Top 200 golf courses in America? 2025 list features 3 in Minnesota, 7 in Wisconsin
Golf Digest has been releasing top 100 course rankings in the United States annually since 1966, and its 2025 rankings were unveiled Tuesday. Minnesota had just one course in the top 100, while Wisconsin nabbed four spots. There are more, however, in the "Second 100 Greatest" list.
The top Minnesota course is Interlachen Country Club in Edina at No. 64 overall. Here's what Golf Digest wrote about it.
When Bobby Jones won the 1930 U.S. Open at Interlachen (completing the second leg of what would become the game's first Grand Slam), fellow competitor Gene Sarazen insisted the course was tougher than everything but Oakmont. In the decades that followed a series of architects including Robert Trent Jones, Geoffrey Cornish and Brian Silva worked to keep Interlachen's edge, but nothing could staunch the march of time that made the course one-dimensional through the shrinkage of greens and the maturation of the hundreds of trees that had been planted, shading fairways and masking the property's natural land movements. Enter Andrew Green in 2023, who was given the resources to strip back the layers and rebuild the course based on the blueprints Donald Ross developed in 1922 when he remodeled the course. Interlachen's edginess is back, with ominous, strategically arranged bunkers guarding greens and fairway lines, and the expanded putting surfaces presenting a range of come-and-get-me hole locations that haven't been seen in ages. The restored bunkering shines a spotlight on Interlachen's wondrous undulation, punctuating focal points like the shared promontory of the second and seventh greens and the majestic rise toward the fortress putting surface of the par-5 12th.
The five courses in Wisconsin that made the top 100 are Milwaukee Country Club in River Hills at No. 97; Sand Valley: The Lido in Nekoosa at No. 69; Erin Hills Golf Course in Hartford at No. 49; and Whistling Straights: Straights Course in Sheboygan at No. 29.
You may be wondering where the likes of The Quarry at Giants Ridge, The Wilderness at Fortune Bay, Hazeltine National Golf Club, and The Classic at Madden's Resort are in the rankings?
You'd be right to wonder considering three of the four cracked Golf Digest's top 100 public course rankings in 2023 (the last time public rankings were released).
However, Hazeltine is the only one of the bunch to even crack Golf Digest's "Second 100 Greatest" list. Hazeltine, home to the PGA Championship in 2002 and 2009, the Ryder Cup in 2016 and the KPGA Championship in 2019, made the second list at No. 137.
Hazeltine will also host the 2026 KPGA Championship and the 2029 Ryder Cup.
Only one other Minnesota course made the Second 100 Greatest list: Spring Hill Golf Club in Wayzata, checking in at No. 107.
Three other Wisconsin courses made the second 100: Sand Valley Golf Resort: Mammoth Dunes in Nekoosa (165); Sand Valley in Nekoosa (134); and Blackwolf Run: River in Kohler (128).
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