Margate has one operating golf course inside its city limits: Oriole Golf Club, an 18-hole, semi-private course that’s open to the public. Older roundups still list two or three more, but Carolina Golf Club and Margate Executive Golf Course have both closed. Widen the radius to about 15 minutes and you pick up a handful of real options, including two public layouts at Colony West in Tamarac. This guide covers the best golf courses in Margate, FL and the ones just outside it, sorted by how far you have to drive, and says plainly which a visitor can get on.
The Three Drive-Time Rings of Margate Golf
Margate covers about 9 square miles between Coral Springs, Coconut Creek and North Lauderdale, with 30 miles of canals running through it and the Atlantic 7.5 miles east (City of Margate). It’s an older city by South Florida standards: at the 2020 Census the median age was 44.3 and 21.5% of residents were 65 or older, according to Margate’s Census profile, and that’s a lot of weekday golfers. Our guide to moving to Margate covers the neighborhoods in more depth.
Past the city line the rings are simple. Within 15 minutes you’re in Coral Springs, Tamarac and western Pompano Beach. Allow 20 to 30 minutes for coastal Pompano Beach, Plantation and Deerfield Beach. None of it’s walkable from anywhere you’d stay, so plan on driving, and if golf is only part of the trip, the rest of the city sits in our things to do in Margate guide.
Golf Inside the Margate City Limits
Oriole is the one course left in Margate, and it doesn’t require a membership to book a tee time. The count used to be higher, which is why old directories still confuse people, and the closures are covered below so you don’t drive to a construction site.
Oriole Golf Club: Small Greens and a Grass Range
Oriole Golf Club at 8000 Margate Boulevard is an 18-hole Bill Dietsch design that opened in 1971 and describes itself as semi-private but open to the public (Oriole Golf Club). The tee shots are fairly open, so the difficulty lives in the greens, which the club calls small targets with quite a bit of movement. It’s playable for beginners and intermediate golfers and still demanding when the greens run fast. Members can get preference on busy days, so a weekday morning is the reliable window for a visitor, and the grass driving range is the reason locals warm up here instead of elsewhere. There’s a restaurant and lounge on site, weekday afternoon point games for social players, and tee times book online or at 954-972-8140.
The Courses Margate Lost
Carolina Golf Club on Rock Island Road closed several years ago, and its site has a mixed-use redevelopment in the approval process, as Florida YIMBY reported. The nine-hole Margate Executive Golf Course closed for good on August 29, 2021, and the land is becoming townhomes (PGA.com). Eagle Lakes, a third name that still turns up on aggregator sites, has been closed since 2004 (GolfPass). If a booking site offers you a tee time at any of the three, it isn’t real.
Courses Within About 15 Minutes
Four more golf clubs sit roughly 15 minutes from Margate, and they’re where local players go when Oriole is booked out. Colony West takes public play as a matter of course. The others are semi-private or partly private, which around here means guest access depends on the day and on how full the tee sheet already is.
Country Club of Coral Springs: Practice Area and Early Hours
The Country Club of Coral Springs at 10800 W Sample Road is a semi-private, 18-hole championship course that bills its greens as some of the best in South Florida, with a secluded driving range, a short game area and a practice putting green (Country Club of Coral Springs). The course and shop run 7 a.m. to dusk and the restaurant closes at 6 p.m., so a late round doesn’t end with dinner. It’s worth booking a few days out from January onward.
Colony West Golf Club: Two Public Courses in Tamarac
Colony West Golf Club at 6850 NW 88th Avenue in Tamarac puts two public courses on one site: the 18-hole Championship course, with strategic bunkering and well-kept greens, and the par-64 Glades executive course for something quicker and gentler (Colony West Golf Club). You can book direct with no booking fee, and children under 17 play free with a paying adult after 3 p.m. (Colony West Golf Club), which makes this the best-value family golf anywhere near Margate. The Glades is also the nearest short course now that Margate Executive is gone. The View restaurant handles the food side.
Palm-Aire Country Club: Three Courses in Pompano Beach
Palm-Aire Country Club in Pompano Beach runs the Oaks, Cypress and Palms courses, the widest single-site choice in the area after Colony West. All three sell public daily-fee tee times alongside the memberships, and rates and online booking sit on the club’s daily-fee page, so check it before you drive over. Club Wyndham Palm-Aire sits nearby, which is the closest thing the area has to a stay-and-play setup; the rest of the lodging picture is in our Margate hotels guide.
Woodmont Country Club: Call Before You Drive
Woodmont Country Club in Tamarac has been renovating its golf in stages. It runs 27 holes, 18 of them fully renovated, with the final nine scheduled for renovation during 2026, according to Woodmont Country Club. Access for non-members depends on the day and the tee sheet, so a phone call is the difference between a round and a wasted trip, and it’s also how you find out which nine is open. One practical warning: a Woodmont Country Club in Maryland shares the name, and it’s easy to end up reading the wrong club’s tee sheet online.
Courses Worth the Longer Drive
Four courses justify 20 to 30 minutes in the car, and one of them is only just coming back from a renovation. Order the drive by what you want from the day: a step up in difficulty, a municipal 36, or a full day at a semi-private club.
Eagle Trace Golf Club: Tournament History in Coral Springs
Eagle Trace Golf Club at 1111 Eagle Trace Boulevard in Coral Springs, about 20 minutes out, is an Arthur Hills design that hosted the Honda Classic from 1984 to 1991 and again in 1996, per Eagle Trace’s history. It’s a semi-private ClubLink club, so ring the shop about guest access before you build a day around it. Treat Eagle Trace as the step up from a weekday round at Oriole, not as a casual fill-in when the closer courses are full.
Pompano Beach Golf Club: The Municipal 36
Pompano Beach Golf Club at 1801 NE 6th Street, about 25 minutes east, is the public answer to a full day. The city runs two 18-hole courses there: the Greg Norman Signature Pines, a par 72 of more than 7,100 yards, and the Palms, a par 71 of about 6,280 yards that’s been a local favorite for more than 50 years (City of Pompano Beach). Tee times book online, and Galuppi’s Restaurant sits on site for the round afterward.
Jacaranda Golf Club: 36 Holes in Plantation
Jacaranda Golf Club at 9200 West Broward Boulevard in Plantation is the one that repays a real drive, about 30 minutes south, with 36 holes across two championship courses: the longer East and the shorter West, which the club says is no less challenging (Jacaranda Golf Club). It’s semi-private and has dining on site. The pro shop runs 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. seven days a week and tee times book online. Save it for a day when you want golf to be the whole plan.
Deer Creek Golf Club: Reopening After Its Renovation
Deer Creek Golf Club in Deerfield Beach is an Arthur Hills design that takes public play with no membership required. The course closed in spring 2026 for a full renovation, including rebuilt greens and new fairway grass, and the club has set its grand reopening for October 1, 2026 (Deer Creek Golf Club). The driving range and dining stayed open through the work. Plenty of older roundups still describe the pre-renovation course, so check the new layout details on the club’s site before you book.
Heat, Rain and When to Actually Tee Off
The comfortable golf window in Margate runs November through May. NOAA’s 1991 to 2020 normals put January at an average high of 76°F and August at 91°F with overnight lows near 77°F (HistoricalClimate). From June through September the only sensible tee time is the first one on the sheet.
Rain decides more rounds here than heat does. Margate takes about 56 inches a year and September is the wettest month at 8.13 inches. Atlantic hurricane season runs June 1 to November 30 with a peak on September 10 (NOAA National Hurricane Center). Summer thunderstorms build fast in the afternoon and clear a course faster, so treat a morning start as the plan and the afternoon as a bonus. Month-by-month detail sits in our guide to the best time to visit Margate.
Tee sheets tighten from January through April, when Broward County fills with seasonal residents, and that’s the stretch to book Oriole and the Country Club of Coral Springs several days ahead instead of turning up. Humidity is the other year-round tax on equipment. Climate-controlled storage in Margate is where plenty of local players keep a spare set, because leather grips and headcovers don’t survive a South Florida garage in August in any recognizable condition.
Walking gets much harder once the heat arrives, so budget for a cart from May onward. Snowbirds have the opposite problem in April: clubs, a pull cart and a pair of shoes need somewhere to sit for six months. A 5×5 storage locker, about the size of a small closet, takes that kind of seasonal gear, and a 5×10 unit holds the contents of one room, including the patio furniture that has to come in before the first named storm anyway.
Where Margate Golfers Keep the Rest of Their Gear
Golf gear in Margate is seasonal in a way it never is up north, and so is half of what lives in a Florida garage. Value Store It’s Margate storage facility rents month-to-month with no long-term contract. Sizes step up from a 5×15 unit, about a large walk-in closet that holds the contents of two rooms, through 10×5 storage units for a furnished bedroom and the 10×10 unit, which holds a one-bedroom apartment. A 10×15 space fits a two-bedroom apartment mid-move, and the 10×20 and 10×30 unit hold a three-bedroom and a four-bedroom home, the sizes people take when a seasonal home gets emptied. If the size question stalls you, the storage size guide settles it in a couple of minutes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the best public golf courses in Broward County, Florida?
Near Margate, the strongest public options are the Championship and Glades courses at Colony West in Tamarac and the Pines and Palms courses at Pompano Beach Golf Club. Inside Margate itself, Oriole Golf Club is semi-private but takes public play. The Country Club of Coral Springs and Jacaranda in Plantation, which carries 36 holes, are semi-private clubs that also book tee times without a membership.
How many golf courses are in Margate, Florida?
One. Oriole Golf Club is the only golf course operating inside the Margate city limits. Carolina Golf Club closed and is slated for redevelopment, Margate Executive Golf Course closed in 2021, and Eagle Lakes has been closed since 2004, though all three still turn up on aggregator directories.
Can a visitor get a tee time at Oriole Golf Club?
Yes. Oriole Golf Club is semi-private but open to public play, and tee times book online. Members can get preference on busy days, so a weekday morning is the dependable window for a visitor rather than a Saturday. The grass driving range is open too, and it’s worth arriving early for.
What are the public golf courses in Coral Springs, Florida?
The Country Club of Coral Springs on West Sample Road is the one to start with: semi-private, open to public tee times, with a driving range and a full practice area. Eagle Trace Golf Club is the other Coral Springs course of note, but it’s semi-private and guest access varies, so call the shop first. Both are inside 20 minutes of Margate.
Where can I find a map of the golf courses in Margate, FL?
Any map app will do it with the addresses. Oriole Golf Club at 8000 Margate Boulevard is the only course inside the city. Add Colony West at 6850 NW 88th Avenue in Tamarac and the Country Club of Coral Springs at 10800 W Sample Road to see the full 15-minute picture, and Pompano Beach Golf Club at 1801 NE 6th Street if you’ll drive a little farther.
Margate isn’t a golf destination the way Palm Beach is, and it doesn’t need to be. For 9 square miles it gives you one semi-private 18 that welcomes the public, and more than a dozen courses inside a 30-minute drive. Book the early tee times from June to September, call ahead at the semi-private clubs, and the rest of it takes care of itself.
