Butler National Golf Club

Few private clubs in the Chicago area carry the mystique of Butler National. Designed by George Fazio and his nephew Tom Fazio and opened in 1972, the course was built on land owned by the Butler family — the same family behind the adjacent Oakbrook Shopping Center empire — and it announced itself immediately as one of the most demanding private tests in the Midwest. The design is relentlessly strategic, with water coming into play on the majority of holes and a routing that rewards patience and precise shot-making far more than raw power.

Butler National spent years as the home of the Western Open, one of the PGA Tour's oldest events, hosting the championship through much of the 1970s and 1980s and attracting the era's biggest names. That tournament pedigree gives the club a competitive DNA that lingers in how the course is maintained and presented.

Oak Brook itself sits in DuPage County just west of Chicago, a prosperous suburb whose open, mature landscapes suit the course's parkland sensibility. Butler National remains one of Illinois' most respected private layouts.