Best Golf Courses in the Fox Valley & McHenry County

The Fox Valley and McHenry County sit on the far western and northwestern edge of Chicagoland, and the golf out here is shaped by prairie, wetland and glacial hills as much as by trees. This guide's public list is short: three courses, in Marengo, Lakewood and Elgin, each worth the drive. The private side includes Rich Harvest Farms, which has hosted a Solheim Cup, NCAA championships and LIV Golf. It is written for golfers heading out from the city or already living out here: public courses first, then the clubs open only to members and their guests.

The public courses

Blackstone Golf Club, Marengo

Blackstone Golf Club puts two kinds of golf on one property. Protected wetlands come into play on 13 holes, and nine holes run through dense hickory and oak. Bob Lohmann's design opened in 2006 on 172 acres, and his 54 bunkers, bold and irregular at the edges, sit where they press a good player, while fairway corridors wide enough to play away from them give everyone else a way around. The greens add a second test: the 6th has three tiers falling from back to front, and the club describes the 18th as three putting surfaces in one. It runs as an upscale daily-fee course, with four sets of tees from 4,893 to 6,734 yards.

RedTail Golf Club, Lakewood

RedTail Golf Club has an unusual back story. Roger Packard designed it in 1987 as a second 18 for the members of Turnberry, a private club; the project ran into financial trouble, and the Village of Lakewood ended up owning the course. The club dates its opening to 1991, and it runs today as a municipal course in southeastern McHenry County, near Crystal Lake, Huntley and Lake in the Hills. The club's pitch is elevation change across 240 acres, plus wildlife and natural areas. Those areas are federally protected and closed to golfers, so anything hit into them is lost. The card is balanced, two par 3s and two par 5s on each nine, and from the Black tees it plays 6,824 yards with a 136 slope. Soft spikes and proper golf attire are required.

Highlands of Elgin

Highlands of Elgin is the pick of the three, and Golfweek agrees, putting it No. 5 on its 2026 Best Courses You Can Play list for Illinois. The City of Elgin course has two distinct nines. One rolls over gentler ground; the other, opened over the July 4th weekend in 2010, was built in an old stone quarry around a 12-acre lake, with four holes on a bluff 30 to 40 feet above the water. Building it took 130,000 cubic yards of imported topsoil.

The quarry is where a round turns. Carries along its edge are longer than they look, and the club's hole notes stress options: center-line bunkers at the 3rd and 5th, a split-level fairway at the 14th, false fronts around many greens. The par-3 7th, the club's signature hole, plays from an elevated tee with a view over the quarry and clubhouse, and reaches 250 yards from the back. Don't confuse it with Chicago Highlands Club, the private Arthur Hills course in Westchester.

The private clubs

The four clubs below are private, for members and their guests only, with no public tee times.

Rich Harvest Farms, Sugar Grove

Rich Harvest Farms is Jerry Rich's course on his own Sugar Grove estate, and largely his own design. He began with three holes in 1988 and reached 18 a decade later, with Greg Martin helping on the last seven; it officially opened in 1999. Rich, a physicist and mathematician by training, aimed for a deliberately eclectic mix of Scottish, Pine Valley and traditional looks, spread across hardwood forest, rolling ground and two branches of Welch's Creek. The event list is long: the 2009 Solheim Cup, the 2015 Western Amateur, the 2017 NCAA Division I Men's and Women's Championships, the 2021 Arnold Palmer Cup and LIV Golf in 2022 and 2023. From the Professional tees it measures 7,671 yards, rated 79.8 with a 155 slope, a rating 1.4 strokes above Butler National's. Golf Digest ranks it No. 113 on its 2025-26 Second 100 Greatest and No. 7 on its 2025-26 Best in State list for Illinois.

Black Sheep Golf Club, Sugar Grove

Also in Sugar Grove, Black Sheep Golf Club is built for golf and nothing else: no homes, no pool, no tennis. David Esler's debut design opened in 2002 with 27 holes on open Kane County prairie, modeled, the club says, on inland links such as Shinnecock Hills, Prairie Dunes and Sand Hills, with more than 300 bunkers and almost no trees to break the wind. Fairways are unusually wide, and the reward goes to the drive that takes on the prairie, water or sand: it gets the better angle in. It is 12th on Golf Digest's Illinois list.

Bull Valley Golf Club, Woodstock

Bull Valley Golf Club is Dick Nugent's routing over glacial moraine, oak-hickory woods, wetlands and remnant prairie in Woodstock, on land the club says had been largely undisturbed since the last glaciers. The 12th tee stands on what the club calls the second-highest point in McHenry County, and water or wetland guards eight greens. Golf Digest's Ron Whitten has ranked its back nine, hole for hole, with anything in greater Chicago for quality and variety, and the magazine's Illinois list has it 31st.

Stonebridge Country Club, Aurora

Stonebridge Country Club in Aurora is a 1989 Tom Fazio course routed through oaks, creeks and ponds, and the club calls it the only private Fazio design in Chicago's far western suburbs. It has had a tour life: the senior tour's Ameritech Senior Open from 1991 to 1995, with Hale Irwin among its winners, and the LPGA's Kellogg-Keebler Classic from 2002 to 2004, which Annika Sorenstam won twice. Her 62 in 2003 shares the course record. The Illinois Open followed in 2021.

How to book

Blackstone and Highlands of Elgin take tee times online, and their course pages link the way in. At Highlands, online bookings include a cart and walkers book through the pro shop. For RedTail, go through the course directly. We don't sell tee times. Most courses here close or go to limited winter play from about November to March, so check before a late-season round. Rich Harvest Farms, Black Sheep, Bull Valley and Stonebridge are members and their guests only, with no public booking route.

Closer to the city, Best Golf Courses in Chicago's Western Suburbs picks up the next ring of courses. For more public options, see Best Public Golf Courses in Chicago; for how access works, How to Play Golf in Chicago; and for every region, Best Golf Courses in Chicago.