Fairfield Golf And Country Club

Par 68 layouts often get dismissed before a golfer even tees it up, but that assumption tends to dissolve quickly at a course like Fairfield Golf and Country Club. A private members' club in southeastern Iowa, it reflects the unpretentious, community-rooted golf culture that defines small-city country clubs across the Midwest — where the game is played for its own sake and the membership tends to know every quirk and contour by heart.

Fairfield itself is an unusually distinctive small city, home to Maharishi International University and a creative, internationally minded population that gives it a character quite different from most Iowa towns its size. The surrounding landscape is classic rolling Iowa farmland — open skies, gentle elevation changes, and the kind of quiet that lets you actually hear the game.

A par 68 typically leans on a collection of short par 4s and par 3s that reward precision and course management over raw power. At a private club, that makes for a layout members can play quickly, know intimately, and never quite stop figuring out.