Finest golf programs in Wisconsin for 2024-25

As a part of GOLF’s rigorous rankings course of for our newly launched Prime 100 Programs within the U.S. and Prime 100 Programs You Can Play rankings, our fleet of 100-plus skilled panelists recognized the very best golf programs in each state.

You may try the hyperlinks beneath to browse all of our course rankings, or scroll right down to see the very best programs in Wisconsin. And when you’re trying to create your individual journey sooner or later, you’d be smart to let GOLF’s new Course Finder device help you. Right here, you’ll be able to toggle all of our lists — Prime 100 public, greatest munis, greatest brief programs, greatest par-3s and extra — or filter by worth to create the proper itinerary in your subsequent journey.

GOLF’s different course rankings: Prime 100 Programs within the World | Prime 100 Programs within the U.S. | Prime 100 Programs You Can Play | Prime 100 Worth Programs within the U.S. | America’s Finest Municipal Programs | The 100 Finest Quick Programs within the World

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The perfect golf programs in Wisconsin (2024/2025)

SYMBOL GUIDE
# = Prime 100 Course within the U.S.
Y = Prime 100 You Can Play within the U.S.
V = Prime 100 Worth Course within the U.S.
P = Public/Resort

Ed. notice: Some programs have been omitted from our rankings as a result of they didn’t obtain sufficient votes.

1. Lido (Rome) [#, Y, P]

The Lido, on Lengthy Island’s South Shore, opened for play in 1917, the work of C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor. The course met an unkind destiny within the Forties, however not till luminaries like Bernard Darwin had lavished reward on it; Darwin mentioned he thought Lido was the very best course on the planet “as a battlefield for giants.” Properly! Some eight many years later Michael and Chris Keiser determined to recreate the course adjoining to their Sand Valley Resort. Key to the equation was Peter Flory, who open-sourced a whole bunch of classic images of the unique Lido and fed them right into a software program program that modeled the brand new Lido as precisely as potential. The Keisers then employed Tom Doak and Brian Schneider (who spent greater than 230 days on-site) to construct the course. This course of included the usage of GPS bulldozers, although discretion by Doak and Schneider was actually required in getting the inexperienced contours excellent. The dimensions of the course, the depth of its hazards and the dimensions of the greens, which common over 12,000 sq. toes, is dazzling. Virtually all the nice template holes are represented, from the Alps tenth to the Redan sixteenth, making this course a strategic marvel. Panelist Clyde Johnson calls Lido the “final IQ check for golf-course structure.” One in all America’s nice designs is again! 

2. Whistling Straits (Sheboygan) [#, Y, P]

Residence of the 2004, ’10 and ’15 PGA Championships, this 1998 Pete Dye design on Lake Michigan was as soon as a poker-table-flat navy coaching base in World Conflict II. Ultimately it turned a web site for unlawful dumping of poisonous waste. Dye and proprietor Herb Kohler engineered a mind-boggling cleanup, transferring 3 million cubic yards of grime, trucking in 7,000 a great deal of sand to create the hills and bunkers and relocating the bluffs again off the shore. Kohler informed Dye “I need the course to appear like it’s in Eire.” Mission achieved. The 2021 Ryder Cup performed right here highlighted what an awesome match-play course it’s, too, with its plethora of ½-par holes. Its set of par-3s is just about unmatched and is complemented by a slew of different standout holes that are available in all sizes and styles, together with the lengthy par-4 4th, the brief par-4 tenth with its central hazard, and the par-5 eleventh, which rivals any par-5 that Dye constructed over his six-decade profession.

3. Milwaukee (River Hills) [#]

Designed by C.H. Alison, Milwaukee Nation Membership is a captivating old-school structure that challenges the trendy participant with quick greens and deep bunkers. You stroll out the boys’s locker door and — growth — you’re standing on the primary tee. A collection of stout two-shotters will get the spherical underway whereas the center part of the course (particularly holes 8-12) enjoys a spectacular element courtesy of the Milwaukee River and its valley. The course gallops dwelling at 17, a brute of an uphill one-shotter, and 18, with its inexperienced that includes a depraved false entrance.

4. Lawsonia – Hyperlinks (Inexperienced Lake) [#, Y, V, P]

After years after all enhancements helped convey it out of the shadows, Lawsonia not counts as a sleeper. But it surely nonetheless qualifies as one of many nation’s best steals. Golden Age maestros Langford and Moreau spent some $5 million in 2024 {dollars} to supply this actually groundbreaking Wisconsin design. With the assistance of steam shovels, they constructed fairways with bedeviling browns and greens with remarkably daring contours. Of the various excellent holes, the par-3 seventh rightly will get essentially the most consideration, partially due to the story behind it. Rumor is {that a} boxcar is buried beneath it. Given its bulging floor and the 20-foot drop-off alongside its front-right facet, that’s straightforward to consider.

5. Sand Valley – Sand Valley (Nekoosa) [Y, P]

A Midwestern manufacturing from the identical Keiser household that gave us Bandon Dunes, Sand Valley lacks an ocean however nonetheless has a lot in frequent with its coastal counterpart. On the prehistoric sand dunes of central Wisconsin, Invoice Coore labored his trademark magic, routing a enjoyable, agency and honest course round a heaving canvas. After a gap tee shot from an enormous dune dubbed the Volcano, Sand Valley bucks and rolls alongside a scenic property, showcasing majestic bunkers, pleasant contours and, on the par-3 seventeenth, one of many recreation’s nice punchbowl greens.

6. Erin Hills (Hartford) [Y, P]

Erin Hills is a contemporary course whose foundations have been laid eons in the past, when glaciers sloughed their means throughout central Wisconsin, roiling the panorama of their wake. Way more not too long ago, Michael Hurdzan, Dan Fry and Ron Whitten took their flip, shaping a burly however swish structure the place Brooks Koepka received the 2017 U.S. Open, the primary of his 5 majors. Stout as it’s, the course additionally poses refined questions, as on the 2nd gap, a brief par 4 with a tiny, tiered inexperienced. And the again 9 is pure magnificence, with beautiful undulations which are maybe most putting on the tumbling fairway of the twelfth gap.

7. Sand Valley – Sedge Valley (Nekoosa) [Y, P]

In his lengthy and heralded design profession, Tom Doak has just about accomplished all of it. What remained on his want checklist was to construct a course impressed by the good heathland layouts of England. At Sand Valley, he lastly acquired his probability to channel his inner-Harry Colt. A intelligent, compact complement to the resort’s three different 18-hole programs (Sand Valley, Mammoth Dunes and semi-private Lido), Sedge Valley suggestions out at a shade below 6,000 yards. However size is just not the very best inform of its tape. Forgiving-looking fairways are splendidly misleading, with slopes and brows that place a premium on discovering the best angle. Greens, too, have ample motion, and approaches to them are sometimes sophisticated by rises within the land that shroud the goal from view. Sedge Valley is a reminder that measurement does certainly matter, and that greater isn’t all the time greatest.

8. Pine Hills (Sheboygan)

9. Sand Valley – Mammoth Dunes (Nekoosa) [Y, P]

True to its title, this broad-shouldered design takes benefit of among the largest dunes within the huge sand barrens of central Wisconsin, with a routing that winds round a towering V-shaped wedge. But when the dimensions is imposing, the course is just not. As soon as generally known as a staunch defender of par, McLay Kidd deliberately softened his method right here, with fairways so broad they’re troublesome to overlook, and myriad floor recreation choices that permit for pleasant entry to beneficiant greens. The purpose right here is magnificence, not intimidation, and the tip result’s terrific enjoyable.

10. Blackwolf Run – River (Kohler) [Y, P]

Whistling Straits claims the best wow-factor, with two miles of frontage alongside Lake Michigan, however this inland Dye structure may need simply as many ardent followers. Constructed a decade earlier than Whistling, the River course occupies probably the greatest wooded parcels that Dye was ever given, studded with hills and stitched via by a creek. The famed architect additionally benefited from an proprietor who provided him carte blanche, permitting Dye to create one in all his most difficult assessments. The calls for are available in many sizes and styles, from angled greens set on plateaus to risk-reward par-5s with water lurking. Among the many hardest photographs is on the par-3 thirteenth, which performs over a bend within the river with a big tree looming on the left. Although its branches have been in the reduction of in recent times, it stays a nightmare for righthanders who favor a fade.

11. Blue Mound (Wauwatosa)

12. West Bend (West Bend)

13. SentryWorld (Stevens Level) [Y, P]

In 2013, Wisconsin native Jay Blasi, working in collaboration with Robert Trent Jones Jr., rerouted the SentryWorld design by implementing unused land all through the property. The brand new par-3 third was as soon as only a stand of bushes, and the brand new par-3 twelfth as soon as a lone peninsula in the midst of the swamp. Now these holes well join the structure. One in all Blasi’s favorites additions is the par-4 fifteenth, the popular angle for the method protected by a strategically positioned, right-side fairway bunker. Superintendent Matt Smith has catapulted SentryWorld into probably the greatest maintained programs within the nation, serving to it land the 2023 U.S. Senior Open.

14. Blackwolf Run – Meadow (Kohler)

15. Membership at Lac La Belle (Oconomowoc)

16. Steven’s Level CC (Stevens Level)

17. Whistling Straits – Irish (Sheboygan)

18. Kenosha (Kenosha)

19. Bull at Pinehurst Farms (Sheboygan Falls) [V, P]

20. Washington County (Hartford)

How we rank our programs

For our newly launched Prime 100 U.S. and Prime 100 You Can Play lists — a course of that helped us create 50 best-in-state rankings — every panelist was supplied a poll that consisted of 609 programs. Beside the checklist of programs have been 11 “buckets,” or groupings. If our panelists thought of a course to be among the many prime three within the U.S., they ticked that first column. In the event that they believed the course to be amongst Nos. 4-10, they checked that column, adopted by 11-25, 26-50, and so forth out to 250+ and even a column for “take away.” Panelists have been additionally free to jot down in programs that they felt ought to have been included on the poll.

Factors have been assigned to every bucket; to reach at a mean rating for every course, we divide its mixture rating by the variety of votes. From these level tallies, the programs are then ranked accordingly. It’s an deliberately easy and simple course of. Why? As a result of it traditionally has produced outcomes which are extensively lauded. Like the sport itself, there’s no have to unnecessarily complicate issues or attempt to repair one thing that already works so properly.

The important thing to the method is the expertise and experience of our panel. Hailing from 15 nations and all of the worldwide golf meccas, every of our 127 handpicked panelists has a eager eye for structure, each regionally and globally. Lots of our panelists have performed greater than 1,000 programs in 20-plus international locations, some over 2,000. Their handicaps vary from +5 to fifteen.

As a result of the character after all score is so intensely subjective, nobody opinion carries the day. The one means, then, to construct significant consensus is to include this variety of panelists and experiences into one rating. Need assistance unriddling the greens at your house course? Decide up a customized Inexperienced Ebook from 8AM Golf affiliate GolfLogix.