The Bay Area Golf Report

What golf costs: by region, hour & course

The price picture is fixed as a citable snapshot — 35,385 bookable tee times at 119 public courses, collected July 5, 2026 straight from the booking systems the courses use. Not rack rates: the real prices you could book.

• The median 18-hole round costs $57 across 119 public courses — but the spread is enormous, from $14 to $445. The priciest bookable round (Pasatiempo Golf Club, $445) costs about 26× the cheapest (Diablo Creek Golf Course, $17).
• Time of day moves prices more than anything else — the median peaks at $72 mid-morning and slides to $37 by 7pm.
• Twilight is the biggest discount in golf: at the same course, afternoon slots run a median 35% below morning rates.
• Geography is destiny: the median round in Lake Tahoe ($139) costs 3.1× the median in Sacramento ($45).

Median 18-hole price by region

Lake Tahoe's resort courses top the table and the coastal counties carry the famous-name premium. The value belt runs inland: Sacramento, Napa's municipal side, and the North Bay all post medians under $50.

Median price of an 18-hole tee time, July 6–11, 2026.

The shape of a golf day: price by hour

Prices climb to a mid-morning peak, hold through lunch, then fall off a cliff after 2pm as twilight rates kick in. The 7pm median is roughly half the 8am median.

Median 18-hole price by start hour, all courses pooled, July 6–11, 2026.

The biggest twilight discounts

Comparing each course against itself — median afternoon (3pm-on) vs. median morning (7–11am) — the median course discounts twilight 35%. These discount hardest:

Among 85 courses with enough inventory in both windows. Live afternoon availability on our deals feed below.

What Saturday actually costs

Same course, same morning hours (7–11am), different day: the median course charges 25% more on Saturday than midweek. 3 of 39 charge no premium at all; these raise weekend rates the most:

Morning-to-morning comparison; 39 courses had enough inventory in both windows.

The cheapest rounds in the Bay Area

Median bookable price across the whole week — everyday rates, not one-off deals (for live markdowns, see the deals feed):

Browse short courses on the 9-hole and par-3 pages.

Best value: most course per dollar

The cheapest round isn't the best value — a flat muni at $30 and a championship layout at $55 aren't the same purchase. So we rank courses by how much course you get per dollar: USGA course rating (an objective measure of the golf itself) against live median 18-hole price. Deliberately not a cheapest list. Diablo Creek Golf Course tops it — a 73.3 rating for a $17 median round.

Bar length = value score (higher is better value). The bold number is the score; the smaller grey figure is that course's median green fee. Full ratings in the table below.

Value = USGA course rating ÷ median 18-hole price × 10 ("rating points per $10"). Top 20 of 80 scored courses.

Hardest tee times to book this weekend

Live snapshot as of July 8 at 7:36 PM PT · weekend of Sat, Jul 11 & Sun, Jul 12 · books up as the week goes on

Every public course we track, ranked by how little prime weekend inventory is left — bookable 18-hole slots 7–11am on Sat, Jul 11 & Sun, Jul 12, the window everyone wants. Shorter list, harder to get on. Callippe Preserve Golf Course is tightest right now with just 1 slot left; 22 of 83 courses are down to three or fewer.

Scarcest 20 of 83 courses with weekend prime inventory. This is a remaining-availability proxy, not a fill rate — see methodology.

Deals right now

Live snapshot as of July 8 at 7:36 PM PT · same-day & twilight slots · changes every scrape

The best-priced tee times on the board — same-day and twilight (3pm+) 18-hole slots priced at least 15% below what each course normally charges this week. Compared against each course's own median, so a "deal" here is a genuine markdown, not just a cheap course. Biggest right now: −67% at Half Moon Bay - Ocean Course. Updates with every scrape.

Each course's biggest live markdown — 25 of 83 courses with a deal (6,869 qualifying slots). Availability changes constantly; a slot may be gone by the time you click.