Green Hills Golf Club

Mt. Vernon sits at the southern edge of Illinois, where the flat agricultural plains of the Midwest begin giving way to the rolling, more wooded terrain that characterizes the lower part of the state. It's a region with a modest but genuine golf culture — county-seat towns like this one have long supported their local clubs as community anchors, places where the same groups of members have played together for decades.

Green Hills Golf Club carries that character. A par-71 layout suggests a design built around the land as it was found — likely a shorter or more sharply doglegged hole somewhere in the routing that nudged the card below the standard 72, which often reflects a practical, ground-up design philosophy rather than a stroke of compromise.

For visiting golfers, this is the kind of course where local knowledge matters and the regulars are worth talking to. Southern Illinois doesn't draw the national golf press, but it offers honest, unhurried golf in a landscape that has more visual interest than outsiders tend to expect.