Featuring some of the top private golf courses in the country, Chicago also boasts some really good public options that are spread across the greater metropolitan area.
“Greater Chicago” is pretty vast for our purposes, stretching as far north as the Wisconsin/Illinois border (for Shepherds Crook and ThunderHawk – 1 hour from downtown Chicago) and as far west as Sugar Grove (Black Sheep – 54 minutes from downtown), which I’d consider to be valid distances to drive if visiting the area for golf.
Anyone intending to play golf in the Chicago area needs to be prepared to drive, either way, as there are few options to play within the city limits and the only course near downtown is Harborside International with its Port and Starboard courses.
WiscoGolfAddict.com’s most recently published articles on Chicago-area golf:
Brandt Snedeker and Geoff Ogilvy have been named captains for the 2026 Presidents Cup at Medinah No. 3, a legendary venue freshly reimagined by Ogilvy’s design firm, OCM. The Midwest will once again host one of golf’s premier international events – this time on a course built for match play and made for drama.
The Harborside International Golf Center is a fantastic prototype for municipal metropolitan golf, featuring links-style Dick Nugent designs on the Port and Starboard courses.
One of the top hidden gems I’ve found in a while, Glen Flora in Waukegan, IL is emerging as one of the top private club options on the North Shore of the Greater Chicago area, thanks to a thoughtful renovation led by Samuel Beckman of Emergency 9 Golf.
My favorite of the three courses at Medinah Country Club, Course 1 features great design, terrific routing and the best of all worlds: A lot of wide, forgiving fairways with strategic playability, great par 3’s and 5’s and a little bit of tree-lined parkland style thrown in for good measure.
One of the top 100 overall golf courses in the country, Black Sheep Golf Club outside of Chicago, Illinois, is a men’s only private club with a fantastic logo and an even better golf course.
Boasting 27 holes of linksy David Esler designed golf, owner Vince Solano has successfully developed an out-of-this-world-good golf experience with…
The journey of Mistwood Golf Club over the past 20 years has been well documented and for good reason: This is a fantastic public golf destination and an incredibly well run operation. The first thing you’ll notice at Mistwood is its facilities. The bag drop is just outside the pro shop, downstairs from their Scottish-style…
Golf Course Review: The Preserve at Oak Meadows (IL).
Greg Martin’s recently reopened redesign of Oak Meadows (fka “Soaked Meadows”) plays a terrific role in water retention/utility… While being an awesome Illinois golf course.
Following a tour of the newly renovated No. 2 course with Rees Jones, we were treated to an out-of-this-world golf experience at Medinah Country Club’s Course 3 – one of the country’s greatest major event hosts.
An introduction to Rees Jones’s newly renovated Course 2 at Medinah Country Club outside of Chicago, IL.
A wonderful media day experience with Rees Jones and the accommodating staff of Medinah CC on May 24, 2017.
This trend-setting new course is set to debut in Summer, 2017.
Packers vs. Bears. Brewers vs. Cubs. Badgers vs. Fighting Illini. Tollways and terrible traffic vs. free highways and backroads. Wisconsin and Illinois folks don’t always get along, but we do all love golf. For the past twenty years, golf writers from Wisconsin have contested golf writers from Illinois in the annual “Writer’s Cup,” a 27-hole…
Harborside International, Portside Course Rankings: GolfWeek: #14 Illinois public Designer: Dick Nugent (1996) With two highly renowned courses, each on GolfWeek’s top 15 in the state of Illinois list, Harborside International provides a fantastic links golfing experience. I had the pleasure of playing their Port course, which is rated as Illinois’ fifteenth rated course you…
As all of my golf buddies know, maybe my favorite course within an hour of the Milwaukee area is ThunderHawk, located within minutes of the Wisconsin/Illinois border in Beach Park. It seems like every time I have the opportunity to play ThunderHawk, it is either early Spring or late Fall, so being a little earlier…
Former host of the BMW Championship and Western Open, Cog Hill No. 4 Dubsdread is one of the most challenging courses in the Midwest.
Shepherd’s Crook first got on my radar last year when it was named GolfWeek’s 13th best municipal golf course in the country, one spot behind its neighbor, ThunderHawk, and 22 spots above Washington County Golf Course in Hartford, Wisconsin. I have been intrigued to check it out, to say the least. Just across the…
Just across the Wisconsin/Illinois border is a fantastic Robert Trent Jones, Jr. course that over the past two years has been rated as a top twelve municipal course in the country, ThunderHawk. To those who know it, ThunderHawk is the best kept secret in the Milwaukee/Chicago area. The question is: How do golf enthusiasts…
