Golf Course Acreage for Every Course Size and Hole Length

When somebody asks you how big a golf course is, you probably answer in yards. That answer tells part of the story, but if you want to know the size of a golf courses’ footprint, you need to know how many acres are on a golf course.

Whether you want to design your own course, build a hole or two in your backyard, or you’re just curious, we’ve got all the golf course acreage answers you need.

Before we get too deep into parsing out the acreage on 18-hole, 9-hole, Par-3, and backyard golf courses, you need a solid understanding of how big one acre really is.

To put it in terms most Americans can understand, one acre is just a little smaller than a football field. If you use the full width of a football field (53 yards), one acre runs from the back of one end zone all the way to the 20-yard line on the other side, 90 yards away. Let’s look at how many of those 90-by-53-yard pieces of land it takes to make a golf course.

Let’s start at the top end of the spectrum. Circling Raven Golf Course in Worley, Idaho, and architect Gene Bates, had the luxury of essentially unlimited land to lay out this 18-hole championship course. The sprawling track sits on 620 acres and plays to a maximum length of 7,189 yards.

About 500,000 tourists visit the Hawaiian island of Oahu each year, and if you’ve ever been one of them, and you’re reading this site, there’s a good chance you’ve noticed an intimate and inviting golf course just a couple blocks from the world-famous Waikiki strip.

Honolulu’s population density is high, and spare land is minimal, so every inch must be used efficiently. Ala Wai Golf Course (pictured at top), a flat and friendly muni, is a perfect example. The 18-hole golf course sits on just 145 acres, stretches to 6,208 yards and plays to a par of 70.

It wouldn’t be hard to make the argument that Sweetens Cove made 9-hole courses cool. The eccentric course design debuted in 2014, not long before golf’s governing bodies started pushing the “PLAY9” campaign to encourage people to squeeze in more golf. 

Whether or not either of these things influenced the other, Sweetens Cove boomed in popularity and changed the reputation of 9-hole courses.

Sweetens, however, is an outlier among 9-hole courses for many reasons. Not only do the design elements and aesthetics blow most other courses – 9- or 18-holes – out of the water, it sits on a parcel of land large enough for a full 18-hole course, and then some. King Collins Golf says the surface area of Sweetens Cove is 420 acres, far greater than most 18-hole facilities, not to mention its 9-hole peers.

The Winter Park Golf Course, known by many as the Winter Park 9, is a shining example of how great municipal golf can be. The 2559-yard layout sits on just 40 acres, but since renovations in 2016 by Keith Rhebb and Riley Johns, the course has earned a reputation as one of the best 9-holers in the country.