Our series on America’s best golf courses continues with a look at the three best classic courses in the north central U.S., as determined by Golfweek magazine’s handpicked panel of 385 course raters. The raters, who are students of architecture, attend national workshops and each evaluate 15 to 20 courses per year.
Here’s what distinguishes the north central region’s top classic courses, according to Golfweek architecture editor Bradley S. Klein. We’ve also included information on the most convenient places to land your business jet near each course.
Look for a report on the best modern courses in the northeastern U.S. in our next issue.
This is easily the most obscure of the country’s great courses. Designers Alister MacKenzie and Perry Maxwell combined efforts here in the sandy heathlands of northwest Michigan in 1931 to create wildly undulating greens and visually baffling bunkers. The par-70 layout is only 6,518 yards from the back tees (73.6 rating/138 slope), but the wind howls, the ball rolls forever and people quickly find out why Crystal Downs ranked ninth on Golfweek’s list of the country’s best classic courses.
Airport
Frankfort Dow Memorial (FKS),
4,050-ft runway, six-mile drive.
FBO: Frankfort City/County Airport Authority,
(231) 352-9118.
Offering links-style golf in the middle of the American heartland, Prairie Dunes ranked 13th on Golfweek’s classic-course list. At this private facility, a simple clubhouse is all that’s needed for famously crumpled fairways that wend their way through waist-high prairie grass roughs. Perry and Pres Maxwell designed and built the course in two stages, in 1935 and 1957, with the famed uphill, 430-yard, par-4 eighth hole the best known feature of what is simply an architectural masterpiece.
Airport
Hutchinson Municipal (HUT),
7,001-ft runway; 3.5-mile drive.
FBO: Wells Aircraft, (620) 663-1546.
The museum-piece of a layout here stems from an 1894 Charles Blair Macdonald design, which was updated by Seth Raynor in 1923. Superintendent Jon Jennings has done an amazing job restoring the native fescues and roughs. Chicago Golf Club, ranked 14th on Golfweek’s classic-course list, showed up well at the 2005 Walker Cup. How exclusive is this private club, which has only 150 members and registers a paltry 8,000 rounds a year? It’s so concerned that it is said to have initiated a membership drive–to get rid of about 25 members.
Airport
DuPage Airport (ORD),
7,570-ft runway, 11-mile drive.
FBO: DuPage Flight Center,
(800) 208-5690.