Booking a round at Kiawah is not the hard part. Picking which of the five courses to play is. The resort spreads five very different courses across the island, the Ocean Course tee times are gone before most people have even decided, and it is easy to burn your one marquee morning on the wrong track.
So here is the honest ranking, the same one from our reel, with who each course is actually for. Every course links straight to its live tee times on SC Tee Times, so once you know which one you want, you can see what is open and grab it before the good times disappear.
1. Ocean Course
The headliner, and it earns the top spot. Pete Dye's oceanfront layout hosted the 1991 Ryder Cup and two PGA Championships, and it routinely lands on lists of the hardest courses in the country. It is the most expensive round on the island and the one people plan an entire trip around. If you play only one Kiawah course, this is it, but go in knowing it will test every part of your game. Book it first, because its tee times are the first to vanish.
2. Osprey Point
The pick for the round you actually want to enjoy. Tom Fazio routed Osprey Point through lagoons, marsh, and live oaks, and it is both beautiful and fair, the kind of course where a decent shot gets rewarded instead of swallowed. It is the strongest of the four non-Ocean courses and the one most golfers come off smiling. If the Ocean Course is the round you survive, this is the round you remember fondly.
3. Cougar Point
A Gary Player design with long marsh and river views, renovated in 2017 to sharpen the greens and bunkering. It is scenic and very playable, a notch back from Osprey Point only because the standout holes are clustered rather than spread across the round. One thing to check before you plan around it: resort courses rotate through seasonal maintenance windows, so glance at the live page for current status if the tee sheet looks thin.
4. Turtle Point
Jack Nicklaus built Turtle Point, and its calling card is a three-hole oceanfront stretch, 14 through 16, that is as good as anything on the island outside the Ocean Course. The rest of the round plays through Lowcountry forest and is solid without being spectacular, which is why it sits fourth despite that stretch. Worth it for those three holes alone if you like a Nicklaus layout.
5. Oak Point
The value play, and the easiest to get on. Oak Point sits just off the main island on its own parcel, so you can play it without going through the resort gate, and it is the most affordable round of the five. It is the least dramatic of the group, but it is a genuinely good public course with marsh views on the back nine, and it is the smart choice when the marquee courses are booked or out of budget.
Rankings are one thing, logistics are another. Lock the Ocean Course first if it is on your list, because those tee times go well before the rest, then build the trip backward from there. If your group is mixed on budget or ability, pair the Ocean Course with Oak Point or Osprey Point so nobody is grinding through a major-championship setup they did not sign up for.
How to play more than one
Kiawah sits in the Charleston market, about 45 minutes from downtown, and a lot of golfers pair a Kiawah round or two with the public courses around the city. The trick is seeing all five Kiawah tee sheets at once instead of clicking through the resort booking flow five separate times.
The Charleston page on SC Tee Times shows every Kiawah course alongside the rest of the area's tracks, so you can scan live availability across all of them, pick your round, and book before the window closes. For the wider trip view, our guide to SC's marquee golf resorts covers Kiawah next to Sea Pines, Palmetto Dunes, Barefoot, and Legends.
See live tee times for all five Kiawah courses in one place, alongside the rest of Charleston.
Find your Kiawah tee timePrefer the quick version? Watch the rankings on Instagram.