Butler National Golf Club

Tom Watson, Hale Irwin, and Nick Price all won Western Opens here between 1974 and 1990, and Butler National's reputation as a course that punishes anything less than precision has not softened since. Salt Creek threads through the property in Oak Brook, the oaks crowd narrow fairways, and George and Tom Fazio's unforgiving design still ranks as one of the toughest private tests in the Midwest.

Butler National Golf Club is among the consequential private courses built in the Chicago metropolitan area during the second half of the twentieth century — a George Fazio design commissioned by a singular patron, constructed with remarkable speed, and immediately recognized as a championship test when it hosted the PGA Tour's Western Open in its very first year of operation. The club's origin lies with Paul Butler, the founder of Oak Brook, Illinois, and among the influential entrepreneurs in the western suburbs of Chicago. Butler was a philanthropist and sportsman who had already transformed the Oak Brook area with polo grounds, a sports core, and a carefully planned village before turning his attention to golf. He was an exacting patron with a clear vision of what a championship course should demand, and he chose George Fazio — himself a former Tour professional who had finished in a playoff at the 1950 U.S. Open at Merion — as the designer most likely to translate that vision into a course of lasting quality. In 1972 Butler engaged Fazio to design a course on what had previously been the York Country Club property, and construction proceeded with exceptional speed. Tom Fazio, George's nephew, supervised the build on site, contributing meaningfully to the shaping and construction decisions, and the first round of golf was played at Butler National in 1974.

George Fazio designed Butler National with championship ambition from the outset. The routing stretches roughly 7,500 yards from the back tees and plays to a par of 71, with a difficulty profile built around ten forced carries over water — a number that distinguishes the course even among the most demanding layouts in the Chicago area. Fairways are firm and tree-lined, with angles that require thoughtful positioning rather than simply maximum distance. Greens are elevated and contoured, with slopes and collection areas that punish imprecise approaches. The course's most demanding stretch comes on the back nine, where several consecutive long par fours and a demanding par five test players' capacity to maintain focus under pressure. Golf Digest ranked Butler National 21st among America's 100 Greatest Courses in its 2007 ranking cycle, a position that reflects the enduring quality of Fazio's design thinking. The Western Open, one of the oldest events on the PGA Tour calendar, called Butler National home from 1974 through 1990 — seventeen consecutive editions of the tournament held on the same course.

Winners during this period included Tom Watson (who won twice, in 1977 and 1984), Hale Irwin, Tom Kite, Andy Bean, Scott Simpson, and Mark McCumber — a roster that confirmed the course's capacity to produce legitimate champions under pressure. The tournament eventually left Butler National in 1991 when the club's men-only membership policy conflicted with PGA Tour requirements that host venues maintain non-discriminatory membership practices. Rather than change its membership policy, the club relinquished its role as Western Open host. The loss of the Western Open ended Butler National's run as an annual Tour stop but did not diminish its reputation as among the top private courses in the Chicago area. The club has continued to operate as an invitation-only private facility since the Western Open era, with a membership that has preserved the course's championship-caliber conditioning. Tom Fazio has returned to the course for periodic updates that have maintained the design's integrity while addressing the demands of modern equipment. Butler National remains one of the defining examples of George Fazio's design work — a relatively small design portfolio that also includes Jupiter Hills and Moselem Springs — and stands as evidence that the Fazio family's architectural legacy began well before Tom Fazio's solo career reached its peak.

The course today continues to rank among Golf Digest's top private courses in Illinois and holds a consistent position in national private course rankings. Its combination of championship length, water-defined strategic demands, and a setting at the heart of one of the Chicago area's most distinguished communities gives it an enduring place in American golf's private club hierarchy. The course's deliberate avoidance of external publicity — it operates without any public presence or media engagement — has paradoxically deepened its mystique. For a course that once drew the Tour's best players every year, its retreat into private life has only enhanced the reverence in which the Chicago golf community holds it, cementing Butler National's place as one of Illinois's most admired and least accessible rounds of golf. Butler National's design philosophy has proven remarkably durable across five decades of play. George Fazio built a course calibrated to the demands of championship golf as he had experienced it — a player who had faced Ben Hogan in a playoff at Merion understood intimately what separates courses that genuinely test the best from those that merely appear demanding. The course's ten forced water carries, combined with its tree-lined corridors and elevated greens, create a test of sustained precision that rewards the same qualities in a golfer that Fazio had admired in the champions he played alongside.