Best Golf Courses in Chicago's South & Southwest Suburbs

South of the city is where Chicago golf runs oldest, and where its public golf gets most serious. Midlothian dates to 1898, Flossmoor to 1899 and Ravisloe to 1901, and out in Lemont sits Dubsdread, the public course that staged 16 Western Opens and five BMW Championships between 1991 and 2013. This guide covers the southwest suburbs, the south suburbs and Harborside on the city's South Side, for golfers who want to know what they can actually book and how the private clubs fit around it.

The southwest suburbs

Five public courses run from Lemont down to Wilmington, and they could hardly be less alike.

Cog Hill No. 4 (Dubsdread), Lemont

Cog Hill No. 4, better known as Dubsdread, is the headline public course south of Chicago. Joe Jemsek, the "Patriarch of Public Golf," hired Dick Wilson and Joe Lee to build a fourth course at Cog Hill that could stand beside the best private clubs, and it opened in 1964. Its tour years are behind it: the Western Open every year from 1991 to 2006, then the BMW Championship in 2007, 2009 through 2011 and 2013. Rees Jones rebuilt the greens, the tees and all 98 bunkers in 2007-08 without touching the routing.

The name is fair warning, since a "dub" is a poor golfer. From the Black tees it runs 7,554 yards with a 78.0 rating and 153 slope, the stiffest numbers in this guide, and tight landing areas feed large, heavily bunkered greens, though a 5,422-yard forward set keeps it open to more than low handicaps. Golfweek puts it No. 1 on its 2026 Best Courses You Can Play list for Illinois; Golf Digest has it No. 14 in its 2025-26 Illinois Best in State ranking. The public can book up to 60 days ahead, cart included. This site lists No. 4 only, not Cog Hill's other three courses.

Ruffled Feathers, Lemont

Also in Lemont, Ruffled Feathers is Pete and P.B. Dye's 1992 daily-fee course, and it looks the part: 114 bunkers, railroad ties, elevated tees and wetlands on former farmland. At 6,898 yards and a 139 slope it asks less than Dubsdread, but the Dye decisions keep coming, from the split fairway at the 6th to the 11th, a 155-yard par 3 to a peninsula green. The Illinois PGA moved its headquarters into the clubhouse in 1995.

Mistwood, Romeoville

Mistwood has the most distinctive look in the region. Ray Hearn designed it, it opened in 1998, and he returned in 2011 for a two-year renovation that added 20 revetted sod-wall bunkers, Lannon stone walls and fescue and stretched it past 7,000 yards. Golf Course Architecture called that bunker style rare in American golf, and GOLF Magazine named the job its Best U.S. Renovation You Can Play in 2014. Mistwood is No. 4 on Golfweek's 2026 Illinois list of courses you can play, has long hosted the Phil Kosin Illinois Women's Open and rates 74.8/147 from the Silver tees. If Dubsdread is the tour test, Mistwood is the course with a point of view.

Silver Lake North, Orland Park

Ignore the "country club": Silver Lake North is public, one of three courses at a family-run, 45-hole facility. It opened in 1927 as the private Euclid Hills and shares some history with Cog Hill: Bert Coghill, a partner in Cog Hill Golf Club, bought it and its neighbor in 1939. Wide, tree-lined fairways and large, receptive greens make it the gentlest course in this guide on paper (6,550 yards, 121 slope) and the easiest to book for a group with a wide spread of handicaps. Cart drivers must be 18.

Cinder Ridge, Wilmington

Cinder Ridge is built on what coal mining left behind. Owner George Kappos designed it across 350 acres of ravines and mine refuse, and it opened in 1995; a ridge of cinders that gave it its name is still visible, and the remains of the old coal tipple stand by the 10th. The club is candid that the difficulty sits off the tee, with medium-to-large, mostly flat greens behind more than 50 bunkers. It plays 6,661 yards, 72.8/136, and the collared-shirt dress code is strictly enforced.

On the South Side: Harborside

Harborside International brings links golf inside Chicago's city limits: two Dick Nugent courses on a former landfill beside Lake Calumet. The landfill soil rules out planting trees in quantity, so fescue mounds and big bunkers frame the holes, wind is a factor on most of them and the downtown skyline stays in view. Both courses take walkers, and a 2017 project rebuilt the bunkers on each.

The Port Course opened in 1995 and has the tournament story: Bob Gilder beat Hale Irwin in a playoff at the 2002 SBC Senior Open on the Champions Tour, the week Ben Crenshaw likened the course to Muirfield. It closes with three holes along the harbor and plays 7,123 yards, 74.6/137. The Starboard Course followed in 1996 at 7,104 yards (74.5/134), and both of its back-nine par 3s, the 13th and 17th, play across water from Lake Calumet. Golfweek ranks the Starboard alone, No. 8 on its 2026 Illinois list of courses you can play. For a golfer staying downtown, this is the obvious round.

The south suburbs: Ravisloe

Ravisloe, in Homewood, is the old south-suburban club you can book. It opened in 1901 with a course by James Foulis, the 1896 U.S. Open champion, and Theodore Moreau; Donald Ross reworked it in the late 1910s. It stayed private for more than a century, until a 2009 sale opened it to the public, and that long private life preserved much of the old architecture. David Esler restored the grass-faced, flat-bottomed bunkers to Ross's specifications, and most greens tilt hard from back to front, so an approach left above the hole is the expensive miss. At par 70 and 6,343 yards (71.3/130) the card looks modest; the greens are the defense. Golfweek ranks it No. 11 on its 2026 Illinois list of courses you can play.

The private clubs

The rest of the area's best-known golf is private, for members and their guests only, and none of it can be booked.

Olympia Fields South is a Tom Bendelow design the club dates to 1915, crossed by Butterfield Creek and laid over hilly ground that is rare for Chicago; Andy Staples restored it in 2023. Golf Digest ranks it No. 13 in Illinois for 2025-26, one place ahead of Dubsdread. The club's North course, host of two U.S. Opens and two PGA Championships, is closed for a restoration expected to run to about 2028 and is not listed on this site.

Midlothian, founded in 1898 and by its own account the first private club south of Chicago, hosted the 1914 U.S. Open, where Walter Hagen won the first of his 11 majors. Herbert J. Tweedie designed it, and Donald Ross worked on the bunkers before that Open. Hearn's renovation, unveiled in 2022, rebuilt all 82 bunkers and recovered lost green edges, bringing back pin positions from the 1920s.

Flossmoor Golf Club, founded in 1899, is another Tweedie course, and 14 of its hole corridors survive from the first layout. Hearn restored it in 2009, so Mistwood's architect has worked on both of the area's Tweedie courses. Every hole carries a name, Road among them, after the Road Hole at St. Andrews. Golf Digest has it No. 22 in its 2025-26 Illinois ranking.

Idlewild, also in Flossmoor, goes back to 1908 and a layout by Al Naylor, and the club credits William Langford with green and bunker work sometime in the 1920s. Butterfield Creek runs through it too, and the card is unusual: five par 5s and five par 3s.

How to book

The public courses here take tee times through GolfNow or their own tee sheets, and each course page links the right one; we don't sell tee times. Dubsdread's sheet opens 60 days out. The private clubs are members and their guests only. The season runs from about April to early November, and from November to March most Chicagoland courses close or offer limited winter play, so check before you drive (when to golf in Chicago has the detail). For access rules see how to play golf in Chicago; for more bookable golf, the best public courses in Chicago or, across the state line, Northwest Indiana.