Where to Find Tiger Woods Golf Courses

There's a long history in golf of the sport's top stars moving into the golf course design business. In 2006, Tiger Woods jumped into the field with the creation of Tiger Woods Design, his own golf course architecture firm. In 2017, the company was rebranded TGR Design ("TGR" pronounced "Tiger").

Woods' company got off to a slow start and little more than 10 years later only a handful of Tiger Woods golf courses have opened. But those early designs have drawn good reviews, and several more projects are in the works.

Just a month after announcing the creation of his golf course design company, Woods, to great fanfare, announced its first project: The Tiger Woods Dubai. Little less than a year later, a second project was announced: The Cliffs at High Carolina, in North Carolina.

Neither project ever materialized. Construction started on both, but Woods' timing was terrible. He launched TGR Design just before the 2008 financial crisis, which led to one of the slowest periods of golf course construction (and fastest periods of golf course closures) in recent history.

Both Tiger Woods Dubai and The Cliffs at High Carolina were eventually scrapped.

Woods finally got a golf course in the United States in April 2016 with the opening of Bluejack National in Montgomery, Texas, north of Houston.

Bluejack National is a private club. The golf course has drawn raves and even been called reminiscent of Augusta National Golf Club. It was named the best new private golf course of 2016 by Golf Digest.

These are the TGR Design golf course projects completed and open for play as of this writing:

• El Cardonal at Diamante in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico: TGR Design added a second, 18-hole course to the original 18 that was already there. El Cardonal opened in 2014 and was the very first Tiger Woods golf course to open. Diamante is a private resort community. Woods also designed The Oasis Short Course at Diamante.
• Bluejack National in Montgomery, Texas: Private, opened in 2016. Woods designed an 18-hole course plus a 10-hole par-3 course.
• Jack's Bay in Rock Sound, Bahamas: A 10-hole short course, with holes ranging from 70 to 165 yards. It is part of a private resort community.

These are TGR Design projects currently underway or announced, with projected completion dates if known:

• Payne's Valley at Big Cedar Lodge in the Missouri Ozarks: This will be the first public TGR Design course when it opens, which is scheduled for 2019. Woods is also designing a par-3 course for the Big Cedar Lodge resort.
• The Oasis at Diamante in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico: This layout will join Woods' El Cardonal at the private resort. Opening date not yet known.
• Trump World Golf Club Dubai in the United Arab Emirates: Private course inside a luxury, master-planned community. Expected to open in 2018.
• South Shore and Jackson Park restoration in Chicago: South Shore and Jackson Park are two old municipal golf courses in Chicago. TGR Design's restoration will combine them into one championship public golf course. The project is expected to finish in 2020.

Woods has stated multiple times in the past that his favorite golf course to play is The Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland. In a 2006 interview with the gaming site IGN, Woods said:

"St. Andrews by far is my favorite golf course in the world. It's where the game all started ... and I think the history behind St. Andrews is amazing. There is no other golf course in the world that can say that every great player who has ever played the game has played that golf course."

Another way of looking at the question of Woods' favorite golf courses is to check where he's won most often. And Woods has eight victories at Torrey Pines near San Diego, Calif.; and seven wins each at Bay Hill (Arnold Palmer's club in Florida) and Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio.