Erin Hills in Hartford, Wisconsin
Jerry Rossi
As a part of GOLF’s rigorous rankings course of for our newly launched High 100 Programs within the U.S. and High 100 Programs You Can Play rankings, our fleet of 100-plus knowledgeable 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 all the way down to see the very best programs in Wisconsin. And in the event you’re seeking to create your personal journey sooner or later, you’d be sensible to let GOLF’s new Course Finder instrument help you. Right here, you may toggle all of our lists — High 100 public, finest munis, finest quick programs, finest par-3s and extra — or filter by value to create the right itinerary in your subsequent journey.
GOLF’s different course rankings: High 100 Programs within the World | High 100 Programs within the U.S. | High 100 Programs You Can Play | High 100 Worth Programs within the U.S. | America’s Greatest Municipal Programs | The 100 Greatest Quick Programs within the World
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One of the best golf programs in Wisconsin (2024/2025)
SYMBOL GUIDE
# = High 100 Course within the U.S.
Y = High 100 You Can Play within the U.S.
V = High 100 Worth Course within the U.S.
P = Public/Resort
Ed. notice: Some programs had been omitted from our rankings as a result of they didn’t obtain sufficient votes.
1. Lido (Rome) [#, Y, P]
Brandon Carter/Courtesy Sand Valley
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 stated he thought Lido was the very best course on this 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 lot of classic photographs 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 scale of the greens, which common over 12,000 sq. toes, is dazzling. Nearly 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 every of 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 filth, trucking in 7,000 a great deal of sand to create the hills and bunkers and relocating the bluffs again off the shore. Kohler advised Dye “I would like the course to appear to be it’s in Eire.” Mission completed. The 2021 Ryder Cup performed right here highlighted what a fantastic 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 styles and sizes, together with the lengthy par-4 4th, the quick 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 an enthralling old-school structure that challenges the trendy participant with quick greens and deep bunkers. You stroll out the lads’s locker door and — increase — 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 part courtesy of the Milwaukee River and its valley. The course gallops residence 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]
Patrick Koenig
After years in fact enhancements helped carry it out of the shadows, Lawsonia not counts as a sleeper. However it nonetheless qualifies as one of many nation’s biggest 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 numerous 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 simple to imagine.
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 widespread with its coastal counterpart. On the prehistoric sand dunes of central Wisconsin, Invoice Coore labored his trademark magic, routing a enjoyable, agency and truthful course round a heaving canvas. After a gap tee shot from a large 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 sport’s nice punchbowl greens.
6. Erin Hills (Hartford) [Y, P]
Erin Hills is a contemporary course whose foundations had been laid eons in the past, when glaciers sloughed their manner throughout central Wisconsin, roiling the panorama of their wake. Much more lately, Michael Hurdzan, Dan Fry and Ron Whitten took their flip, shaping a burly however sleek structure the place Brooks Koepka gained 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 can be maybe most putting on the tumbling fairway of the twelfth gap.
7. Sand Valley – Sedge Valley (Nekoosa) [Y, P]
courtesy
In his lengthy and heralded design profession, Tom Doak has just about carried out all of it. What remained on his want checklist was to construct a course impressed by the nice heathland layouts of England. At Sand Valley, he lastly obtained 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 beneath 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 proper angle. Greens, too, have ample motion, and approaches to them are sometimes difficult by rises within the land that shroud the goal from view. Sedge Valley is a reminder that dimension does certainly matter, and that larger isn’t at all times finest.
8. Pine Hills (Sheboygan)
9. Sand Valley – Mammoth Dunes (Nekoosa) [Y, P]
True to its identify, this broad-shouldered design takes benefit of a few of 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 often known as a staunch defender of par, McLay Kidd deliberately softened his strategy right here, with fairways so broad they’re troublesome to overlook, and myriad floor sport choices that permit for pleasant entry to beneficiant greens. The purpose right here is magnificence, not intimidation, and the top 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 the most effective wooded parcels that Dye was ever given, studded with hills and stitched by way of by a creek. The famed architect additionally benefited from an proprietor who supplied him carte blanche, permitting Dye to create one in every of his most difficult checks. The calls for are available in many styles and sizes, from angled greens set on plateaus to risk-reward par-5s with water lurking. Among the many hardest pictures 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 reduce lately, 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]
Getty Photographs
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 timber, and the brand new par-3 twelfth as soon as a lone peninsula in the course of the swamp. Now these holes well join the structure. One in every of Blasi’s favorites additions is the par-4 fifteenth, the popular angle for the strategy protected by a strategically positioned, right-side fairway bunker. Superintendent Matt Smith has catapulted SentryWorld into the most effective maintained programs within the nation, serving to it land the 2023 U.S. Senior Open.
