How many acres on average make up a regular and professional golf course?

QUESTION:
I don’t know if there’s any difference in size between any regular golf course and the ones the pros play on like any used for the PGA tournament.

Just on average, how many acres would make up a golf course? Or if there’s a difference, regular and pro?

ANSWER:

Answer by JD
You see some small ~6000 yard courses on as little as 110 acres. Anything less than that and you get too close for comfort, and even with a full 110+ you need a well routed course to effectively sit on land that small.

Merion East will host the US Open in 2013 and it’s around 150 acres, which is extremely small; they won’t be able to sell as many tickets as they would at a larger venue.

Your typical tour venue is going to be pretty large in order to accomodate all the foot traffic, concession stands, etc. What constitutes the golf course, and surrounding area, can make it difficult to say exactly what the effective acreage is (i.e., courses often use neighboring land, the driving range, a second course (if one exists), to help house all the components of running a tournament. Are you counting that in your acreage, or not?).

The largest courses in terms of acreage will not be tour courses, because the PGA Tour requires walking so the holes cannot be spread too far. You can find mountain courses, real estate courses, or poorly routed courses, that can cover 400+ acres, but you could never walk them.

A Tour event will generally fall in the middle of the scale for those reasons. Something in the low 100’s is too small (and too short) and something on the high end of the scale would be too spread out to walk.