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Golf in St. George, Utah

St. George is one of the few places in the United States where golf is a twelve-month sport, and that single fact built the local golf economy. The city sits at about 2,860 feet in the transition zone between the Mojave Desert and the Colorado Plateau — low and warm enough that the courses stay open through winter, high enough that they are playable in summer if you tee off early. Golfers drive down from Salt Lake City, fly in from Las Vegas an hour and a half away, and come across from Southern California specifically for the months when courses elsewhere are shut.

There are 14 courses in Washington County, and 12 of them take public tee times.

What makes golf here different

The geology does the work that trees and water do elsewhere. Courses in this valley are routed through three distinct kinds of ground, and most golfers notice the difference within a few holes. Navajo sandstone — the same cross-bedded red rock that forms the walls of Zion — supplies the cliffs and slickrock that frame the clifftop holes at Sand Hollow and the ledges at The Ledges. Basalt lava flows, geologically young and still sharp rather than weathered smooth, run through Black Desert, the Black Rock nine at Sunbrook and the closing stretch at Entrada; the rock is unplayable where it sits, so it punishes a genuinely bad shot while leaving the ordinary miss alone. And the river bottoms along the Santa Clara and the Virgin support the mature cottonwood canopies at Bloomington, Southgate and the Woodbridge nine at Sunbrook, which play and feel like parkland golf.

The second difference is elevation change. Several courses sit on benches a few hundred feet above the valley floor, which affects carry distance, exposes the round to wind that the town courses never feel, and keeps summer temperatures down.

The courses

Resort courses

Attached to a resort and open to the public as well as to staying guests. These are the destination rounds visitors plan a trip around.

Public daily-fee courses

Privately owned but open to anyone who books a tee time, with no membership and no resort stay required.

Municipal courses

Owned and operated by St. George, Washington City or Hurricane, and open to public play. This is the backbone of everyday golf in the county and the reason a resident can play year round without a membership.

Semi-private courses

Privately owned and centered on a member community, but selling public tee times alongside member play.

Private clubs

Members and their guests only. Both are long-established and neither can be booked as a visitor without an invitation.

Compare all 14 courses side by side → — par, yardage, course and slope rating, architect and access in one table.

Tournament golf

Washington County reached the top level of professional golf recently and quickly. Black Desert Resort in Ivins, Tom Weiskopf's final design, hosted a PGA Tour event in 2024 as the Black Desert Championship and again in 2025 as the Bank of Utah Championship, and staged the LPGA's inaugural Black Desert Championship in May 2025. Copper Rock in Hurricane hosts the Copper Rock Championship on the LPGA's Epson Tour, the developmental circuit that feeds the LPGA, each spring. A recurring professional date is a useful signal for a visiting golfer, because it implies agronomy and conditioning maintained to a standard the scorecard cannot show.

When to come

Spring and autumn are peak season, and tee sheets and lodging both reflect it. Winter is the reason most out-of-state golfers come: courses stay open, the crowds thin, and a round here in January is a genuine novelty for anyone driving down from northern Utah. Summer is early-morning golf, and the elevated courses run cooler than the valley floor. Wind builds through the day on the exposed benches at Sand Hollow, Sky Mountain and The Ledges, so a morning tee time is a scoring decision rather than only a comfort one.

Planning a golf trip

The marquee courses sit at opposite ends of the valley — Black Desert and Entrada northwest in Ivins, Sand Hollow and Copper Rock east in Hurricane — so where you base yourself decides how much of the week you spend driving.

Read the St. George golf vacation guide for stay-and-play planning, or start with the courses comparison.

Golf guides