Butler National
Golf architect snobs hate parkland courses opened in the 50’s through 70’s. Surprisingly, Butler National gets some golf magazine lovin’ despite it being both a heavily tree-lined course AND opening in 1972. Personally I like traditional parkland courses. And I think RTJ and Tom Fazio produced some pretty good work in the “dark ages” of golf course design (Butler was one of the first designs of the latter who teamed up with his Uncle George). It ranks 49th in the US in Golf Digest’s 2021 ranking and has been a mainstay on all three major top 100 lists since its opening.
Why the love then? Well, conditioning and a straight-forward course that is demanding without being tricked up is what you’ll find here. And demanding is an understatement. This course is damn tough. Water, length, deep gnarly rough, complex and well-bunkered green complexes and most recently Tom Fazio came back here to deepen the fairway bunkers. Oh my. Butler is also a mainstay on every ranking of the world’s toughest courses – and that makes for an intimidating experience (I took a 6-7-6 on the opening three holes before the Bloody Mary kicked in). After that though, if you hit your shots, you can survive (though the par five seventh is 600-yards of a fader’s worst nightmare).
Butler is an all-men’s club – not a very popular feature in today’s uber-inclusive world. Personally, I wouldn’t clamor to join an all-men’s club but then again I don’t fault the membership for sticking to what they want to do. Look this is a damn tough club without pool or tennis that wouldn’t attract a lot of families anyway and any female members would likely need to be pretty good. But it’s a private club, they want to be all male and they even lost the Western Open because of it and they still don’t care. Let them do what they want. I personally wouldn’t want to force myself into an all-female club or bitch and moan that they’re excluding me. But I guess that’s just me.
To the course. I just played here in July 2021 with our host Joe and work buddies Todd and John. The clubhouse, locker room, men’s grille (though I guess all bars at the club are men’s grilles), range, etc. were all fantastic. It was caddies and walking which I do enjoy as it is a treat – not my usual golf round. We played the combo tees which were about 6,500 yards and a 144 slope (I told you this is damn tough).
First hole is a great elevated tee down to one of the easier par fours on the course (a dogleg left with a pond to clear on the approach). Even after a decent couple of shots on the range it was a shanked drive and then a sliced breakfast ball off the tee. I gathered myself for a nice layup then plunked one into the pond with my gap wedge. I did get up and down for a six but not a way to burn one of the very few sub 400-yard par fours on the course. Two is the first of the BRUTAL par 5’s. It only took me two to get within 125 yards but guess what? I was in the middle of the fairway which was too far right and was completely blocked out by some trees so had to burn another shot to get a clear view to the green. Then a slightly thin but not horrible 56-degree wedge ran off the speedy green. A crappy chip out of the thick green-side rough. A two putt and voila a 7. Two more doubles would follow on the mid-length third and fourth holes and was looking at a score that would likely approach my weight – and I ain’t skinny. Then I settled down.
The par threes are great. The fifth is the first of those and it’s a pretty hole surrounded by water on all sides. We played from about 165 yards and I hit a decent six iron to about 15 feet and drained the downhill slider for a two. I played okay from there on out until 18 where I finished up in my pocket after an OB drive, shank approach shot and a skuller into the pond.
As mentioned above seven is a 600-yard par five that plays along a creek and curls like the letter C though probably my favorite and most memorable hole on the course. I really liked Butler National. It’s tough and not a course I would want to play every week. But as I said to our host, it’s like the prettiest girl in high school. Even though you hear she’s a bitch, it doesn’t mean you wouldn’t want to date her and brag about it to your buddies if you did. (Though I didn’t use the word date but am trying to keep this PG rated.)
We did Butler after a meeting and were able to avoid going into Lori Lightfoot’s shoot-a-rama city. I would love to do a whole write-up of that racist, Beetlejuice-looking cat turd of a human being but I try not to get too political here. You can have a great time in Chicagoland staying suburban and not worrying about getting shot in the city (but we did go to Wrigley for a Cubs-Phillies game and went to Swift & Son’s and the Smokehouse – both new, next door to the stadium and really nice). We also grabbed a Lou Malnotti’s to go and took it to The Bar in Des Plaines – this was a great little divey bar that had $2,50 Miller Lites and a great yokels vibe. There’s also a Gibson’s right in Rosemont that is great and a Hugo’s (same group) right down the street in the casino that offers the same great steaks as well as more seafood fare,
So I played two of five bucket-list courses in the Chicagoland area (played Olympia Fields and Butler and want to play Medinah, Shoreacres and Chicago GC). I rank OF slightly above Butler. It was a little more fun of a course and while the experiences from the staff were both great, Olympia was like something I’ve never seen before outside of Cascata. Again if you get the invite to either, GO!
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