Mark Twain, America’s great man of letters but clearly a hapless hacker with a mashie niblick, once wrote that golf is a good walk spoilt. Well, if you are going to spoil a good walk, you may as well do it in an attractive landscape and you don’t get more breathtaking locations for golf than the courses dotted around California.

Just watch the US Open this week for one example. Winding for almost 7,000 metres across the cliffs outside San Diego, Torrey Pines is one of the state’s most picturesque courses. Or rather two of the most picturesque: it has a North Course and a South Course. This week it is Tiger Woods, Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson who get to play there, but the rest of the year it is open to the public.

You can make a reservation by telephone up to one week in advance or you can play the course with a guaranteed tee time when you stay in the Lodge. Or if you’d rather chance your luck, you can queue up overnight for a tee time. There are worse places to spend the night. But if sleeping under the stars and the lofty pines does not appeal, then there are plenty of other options on California’s “golf coast”.

More than 900 of them, in fact. From the perfectly manicured parkland courses to the wild links, from high-altitude holes to ones in the deep valleys, there is something to suit every taste and affordability. If you want to hit your drives against a mountain backdrop, head for the Lake Tahoe area, where there are 20 courses within an hour’s drive of the lake. If you like to reward a good round with a glass or three of wine, then your best bet is the north coast of California, where 18 holes of testing links golf at Bodega Harbour can be followed by some wine-tasting in Napa or Sonoma County.

Or why not stay around San Francisco Bay? There are more than 100 courses within 90 minutes’ drive, from the fun track at Crystal Springs in Burlingame to the two spectacular ocean-side links courses at Half Moon Bay or, a little farther south, The Ranch in San Jose, one of the sternest tests of a golfer’s nerves.

Continuing down the coast you find legendary courses, such as Pebble Beach, one of the most famous places to play golf outside of Scotland, or Poppy Hills, one of the hosts for the PGA Tour’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Maybe you have brought the family with you. If so, why not let them explore Disneyland while you go in search of your own inner child on the splendid greens of Orange County? Or head east to the desert and the 50 courses around Palm Springs. If you do that, don’t miss the Westin Mission Hills resort, which also has a spa so that you can soothe those aching muscles after a hard round. After all, you will have earned it.