6 Illinois Golf Courses Ranked Among Nation's Top 100: Golf Digest

ILLINOIS — Six of the nation's best golf courses can be found in Illinois, according to the eminent golf publication.

Golf Digest recently published "America's 100 Greatest Golf Courses."

The list looked at six pieces of criteria: shot options, challenge, layout variety, aesthetics, conditioning, and character.

"We are proud to say this year's edition is the most scientific ever—with our 1,800 panelists submitting more than 85,000 evaluations over our 10-year scoring criteria," Derek Duncan and Stephen Hennessey wrote for the publication.

Among the top 100 courses, which include landmark golf destinations including Augusta National – home of the Masters – and Pebble Beach are six Illinois courses topped by the Chicago Golf Club in Wheaton, which ranked 13th.

Pine Valley Golf Club in New Jersey was again ranked the nation’s top course by the magazine.

Here are the Illinois golf courses ranked in the nation’s top 100:

13. Chicago Golf Club, Wheaton (Private)

55. Shoreacres Golf Club, Lake Bluff (Private)

75. Butler National Golf Club, Oak Brook (Private)

85. Canyatta Golf Club, Marshall (Private)

93. Medinah Country Club: No. 3, Medinah (Private)

99. Olympia Fields Country Club: North, Olympia Fields (Private)

Here's what Golf Digest has to say about Chicago Golf Club, which also ranked No. 13 last year:

"Chicago Golf Club opened the country’s first 18-hole course in 1893, built by C.B. Macdonald, the preeminent golf expert in the U.S. at the time. Two years later Macdonald built the club a different course after the membership moved to a new location in Wheaton, Ill.: “a really first-class 18-hole course of 6,200 yards,” he wrote. Members played that course until 1923 when Seth Raynor, who began his architectural career as Macdonald’s surveyor and engineer, redesigned it using the “ideal hole” concepts his old boss had developed 15 years earlier (he kept Macdonald’s routing, which placed all the O.B. on the left—C.B. sliced the ball). For reasons of history and practicality, no major remodels have occurred since then, allowing the club to merely burnish the architecture by occasionally upgrading worn parts, adjusting grassing lines, and, recently, reestablishing a number of lost bunkers that had been filled in over time."