A look at the steel framework of the new Oakland Hills Country Club clubhouse
A video released by the Oakland Hills Country Club shows the steel framework of the new clubhouse. The original club house was destroyed by fire in February 2022.
Provided by the Oakland Hills Country Club
Michigan has dozens of excellent private golf courses and country clubs.
Some are among the best in the United States and the world.
Golfweek, part of the USA TODAY Network like the Detroit Free Press, has released its highly anticipated 2025 rankings of each state’s best private golf courses, including the top 15 in Michigan.
And the names at the top are among the most celebrated in all of golf.
Crystal Downs retains the title as No. 1 golf course in Michigan. Finished in 1933, it is a top 50 golf course in the world, according to Golf.com.
According to Crystal Downs, the owners convinced the world’s most renowned architect, Alister MacKenzie, to detour his train trip from the west — after finishing work on Cypress Point Golf Club in California — to east coast on his way home to England. MacKenzie, traveling with his associate Perry Maxwell, wasn’t all that enthused and perhaps more annoyed than anything, but his demeanor changed when he saw the dunesland in Frankfort overlooking Lake Michigan.
“For roughly 10 days, he worked feverishly with Mr. Maxwell, selecting the course routing, painting green complexes and creating the eighteen-hole design that remains essentially unchanged today,” the club’s website says. “Mr. Maxwell returned in the spring to supervise the commencement of the course construction, and subsequently returned each summer, living in a farm house aside what is now the 8th fairway, until 1933 when the back nine was finally completed.”
Crystal Downs remains unaltered from its original design, according to the club. It is one of two MacKenzie course designs in Michigan; the other is at the University of Michigan, ranked in 2022 by the Detroit Free Press as the No. 1 course in metro Detroit.
The top five private golf courses in Michigan, according to Golfweek, stayed the same as 2024. The restored Oakland Hills (South) in Bloomfield Township is No. 2, Kingsley Club in Kingsley is third, Dunes Club (nine holes) in New Buffalo fourth and Franklin Hills in Franklin fifth. See the entire top 15 below.
Golfweek’s rankings come from a rating panel of hundreds of everyday golfers, who evaluate courses from 1-10 based across 10 criteria, and file a single, overall rating on each course. Criteria include routing, greens, variety and memorability of par 3s, 4s and 5s, and course conditions. Those overall scores are averaged to produce Golfweek’s annual Best Courses lists.
If you’re looking for Michigan’s best public golf course options — from the more than 650 to choose from — we already covered Golfweek’s top 20 in Michigan.
Find the complete list of Michigan’s top 15 private golf courses, as ranked by Golfweek.
Michigan best private golf course rankings for 2025 by GolfweekCrystal Downs Country Club, Frankfort (last year’s ranking: 1)Oakland Hills Country Club (South), Bloomfield Township (2)Kingsley Club, Kingsley (3)Dunes Club, New Buffalo (4)Franklin Hills Country Club, Franklin (5)Lost Dunes Golf Club, Bridgman (t7)Meadowbrook Country Club, Northville (6)Orchard Lake Country Club, Orchard Lake (9)Indianwood Golf and Country Club (Old), Lake Orion (t7)Barton Hills Country Club, Ann Arbor (10)Wuskowhan Players Club, West Olive (11)True North Golf Club, Harbor Springs (15)Bloomfield Hills Country Club, Bloomfield Hills (12)
T14. Point O’Woods Golf and Country Club, Benton Harbor (14)
T14. LochenHeath Golf Club, Williamsburg (N/A)
Dropped: Country Club of Detroit, Grosse Pointe Farms (13).
Check out Michigan’s best 20 public courses, and read more from Golfweek’s best private courses.
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Marlowe Alter is an assistant sports editor at the Detroit Free Press and spraying golf aficionado. You can reach him by email: malter@freepress.com.
