The Bridges Golf Club

Attached to the Hollywood Casino Gulf Coast in Bay St. Louis, this course opened in 2006 as the first Arnold Palmer Signature design to debut in Mississippi. Spread across roughly 600 acres of wetlands bordering the Bay of St. Louis, its defining trait is literal: players cross more than a mile of bridges to move between holes, a routing forced by the expansive marsh. The layout is water-heavy throughout, with forced carries and greens perched on the edge of hazards, and it saves its best scenery for a closing stretch that runs along the saltwater marshes of St. Louis Bay. The short par-four 17th, only about 285 yards from the back, epitomizes the risk: bunkers guard the front and water surrounds a miss. It regularly ranks among the state's better public courses.