A golf guide, done properly.

Chicago is one of America’s great golf cities, and much of it sits behind club gates: Chicago Golf Club, one of the five founding clubs of the USGA, Medinah, Butler National and the Golden Age clubs of the North Shore. The public side runs deeper than most visitors expect, from Cog Hill’s Dubsdread to Harborside on the South Side.

Golf in CHI is an independent guide to the best of them — the city, the North Shore, the western and southern suburbs, Lake County, the Fox Valley, Northwest Indiana and Kenosha, plus the Wisconsin trips worth a weekend. We cover the courses worth the drive, not every course in the area. Each one is written up the way a serious player would describe it: designer, design philosophy, the round hole by hole, playing strategy by skill level, the real green fee.

We don’t sell tee times — we map them. Every course page gives the exact way on: book it yourself on GolfNow or the course’s own tee sheet, book through the resort, or what a members-only club actually requires. Want to book dinner or a club in Chicago? Reserve through MyRSVP.