and the No. 2 tee time — six to nine months out for spring peak (March through May). Fall is more forgiving.
Sand Valley: Tee times open 12 months out. Summer weekends on Mammoth Dunes and The Lido fill steadily from the moment the window opens. Shoulder season (October, early May) opens up considerably and cuts green fees by 25 to 35 percent.
Arcadia Bluffs: The Bluffs Course in July and August fills four to six months out. September and October still offer great conditions with less competition for tee times.
Scottsdale: The most bookable major destination on this list. Most courses open 30 to 90 days out, though TPC Scottsdale's Stadium Course and Troon North fill faster during peak season (January through April).
The booking rules for every GTI-ranked destination are listed in the "How to Book" section on each trip page. Check there before assuming you can book whenever.
Step 4: Book in the Right Order
The sequence matters. Most people book flights first because flights feel like the anchor. They aren't.
First: tee times. Confirm availability at your must-play courses. If the courses you want are sold out on your intended dates, shifting a week earlier or later often opens things up. Do this before anything else is locked in.
Second: lodging. Once tee times are confirmed, book lodging that makes sense around them. At resort destinations — Bandon, Pinehurst, Sand Valley — staying on-property is usually the right call. The experience is different, access to courses is sometimes better, and the convenience of walking from your room to the first tee is real. At destinations with many courses spread across a region (Scottsdale, Myrtle Beach), staying off-property in a vacation rental often saves significant money with minimal sacrifice.
Third: flights. Flights are the most flexible element of the trip. Book them after everything else is confirmed. For most domestic golf destinations, two to three months out gets you reasonable fares. Flying into the closest regional airport — rather than a major hub and driving two hours — is often worth the price premium on a multi-day trip.
Step 5: Build the Itinerary Without Over-Scheduling
The most common itinerary mistake is too much golf. Two rounds a day sounds great in a group text in February. It is not great by day two of an actual trip when everyone's back is tight and the group wants to sit down for dinner before 10 PM.
The right framework: one round per day, with a second optional round for anyone who wants it. On a four-day trip, schedule three rounds and leave the fourth day flexible. The flexible day usually becomes the best day — a spontaneous second round somewhere, an afternoon on the patio, dinner at a place you'd have missed if you'd been grinding on a course.
A few more things that make itineraries work:
Don't put the marquee course on day one. Everyone is traveling, tired, and hasn't found their swing yet. Save the course everyone really wants to play for day two, when the group is settled.
Morning tee times have better conditions. Greens are faster, the course is quieter, and you're done by early afternoon with the whole day ahead. At links-style coastal courses, mornings often have less wind. The exception: Arizona and desert destinations in fall, where afternoon tee times let the heat break.
Scramble or team formats keep mixed groups together. If skill levels vary — and they always do — a scramble means the group is actually playing together rather than grinding in silence on their own ball. This matters especially for bachelor parties and first golf trips.
Step 6: Pack for the Destination
One decision before everything else: are you flying with your clubs or shipping them?
Shipping wins on itineraries with multiple stops or when flying through smaller regional airports. Services like Ship Sticks can get clubs to the resort two to three days ahead of you for $80–$150 each way. For most people, that cost is worth avoiding the airport checked-bag process with a hard case.
Flying with your clubs is fine for straightforward point-to-point trips. Most airlines charge $35–$75 per bag each way. A soft travel cover works for most destinations; a hard case is worth it for Bandon (the checked-bag carousel at Coos Bay is not gentle) and for anyone traveling with expensive equipment.
What to pack varies by destination:
Coastal links (Bandon, Arcadia Bluffs, Whistling Straits): A serious rain jacket and waterproof shoes are non-negotiable. Wind vests and base layers even in summer. Bring more balls than you think you need — links courses punish offline shots in ways parkland courses don't.
Desert (Scottsdale, Las Vegas, Palm Springs): Sun protection is the priority. Two pairs of golf gloves. Light, breathable shirts. Dehydration on a desert course hits faster than you expect.
Southeast resort (Pinehurst, Sea Island, Kiawah): Standard resort golf packing. Dress codes are enforced at courses like Pinehurst No. 2: collared shirts, no cargo shorts.
One More Thing: Appoint a Trip Captain
Every golf trip needs one person who runs it. Not by committee — by one person who books everything, collects money before the trip, sends the itinerary, and makes calls when plans change.
The trip captain role is thankless and essential. Planning by group text produces missed reservations, arguments about who owes what, and someone always being surprised by the schedule. A shared document with all confirmation numbers, tee times, and addresses handles the logistics. Venmo or Splitwise handles the money. Collect deposits from everyone as soon as tee times and lodging are booked — non-refundable deposits have a remarkable effect on group commitment.
The rest of the planning — restaurants, side activities, who's playing with whom — sorts itself out once the golf is locked in. Start with the courses. Everything follows from there.
Browse GTI's full trip rankings to find where you're going, or start with the best golf trips in Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, or Oregon if you have a region in mind.