Best Golf Courses in Chicago's Western Suburbs

The western suburbs carry a large share of Chicago's championship history, and most of it is private. Medinah No. 3 hosted the 2026 Presidents Cup, Chicago Golf Club opened the country's first 18-hole course, and Butler National held 17 straight Western Opens. None of them sells a tee time. The public golf is better than that shadow suggests: a forest-preserve course rebuilt around a restored creek, a Robert Trent Jones Jr. prairie links, and park-district and village courses with roots in the 1920s and 1960s. This guide is for the golfer who wants to play, so the public courses come first and the private clubs close it out.

The public courses

Cantigny Golf, Wheaton

Cantigny Golf arrived with a reputation. Roger Packard laid out 27 holes on Robert R. McCormick's former estate, and Golf Digest named it the best new public course in America when it opened in 1989. It is No. 10 on Golfweek's 2026 Best Courses You Can Play list for Illinois and No. 35 on Golf Digest's 2025-26 Best in State ranking for Illinois.

Plan around the renovation. Todd Quitno has been rebuilding the three nines one at a time since June 2024, every green and tee complex included, and the wooded Woodside nine is closed until about June 2027. Until then the round is Hillside and Lakeside. Hillside is the shortest nine but carries some of the toughest holes; Lakeside brings four lakes into play on six holes. Caddies or forecaddies can be requested. For now it is a strong 18 rather than the full 27.

Prairie Landing Golf Club, West Chicago

Prairie Landing is the change of pace. The club calls Robert Trent Jones Jr.'s 1994 design a prairie links: wetlands, mounds and fescue in place of tree-lined corridors. Several greens will take a bump-and-run. The choices start on the 1st tee, where the gamble is to the right, and finish at the 18th, which offers a 235-yard carry over water to anyone who wants it. The 6th, patterned on short holes in Scotland and Ireland, has three tees, each with its own line. Booking is online only, with dynamic pricing, and the green fee covers two regulation par-4 practice holes.

The Preserve at Oak Meadows, Addison

If you have one public round in the western suburbs, play The Preserve at Oak Meadows. Golfweek puts it No. 6 on its 2026 Best Courses You Can Play list for Illinois, four places ahead of Cantigny. The Forest Preserve District of DuPage County owns it, and Greg Martin's rebuild, begun in July 2015 and open for a full season in 2018, turned a flood-prone 27-hole site into a single 18.

Salt Creek had flooded the old course 38 times between 2008 and 2015. Martin restored 1.23 miles of it, raised and moved tees, greens and fairways so the course can hold far more stormwater, and brought the water into view rather than hiding it behind berms. The ground has a past: as Elmhurst Country Club, it is where Ben Hogan won the 1941 Chicago Open.

Arrowhead and the Village Links

Arrowhead Golf Club belongs to the Wheaton Park District: 27 holes in three nines, West, South and East, played as three par-72 combinations, with forest preserve around them and no houses in play. Water touches 17 of the 27 holes. It began in the 1920s as the Antlers Club, and Ken Killian renovated all three nines between 1990 and 2001. The driving range is closed for construction until a new one opens, due in February 2027.

Village Links of Glen Ellyn, owned by the village, measures 7,208 yards from the back, with 118 bunkers, water in play on 15 holes and large, rolling greens that typically run three clubs deep. David Gill's course opened in 1967, built partly as a stormwater project, and his son Garrett rebuilt every green, tee, fairway and bunker in 2003-04. It was the regular site of Western Open qualifying from 1980 to 2006.

Schaumburg Golf Club

The Schaumburg Park District runs Schaumburg Golf Club, another 27-hole facility, with Tournament, Players and Baer nines. The course dates to 1928, and its original design is credited to William Langford with Theodore Moreau. Lohmann Quitno rebuilt its greens, tees and bunkers from 2017 to 2019 with Langford's ideas in mind. The Tournament nine's par-3 3rd now has a Redan feel. Walking is allowed, the range has Toptracer, and the course has hosted U.S. Open qualifying.

The private clubs

Everything below is private: members and their guests only, with no public tee times.

Medinah Country Club

Medinah No. 3 is the headline. It has held three U.S. Opens, the 1999 and 2006 PGA Championships and the 2012 Ryder Cup, and in September 2026 it hosted the Presidents Cup, the first time the world's best played OCM Golf's redesign, which reopened in 2024. Geoff Ogilvy, whose firm did that work, captained the International team, and the United States won 17-13 after a rally in Sunday singles. The redesign widened every fairway and rerouted the last six holes around Lake Kadijah, and Golf Digest named it a Transformation of the Year. No. 3 is No. 74 on Golf Digest's 2025-26 America's 100 Greatest and No. 3 on the magazine's 2025-26 Illinois list.

The other two courses rank too. Tom Doak's 2014 rebuild of Course No. 1 is 18th on that Illinois list, and Tom Bendelow's Course No. 2, the club's family course, restored by Rees Jones and unveiled in 2017, is 34th.

Chicago Golf Club and Butler National

Chicago Golf Club in Wheaton is No. 1 on Golf Digest's 2025-26 Illinois list and No. 11 on its 2025-26 America's 100 Greatest. After the club left Downers Grove, C.B. Macdonald built a new 18 in Wheaton, and Seth Raynor rebuilt it in 1922-23 on his mentor's routing; no major remodel has followed. Expect Raynor's takes on the Road, Biarritz, Redan and Eden, and large greens with steep internal contours. It is one of the USGA's five founding clubs and held the U.S. Open in 1897, 1900 and 1911.

Butler National in Oak Brook is the opposite in spirit. Paul Butler wanted a course hard enough for the best professionals, and George Fazio built one: 7,550 yards from the back, rated 78.4 with a 155 slope, with water hazards the Fazios added and small greens set at angles to the fairway. It hosted the Western Open from 1974 to 1990. Golf Digest has it No. 93 in America and No. 5 in Illinois.

Chicago Highlands, Butterfield and the Langford clubs

Chicago Highlands Club in Westchester, 15th in Illinois on the same Golf Digest list, is Arthur Hills's 2010 links-style course on a former landfill beside I-294, with the downtown skyline in view from the 9th green. It is not Highlands of Elgin, the public course in the Fox Valley guide. Butterfield Country Club in Oak Brook, 20th, has three nines on William Langford's 1920 design, redesigned by Steve Smyers in 2010.

Langford runs through the rest of the list. He and Theodore Moreau rebuilt Tom Bendelow's Glen Oak Country Club in Glen Ellyn in 1922 and designed Ruth Lake Country Club in Hinsdale, which unusually finishes on a par 3. La Grange Country Club credits him, with Bendelow, for its 1913 course; it hosted the U.S. Women's Open in 1974 and 1981 and reopened in 2025 after a bunker and irrigation renovation. The outlier is Oak Park Country Club, in River Grove despite the name, a 1914 Donald Ross course that Rick Jacobson renovated in 2007 from Ross's own plans and notes.

How to book

All six public courses above take tee times online, through GolfNow or the course's own tee sheet, and each course page links the way in. We don't sell tee times. Most Chicagoland courses close or go to limited winter play from about November to March, so check before a late-season round. The private clubs are members and their guests only, with no public booking route.

For how access works across the city, see How to Play Golf in Chicago; for more public options, Best Public Golf Courses in Chicago; for the national rankings, Chicago's Courses on Golf Digest's 100 Greatest; and for every region, Best Golf Courses in Chicago.