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

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