There are around 1,000 golf courses in the state of New York ranging from municipals, state park, military, public, private, and resort courses, so this guide and map to the best public golf courses in New York will save time in traveling. New York's geography outside the New York City metropolitan area is an assortment of rugged mountains to the north into the Catskills and the Adirondacks extending to Lake Champlain and the Canadian border. The lowlands occupy a band along the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario and on to Lake Erie bordered by the Finger Lakes and the Appalachian Highlands to the south.

New York is intertwined with golf's history in the United States as home to the first public golf course in the US in 1895 at Van Cortland Park in the Bronx which is still in play today. The best public golf courses in this guide in New York State run the gamut from those public and municipal golf courses located near the NY Metropolitan area like Ferry Point, Pound Ridge, and Bethpage to those in remote and isolated, resort destinations like Atunyote and Kaluhyat at the Turning Stone Casino, Leatherstocking in Cooperstown, The Sagamore, and Saratoga National near Saratoga Springs.