Golfer’s Guide Chicagoland Golf Courses Stories

For a perfect resort golf experience without leaving Chicagoland area proper, look no further than to Foxford Hills Golf Club in Cary.

At a charming, Southernstyle clubhouse Foxford Hills Golf Club, with a spacious veranda evokes the Carolinas. Inside, it’s bright and airy with a well-stocked pro shop, an inviting bar and grill, and accommodating locker rooms. Hospitality is friendly, not fussy, and always courteous. Attention to detail is everywhere. It’s resort golf ambiance, and you haven’t yet set foot on the golf course.

Ah, the golf course. The first six holes are relatively wide open, with expansive greens, spacious, undulating fairways, and discrete water and wetlands. The look is windswept and coastal; you almost expect to hear the muted thunder of the ocean and cries of gulls. Many of the next 12 holes, especially the back nine, meander up and down hills framed by mature hardwood trees. Sixty distinctive MacKenzie-style bunkers populate the course. The flavor is vintage Carolina...the conditioning, consistent with what you’d find at elite private clubs. 

If you can find better greens, play them!

Like Lee Iacocca, the automaker icon, Tim Miles, Sr., a longtime golf course operator in northern Illinois, is just that passionate about Oak Grove Golf Course in Harvard. One of Golf Digest’s Top 20 Places to Play in Illinois, Oak Grove has garnered raves from those who’ve ventured out to the quiet, gorgeous layout just 75 minutes northwest of Chicago, near the Wisconsin border between Woodstock and Lake Geneva.

In fact, Miles will go a couple of steps farther, stretching his claim of “best public greens you’ll play” to a 300-mile radius of the course, and promising that if you don’t agree with the quality and value of the Oak Grove experience, he’ll make it right for you.

When it comes to high-quality golf at an affordable price, Chicagoland golfers can find a gem of a course just down I-90 in Rockford.  The Aldeen Golf Club is an 18-hole Rockford Park District golf course featuring manicured bentgrass greens, challenging water features, beach bunkers, and breathtaking landscape.

Aldeen is rated 4-stars by Golf Digest “Places to Play;” listed as one of the Top-30 new public courses built in 1991; and named one of the “Top-50 courses in the USA under $50” by GOLF Magazine in September 2004. Last year, a story in the Chicago District Golf Association Magazine included Aldeen as one of the CDGA’s toughest 25 public golf courses, called “Chicago Bears.”