Best Public Golf Courses in Chicago

The top of Golf Digest's Illinois ranking is private-club country, but the public game here runs deep. Golfweek's 2026 Best Courses You Can Play list for Illinois has 15 places, and 11 of them go to Chicago-area courses. This guide covers them and a few more, region by region, from links golf inside the city limits to quarry holes in Elgin and a capped slag dump in Indiana. Each one is public or semi-private.

Inside the city: Harborside

In the city itself, the place to play is Harborside International, two Dick Nugent courses on a former landfill beside Lake Calumet, about 15 miles from the Loop. Landfill soil rules out planting many trees, so fescue mounds, big bunkers and the wind frame the holes, with the downtown skyline in view. The Starboard, No. 8 on Golfweek's 2026 Illinois list, sends both of its back-nine par 3s over water from the lake. The older Port hosted the Champions Tour's 2002 SBC Senior Open and closes with three holes along the harbor. Nugent's brief was seaside links in the city, and on a windy day the pair delivers it.

The southwest and south suburbs

The southwest suburbs start with the biggest name in Chicago public golf, in Lemont.

Cog Hill No. 4 (Dubsdread)

Cog Hill's Dubsdread is the public course with the longest résumé: No. 1 on Golfweek's 2026 Illinois list and No. 14 on Golf Digest's 2025-26 Best in State ranking for Illinois. Joe Jemsek hired Dick Wilson and Joe Lee for a course to rival the best private clubs, and it opened in 1964 as the fourth at his public Cog Hill complex. It hosted the Western Open from 1991 to 2006 and the BMW Championship five times through 2013, and Rees Jones renovated every hole before a 2009 reopening. From the Black tees it is 7,554 yards with a 153 slope, so the name is fair warning to the dub, or poor golfer. Tee times open 60 days ahead, cart included.

Mistwood

Mistwood in Romeoville, No. 4 on Golfweek's 2026 Illinois list, has the most distinctive look on this side of town. Ray Hearn renovated his own 1998 design, adding 20 revetted sod-wall bunkers, Lannon stone walls and fescue, and GOLF Magazine named the result the best U.S. renovation you can play in 2014. It is also the long-time home of the Illinois Women's Open.

Ravisloe and Ruffled Feathers

Ravisloe in Homewood, No. 11 on Golfweek's 2026 list, was a private club from 1901 until a 2009 sale opened it to everyone. Donald Ross's work survives in grass-faced bunkers and in greens that tilt hard from back to front, and at 6,343 yards it defends with the greens, not length. Ruffled Feathers, back in Lemont, is Pete and P.B. Dye in full voice: 114 bunkers, railroad ties, wetlands and a 155-yard 11th played to a peninsula green.

The western suburbs

The western suburbs mix a forest preserve rebuild, a former estate and a village course.

The Preserve at Oak Meadows in Addison, No. 6 on Golfweek's 2026 Illinois list, is the most interesting rebuild in the region. Salt Creek flooded the old Oak Meadows 38 times between 2008 and 2015, so Greg Martin turned the 27-hole site into one 18, raised tees, greens and fairways to hold stormwater, and restored the creek and its prairie; it reopened fully in 2018. Ben Hogan won the 1941 Chicago Open here, when it was Elmhurst Country Club.

Cantigny in Wheaton, Golf Digest's best new public course of 1989, is No. 10 on Golfweek's 2026 list and No. 35 on Golf Digest's 2025-26 Illinois ranking. Its three nines, on Robert R. McCormick's former estate, are being renovated one at a time through 2027 with 18 holes open throughout, and caddies are available on request. Nearby, Village Links of Glen Ellyn is a village-owned 18 of 7,208 yards with water in play on 15 holes. Garrett Gill rebuilt it on much of his father David's routing, and it was the regular site of Western Open qualifying from 1980 to 2006.

The north: The Glen Club and Lake County

The Glen Club in Glenview is semi-private, but non-members can book up to seven days ahead, and it is the headliner north of the city. Tom Fazio turned the flat runways of the old Glenview Naval Air Station into rolling ground with lakes and prairie, and it ranks No. 3 on Golfweek's 2026 Illinois list and No. 32 on Golf Digest's 2025-26 Illinois ranking. It is a long-time Illinois Open venue and has hosted a Korn Ferry Tour event since 2019; that event moves to Aurora in 2027.

Farther north, three Lake County public courses make Golfweek's 2026 Illinois list. Stonewall Orchard in Grayslake (No. 9), Arthur Hills' first Illinois design, is the stiffest of them on paper (75.3 rating, 152 slope from the Silver tees) and also sits No. 30 on Golf Digest's 2025-26 Illinois ranking. ThunderHawk in Beach Park (No. 12) is the Lake County Forest Preserves' Robert Trent Jones Jr. course, an unusual par 72 built from five par 5s, five par 3s and eight par 4s. Shepherd's Crook in Zion (No. 15) is Keith Foster's links-style park district course, with walking encouraged, no driving range and holes that ask for decisions rather than forced carries.

Fox Valley

Highlands of Elgin, No. 5 on Golfweek's 2026 Illinois list, is the surprise of that top five. Nine holes at Elgin's city course were built in an old stone quarry around a 12-acre lake, four of them on a bluff 30 to 40 feet above the water, and the par-3 7th plays from an elevated tee across the quarry. Out in Marengo, Blackstone is Bob Lohmann's wetland-and-woodland course: protected wetlands in play on 13 holes, nine holes through hickory and oak and 54 bunkers, with fairways wide enough for higher handicaps to steer clear.

Northwest Indiana

Across the state line, White Hawk in Crown Point is a semi-private, 36-hole club that keeps its tee sheet open to daily-fee golfers in season. Its Dick Nugent 18 stretches to 7,285 yards with a 145 slope, and the club puts itself less than an hour south of downtown Chicago. Lost Marsh in Hammond is the stranger story: a public course capping a former steel-mill slag dump on Lake George, with water on the first four holes and views of the city.

Worth the trip: Wisconsin and the Quad Cities

The best public golf within reach of Chicago is in Wisconsin, and it takes an overnight. Kohler's Straits course at Whistling Straits, 142 miles from O'Hare, is No. 26 on Golf Digest's 2025-26 America's 100 Greatest Golf Courses and No. 1 on Golfweek's 2026 Wisconsin list. It is walking only, and Kohler notes it may restrict bookings for non-resort guests. Erin Hills, host of the 2017 U.S. Open and the 2025 U.S. Women's Open, is about two hours from O'Hare, also walking only, and No. 49 on that Golf Digest list. Sand Valley, the Coore and Crenshaw course that started a six-course resort in central Wisconsin, is No. 3 on Golfweek's 2026 Wisconsin list. The Wisconsin trips guide compares them, along with Lake Geneva's resort courses, the shortest drive of the group.

To the west, TPC Deere Run in Silvis is the public course behind the PGA TOUR's John Deere Classic, D.A. Weibring's design through hardwoods high above the Rock River. It is No. 2 on Golfweek's 2026 Illinois list and No. 19 on Golf Digest's 2025-26 Illinois ranking, and from Chicago it is an overnight or a long day.

How to book

Public courses take tee times through GolfNow or their own tee sheets, and each course page here links the right one; we don't sell tee times. Booking windows vary: 60 days at Cog Hill, 30 at ThunderHawk, 14 at Shepherd's Crook and seven for non-members at The Glen Club. Resort courses book through the resort. Most Chicagoland courses close or switch to limited winter play from about November to March, and the Wisconsin resorts run roughly May through October, so read when to golf in Chicago before choosing dates. The area's private clubs are for members and their guests only.