These cities are the best and worst for golfers, according to a new study

TPC Scottsdale aerial

Access to premium publicly-accessible courses like TPC Scottsdale helped the city of Scottsdale top a "Best Cities for Golfers" ranking.

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How satisfied are you with your hometown’s golf options? How about the weather, or ability to gain access to a professional instructor?

If you live in Orlando, chances are you feel pretty good about these things. Pasadena, Texas? Not as much.

That’s according to data compiled by LawnStarter, an online marketplace for yard-maintenance services. LawnStarter initiated the ranking as a means of marketing their love of lawn care, and to celebrate National Golf Lovers Day, which is Oct. 4th.

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Using 22 key indicators of “golfer-friendliness,” which included factors like the number of public and municipal courses available per 100,000 residents, the number of premium-access courses, equipment availability and climate, LawnStarter grouped the 22 factors into five different categories. LawnStarter then calculated a weighted score for the 200 largest U.S. cities by population in each category, then averaged the scores for each city across all categories to come up with a list of the 10 best and worst cities for golfers. In plain terms: your hometown might be great for weather but short on courses. Or overflowing with golf options but stuck in a northern clime.

Based on LawnStarter’s ranking, the top city in America for golfers is … drumroll …. Scottsdale, Arizona. No surprise there! Scottsdale topped the rankings for both public and premium course accessibility. Next on the list was Orlando, followed by Cincinnati, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Winston-Salem, N.C., Los Angeles, Savannah, Ga., Augusta, Ga., and Rochester, N.Y.

The city that fared the worst in LawnStarter’s ranking was our previously mentioned Pasadena, Texas, which has a reported population of nearly 153,000 people but ranked near the bottom in four out of five categories.

The other nine areas making up the “worst” list include Bridgeport, Conn., Warren, Mich., Miramar, Fla., Santa Clarita, Calif., Paterson, N.J., Orange, Calif., Garden Grove, Calif., Fremont, Calif., and West Valley City, Utah.

You can check out the LawnStarter’s entire ranking results and methodology here.

Golf.com Editor

As a four-year member of Columbia’s inaugural class of female varsity golfers, Jessica can out-birdie everyone on the masthead. She can out-hustle them in the office, too, where she’s primarily responsible for producing both print and online features, and overseeing major special projects, such as GOLF’s inaugural Style Is­sue, which debuted in February 2018. Her origi­nal interview series, “A Round With,” debuted in November of 2015, and appeared in both in the magazine and in video form on GOLF.com.