The Best Real Courses on GSPro

Why the names are all different

Real golf clubs own their names and their likenesses, and licensing them costs money that a community course designer doesn't have. So designers build the course and file the serial numbers off the name. Augusta National becomes Georgia Golf Club. Pebble Beach becomes DPC Pebble. TPC Sawgrass becomes DPC Sodgrass, which is at least an honest joke.

These are courses inspired by the real venues, not licensed recreations, and the quality varies with the designer. The good ones are startlingly close. The point for you is practical: if you search GSPro for “Augusta” you find nothing, and you'd be forgiven for thinking it isn't there.

We store both names, so searching the directory for either the real name or the sim name finds the course either way. Everything below links straight to the course page.

Major championship venues

The courses that decide the four majors, and the ones most people come looking for first:

• Georgia Golf Club: Augusta National, home of the Masters. Full walkthrough in our Masters guide.
• DPC Pebble: Pebble Beach, the clifftop US Open venue returning in 2027. See the Pebble Beach profile.
• Sovereignbyre Links: the Old Course at St Andrews. See the St Andrews profile. This one is a Patreon course.
• Pinehurst 2: Donald Ross's masterpiece and a permanent US Open site. See the Pinehurst profile.
• Oakmont CC: the hardest course in the US Open rotation, and it isn't close.
• DPC Lake Michigan: Whistling Straits, the PGA Championship and Ryder Cup venue on the Wisconsin shoreline.
• Wing Dafoot (West): Winged Foot West, where par has always been a good score.
• Torrey South: Torrey Pines South, the San Diego muni that hosts a US Open.
• Brookline CC: The Country Club, birthplace of American golf's 1913 upset.
• Olympic Club: the Lake Course, famous for its sidehill lies and its habit of breaking favorites.
• Valhalla: the Louisville PGA Championship venue.

The Open rota

British links golf is unusually well served in GSPro, and most of it is free:

• Royal Birkdale: host of the 2026 Open. Under its real name, unusually. See the Open guide.
• Carnoustie: the hardest links on the rota, and a genuinely brutal finish.
• Royal St Georges: the Open's home in Kent.
• DPC Portrush: Royal Portrush, the 2025 Open venue.
• Royal Liverpool: the Hoylake links, in its tournament layout.
• DPC County Down: Royal County Down, which a lot of people will tell you is the most beautiful course on earth.
• Prestwick: where The Open started in 1860.

PGA Tour regulars

The courses you watch on a normal tour Sunday:

• DPC Sodgrass: TPC Sawgrass and the island green. See the Sawgrass profile.
• East Lake: where the FedExCup is settled every August.
• Quail Hollow: home of the Green Mile, one of the toughest closing stretches on tour.
• Bay Hill: Arnold Palmer's course, and a proper test in the Florida wind.
• Harbour Town: tight, tree-lined, and the antidote to bomb-and-gouge golf.
• Firestone South: a long, old-school Ohio par 70.

Modern destination golf

The bucket-list resorts and the best of European golf:

• Sheep Ranch: the Bandon Dunes course with no bunkers and nine greens on the Pacific cliffs.
• Sand Valley: Wisconsin sand-hills golf, and a great one to play firm.
• Le Golf National: the Albatros course, site of the 2018 Ryder Cup and the water-lined closing holes.
• Wentworth (West): the BMW PGA venue in the Surrey heathland.
• Gleneagles: the King's Course in the Scottish highlands.

How to find them yourself

Three ways, depending on what you know:

• The inspired-by-real-courses list: every disguised course in one place, with a search box that matches both the real name and the sim name.
• The main directory search: type “Augusta” and Georgia Golf Club comes up, because we index the real name alongside the GSPro one.
• The major tournament courses list: filtered to championship venues if that's what you're after.

Once you have the sim name, search for that in the GSPro course browser and download it there. Most of these are free; a handful are Patreon-only, which the course page will tell you. Our install guide covers the whole process if a course won't show up.

Getting the settings right

A real course played on default settings is a shadow of itself. Links courses need wind or they turn into pitch-and-putt; Pinehurst needs firm greens or the crowned shapes do nothing; Sawgrass needs fast greens for the 17th to mean anything. Each of the profiles above has a settings block, and if you're still choosing hardware, our launch monitor buyer's guide compares every unit that runs GSPro.

Setting up at home

If this list has you planning a sim room, the simulator build guide prices out three complete setups. A few things earn their place in any of them:

• Hitting mats (Amazon): the one piece you touch on every single shot, so it’s worth not cheaping out.
• Impact screens (Amazon): Augusta and Pebble deserve better than a monitor in the corner.
• Practice nets (Amazon): the cheapest way to swing full-out indoors before you commit to an enclosure.

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