For years, I have loudly proclaimed that the Chicago region is the second best area for golf in America. Even with Long Island taking home the title, the density of great golf in Chicago is pretty unbelievable. The most impressive golf courses are all private, but Chicago still has a lot of options for quality public golf. You will find just 1 top 100 public golf course in the Chicago area, but there is a ton of great value and a lot of golf courses that are worth exploring.
For my Chicago guide, I have broken the list down into two categories. We have the premier experiences for those looking for the very best high end options for public golf. Then we have the experiences. These are atypical golf courses but are worth a visit. At the end of the article, I give you my ideal Chicago golf weekend. You can check my full list of courses in Illinois here and enjoy my public golf guide below.
Premier Public Destinations.
Harborside International Golf Center - Chicago, IL
Some of the best links style courses in America are built on top of landfills. Bayonne, Bally’s Golf Links, Granite Links and Harbor Shores quickly come to my mind. Harborside is another story of a trash dump turned into a golf playground.
There are 36 holes available to play at Harborside and they are both nautically themed. The Starboard and The Port courses are similar in nature and provide some great links style undulations. There are views of the Chicago skyline on several holes and the infamous anchor bunker is a popular one for Instagram.
Bowe’s Creek Golf Club - Elgin, IL
Don’t sleep on Bowe’s Creek.. and definitely don’t sleep in it. Located close to several other options on our list, Bowe’s can make for a great day of 36. Designed by Rick Jacobson in 2009 as part of a real estate project, Bowe’s does a decent job of avoiding prominently featured real estate on most of the holes. Its a solid deal and there are a handful of fun and challenging golf holes.
Sunset Valley Golf Club - Highland Park, IL
Nestled on the north shore and in one of the most dense areas in America for private clubs is a sweet little public option. The golf course has been around since the 1920’s when a guy named William Diddel laid down the original design. Dick Nugent reworked the course in the 1970’s and a 2018 overhaul by Rick Jacobson was an attempt to bring back the 1920’s heathland style design. Jacobson ignored most of the elements of golden age design and built what feels like a Jack Nicklaus design from the 1990’s with fescue.
Bolingbrook Golf Club - Bolingbrook, IL
After a 2 year stint at Rich Harvest Farms, LIV Chicago made its way to Bolingbrook Golf Club in 2024. Boasting a large clubhouse and a great practice facility, its easy to see why LIV selected the venue. This beast can play up to 7,224 yards for those looking to get a professional golf experience, but is very enjoyable from the realistic sets of tees. This Arthur Hills / Steve Forest design is one that should be on your short list. Most notably the pictures on their website need to be updated.
Arrowhead Golf Club - Wheaton, IL
Nestled right down the street from Cantigny and the legendary Chicago Golf Club, you will find a great public option with 27 holes of quality golf. The golf course has been around since the 1920’s and water comes into play on 17 of the 27 holes. Most importantly, the golf is not bound by real estate concerns.
Heritage Bluffs Golf Club - Channahon, IL
Its a little bit of a drive out to Channahon, but this beauty is worth the drive and has very affordable green fees. I go into detail on every hole at Heritage Bluffs on this post from the Golf Blog.
Pine Meadow Golf Club - Mundelein, IL
There is some history here that is gonna make the golf nerds of the world squirm in their seats. Pine Meadow was originally a William Flynn design from the 1920’s. Yes, the same guy that built Shinnecock Hills originally designed Pine Meadow. It also operated for decades as the private club for the Archdiocese of Chicago.
Here is where it gets nasty, the Jemsek family took over in 1985 and bulldozed the outdated and overgrown design. On top of it, they laid modern target golf over Flynn’s original plans, complete with new water hazards and modern bunker complexes. When it reopened in 1986, Golf Digest named it the #1 new public golf course in America. Today, this feels like a crime. I view it as a testament to how the times have changed over the past 40 years in golf. I visited for the sole purpose of walking on the grounds of the “Lost Archdiocese Course” and rather enjoyed my time.
Village Links of Glen Ellyn - Glen Ellyn, IL
There isn’t much of a village and the golf course certainly isn’t fashioned in a traditional links style, however, Village Links is a great option for some public golf. This muni gem offers two different options for play, The Championship 18 and the Casual 9. All three 9 holes are full sized and the Championship 18 boasts a particularly strong course rating of 148 with a slope of 138.
Cantigny Golf Club - Wheaton, IL
A recent renovation from Todd Quitno has turned this place into something glorious. I first played back in 2018 and I barely recognized the changes in 2026. When it comes to public golf in Chicago, this is easily one of the best options. There are 27 holes to enjoy out at Cantigny and the conditions make it feel like a private club.
Ravisloe Country Club - Homewood, IL
Everyone knows that “Ross is boss” and that rule still applies in Chicago. Sadly, there is only one Donald Ross design that Chicagoans can play without finding their way onto the grounds of a private golf club. For many years, Ravisloe was private but the course is now on the National Register of Historic Places and is completely open to the public. Ravisloe is short, charming and intensely focused on proving that courses don’t need to be 7,000 yards long to protect par. Run, don’t walk to this beauty.
My favorite aspect on display at Ravisloe are Ross’s deception bunkers that are set 30-40 yards back from the green but are angled in a way that makes them appear is they are located right next to the green. In the 1920’s this was a masterful trick that wreaked havoc on club selection. Today’s laser beams and modern technology have rendered Ross’s bunkers far less deceitful.
Cog Hill Golf & CC - No 4 - Dubsdread - Lemont, IL
There is only 1 public course in Chicago that makes an appearance on the list of the top 100 public courses in America. Coming in at #76 is Cog Hill. The nomination is well deserved as Cog Hill is a great test of championship golf. If you are looking to find the most critically acclaimed public course in the Chicago area, Cog Hill is your answer. Most importantly, the golf barn at Cog Hill is one of America’s finest golf barns scoring 40.7 points on the 2027 pjkoenig golf barn rankings.
Ruffled Feathers Golf Club - Lemont, IL
Similar to Donald Ross, there is only one Pete Dye golf course in the Chicago area. Ruffled Feathers is the place to go to get your Dye fix. This course has all of the hallmarks of a Dye design. From the flat bottom bunkers to the bold mounding, Ruffled Feathers delievers all of the hits. The 11th hole even features a signature island green par 3.
Stonewall Orchard - Grayslake, IL
Stonewall is another popular spot that ends up towards the top of many best of lists. This Arthur Hills design opened in 1999 and immediately climbed the ranks of Chicago’s most demanding golf courses. Over the years, it has hosted a number of US Open qualifying events and served as the venue for the Illinois PGA Championship. Stonewall should be high on your Chicago list of places to lose golf balls.
Mistwood Golf Club - Romeoville, IN
I am not sure if its because this golf course is in Romeoville, but people love this golf course. The original golf course opened to the public in 1998, but it was the renovation in 2014 that helped give the course the edge it needed. With a Scottish links inspired strategy, sod wall bunkers, strategic shaping and fescue grasses gave Mistwood an entirely new look. The results were good enough that Golf Magazine gave Mistwood the Renovation of the Year award in 2014.
There are 2 Tom Fazio designs in the Chicago area and 50% of those courses are open to the public. The Glen Club is near the top of the best public golf options in Chicago. Most interestingly the golf course was born out of what was previously a Naval air station. Fortunately, Tom Fazio is a master at transforming a flat and boring piece of land into something special. Those runways became undulating fairways when the course opened for play in 2001.
Like any list, there are going to be some omissions that need to be addressed. Based on my travels and word of mouth from local Chicago golfers, here are courses that I have not played but are worth exploring.
The Chicago Experiences
It all started with a major water-management project intended to improve sanitation by reversing the flow of the Chicago River away from Lake Michigan. That’s the canal.. the shores is where the golf course was built by Tom Bendelow in 1919. The course stretches across two cities: eleven holes in Evanston and seven in Wilmette. The result is an unusual urban routing where streets, rail infrastructure, the canal, and residential neighborhoods are all part of the golfing experience.
Most importantly, the course serves as a community center for today’s youth. First Tee and Evans Scholars are heavily associated with the golf course and it is one of those spots where tomorrow’s professionals are learning to play the game.
Fun Fact: One of my favorite stories from The RGV Tour 1.0 happened at Canal Shores. You’re gonna have to get the book to get the story.
South Shore Golf Course - Chicago, IL
I cover this gem of a 9-holer more extensively in my blog post “A South Shore Experience” on the golf blog. This place is mandatory for those looking to catch a slice of Chicago golf history.
Waveland Golf Course - Chicago, IL
The sign on the wall might say Sidney Marovitz Golf Course, but the reaI Chicagoans know it as Waveland. It is very similar to the injustice of renaming the Sears Tower. Either way, we have nine holes of municipal golf wedged in between Lake Shore Drive and Lake Michigan. The course opened in 1932 during the great depression and the original green fee was just 25 cents for all day play. Waveland was so popular that ping pong tables and horseshoe pits were added so people waiting for a tee time had something to do.
Even more notably, the course banned beginners when it opened because they played too slow and unnecessarily damaged the golf course. It was a bold move, but taxpayers and common decency eventually overturned the rule. Waveland is not a high end experience or a particularly fast round of golf, but the golf course is distinctly Chicago.
Belmont Golf Club - Downer’s Grove, IL
Formerly Chicago Golf Club and Downer’s Grove Golf club, this golf course is home to the very first parcel of land in America where 18 holes of golf was built. Arguably, it is the most important golf site in American history. In 1892, CB Macdonald persuaded approximately 30 friends to contribute $10 apiece toward creating a golf course. The site was a 60-acre stock farm owned by A. Haddow Smith, a Scottish-born golfer. The group laid out nine holes and organized the Chicago Golf Club.
Several years later, the original club moved to Wheaton but the golf course in Downer’s Grove survived. Today, the course still has six of the original holes. It might not be Chicago Golf Club, but it’s worth the visit to step foot on hallowed ground. If you walk just right, your feet can almost feel the history of the Old Course in America.
Please enjoy these photographs of Belmont Golf Club above and Chicago Golf Club below.
To finish off this post, I am going to answer the question that I get the most.
“If you only had one weekend to play golf in Chicago what would you do?”
The quick answer is that I would play Shoreacres for a Friday twilight round, Chicago Golf Club on a gorgeous sunny Saturday and then head on over to Old Elm for an early morning Sunday tee time before watching the Bears devastate the Packers. However, only a lucky few can pull off that weekend.
From a public perspective, I would play Ravisloe up until sunset on Friday, then I would slug it out over at Cog Hill on Saturday to see what all of the Top 100 fuss is about. I would order an emergency 9 on Saturday with a quick round at South Shore in the afternoon. Then I would head downtown to enjoy some Pequods. Sunday morning I would get up early and play 27 at Cantigny before catching my flight out of O’Hare.