Bolingbrook Golf Club

Bolingbrook Golf Club is a municipally-owned Arthur Hills design in the southwestern Chicago suburbs, routing 18 holes through open prairie and wetland terrain with strategic bunkering and a challenging championship layout that plays to 7,104 yards from the Gold tees.

Bolingbrook Golf Club is a municipal facility owned by the Village of Bolingbrook, Illinois, designed by Arthur Hills and Steve Forrest and opened in July 2002 — a public course that has evolved from a well-regarded Chicago-area daily fee facility into a nationally recognized competitive venue that has hosted professional golf at the highest level. The course occupies former open farmland in Will County southwest of Chicago, which Hills and Forrest transformed through extensive earthmoving into a landscape of rolling fairways, elevated tees, large mounds for visual drama, and seven interconnected lakes that come into play throughout the routing. Hills and Forrest designed Bolingbrook to play to more than 7,100 yards from the championship tees — a length appropriate for the competitive events the course would eventually host — while providing accessible play from the shorter tee positions that make the municipal facility available to the full range of golfers in the Chicago metropolitan area.

The design's most distinctive features are two island green par-3 holes: the 6th hole, a 151-yard "party hole" with a true island green and rough behind for marginally long approaches, and the 15th hole, playing 156 yards to another island green that has become among the photographed holes in Illinois public golf. Both holes create the spectator drama and the player anxiety that make par-3 island greens among the most memorable architectural statements in American course design. Golf Magazine named Bolingbrook Golf Club one of the "Top Ten You Can Play" in its rankings of the best public courses available to unaffiliated golfers, making it one of only two Arthur Hills designs in Illinois to receive that designation.

The combination of a public ownership model and a championship-caliber course quality at Bolingbrook reflects the broader municipal golf investment philosophy that the Village of Bolingbrook applied to the project — a commitment to providing residents with a facility that would compare favorably to the private clubs in the surrounding Chicago suburbs. The course's competitive history reached its peak when LIV Golf selected Bolingbrook for its Chicago Invitational tournament, first hosting the event in 2024 when Jon Rahm won with a score of 199 (-11) over three rounds. LIV Golf returned to Bolingbrook for the 2025 Chicago event, establishing the municipal course as a recurring stop on the professional series and bringing international television coverage and record crowds to a facility that had previously served primarily the Will County and Chicago southwest suburban golfing community.

The selection of a public municipal course — rather than a private club — as a regular LIV Golf venue was noted nationally as an unusual choice that reflected Bolingbrook's genuine competitive quality. The course operates as part of the Village of Bolingbrook's parks and recreation system, giving residents access to a facility whose championship credentials have been confirmed by both national rankings and professional tournament hosting. The combination of a public ownership model, an Arthur Hills-designed layout, and a tournament hosting history that now includes LIV Golf professional competition gives Bolingbrook Golf Club a profile unique among Illinois municipal golf facilities.