Where to play golf around Las Vegas? We rank the best public courses

Ready to make a break from the casinos or hectic pace of the Las Vegas Strip? If you’re looking for the top golf courses around Sin City, Golfweek’s Best has you covered.

If you’re willing to drive a bit, there are several courses in this region that appear on the Golfweek’s Best rankings of top public-access layouts in Nevada. All the courses listed below are within an hour’s drive of Harry Reid International Airport, which sits adjacent to the Strip. But it’s not as easy as pulling up our state-by-state rankings, which list Nevada courses that might be a considerable drive away.

For this exercise, we used Google Maps and punched in each course as of a regular Saturday morning to determine drive times. Keep in mind that traffic near Las Vegas, especially around the Strip, can be slow – take all these times with a grain of salt.

Included with this list is a general map of where to find all these courses. Each one on the list below is represented with a number on the map – keep scrolling to see the numbers.

Included with each course is its position in Nevada on the Golfweek’s Best public-access list. For any course that appears on our other popular rankings lists, those positions are included as well.

A little background: The hundreds of members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them on 10 criteria on a points basis of 1 through 10. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings are averaged to produce all our Golfweek’s Best course rankings.

The courses on this list allow public access in some fashion, be it standard daily green fees, through a resort or casino, or by staying at an affiliated hotel. If there’s a will, there’s a tee time – no membership required.

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Shadow Creek in Nevada (Photo by Kelvin Kuo-USA Today Sports)

Where: North Las Vegas
State ranking 2023: No. 1 public-access in Nevada; No. 13 modern course in U.S.; No. 1 casino course in U.S.; No 8 public-access course in U.S.; No. 8 resort course in U.S.
Designer: Tom Fazio
Distance: 25 minutes north of Harry Reid International Airport

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Cascata in Nevada (Courtesy of Cascata)

Where: Boulder City
State ranking 2023: No. 2 public-access in Nevada; tied for No. 159 modern course in U.S.; No. 56 public-access course in U.S.; No. 42 resort course in…