Courses
Guides
SIGN UP
Guides

The best golf courses in Montana

By Derek Duncan and Stephen Hennessey
May 29, 2025
Save for later

For the first time in the history of our course rankings, Montana is represented by three golf courses in our top 200. Rock Creek Cattle Company has become a fixture in our list of America's 100 Greatest Golf Courses, jumping 25 spots in our previous ranking and settling in at 65th this time.

The Reserve at Moonlight Basin earned its first national recognition on our rankings last time and sits at 181st in this ranking. Stock Farm Club, which ranked first in Montana for much of the past 25 years, never had enough ballots to qualify for our national rankings. We finally got enough panelists to visit Hamilton, Mont., to evaluate Stock Farm after some renovations in recent years, allowing Big Sky Country to make history in Golf Digest’s rankings in 2025-’26. (Yellowstone Country Club in Billings made our first two lists of America’s 200 Toughest Courses in 1966 and again in 1967-’68. We had only seven panelists evaluate it over the past 10 years, so it dropped from our list this year.)

We also have our eyes on Crazy Mountain Ranch, a new Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw course currently under construction near Livingston, which is slated to open sometime in 2025. Montana golf keeps getting better.

More From Golf Digest

Golf Digest Logo
America's 100 Greatest Golf Courses

Below you'll find our 2025-'26 ranking of the Best Golf Courses in Montana.

Scroll on for the complete list of the best courses in Montana. Be sure to click through to each individual course page for bonus photography and reviews from our course panelists. We also encourage you to leave your own ratings … so you can make your case for (or against) any course that you've played.

Save for later Public
8. Northern Pines Golf Club
Kalispell, MT
3.3
2 Panelists
Previous rank: 8
The Andy North- and Robert Packard-designed Northern Pines Golf Club opened in 1996, set on the floor of the Flathead Valley in Kalispell. The course is highlighted by its two distinct nines, the front being fashioned after Scottish links-style layouts, while the back nine tumbles over more intense elevation and snakes along the Stillwater River. Off the tee, you’ll find wide driving areas protected by tall fescue and man-made mounding as well as firm and fast greens with challenging slopes. The standout hole at Northern Pines is the par-4 14th with a forced carry over the river off the tee and an approach to an intimidating riverside green.
View Course
Save for later Public
7. Old Works Golf Club
Anaconda, MT
4
8 Panelists
Previous rank: 7
On the site of a former copper-mining operation, Old Works, designed by Jack Nicklaus, has the feel and conditioning of a high-end course but is priced more affordably. An old smelter smoke stack, touted as the largest free-standing masonic structure in the United States—at 585 feet—towers in the distance. (Hint: Most putts break toward it.) As a nod to the area's mining history, Nicklaus used black slag—a byproduct of smeltering ore—instead of sand in the course's bunkers.
View Course
Save for later Private
6. Spanish Peaks Mountain Club
Big Sky, MT
4
5 Panelists
Previous rank: 6
Just over an hour northwest of Yellowstone National Park, the Tom Weiskopf-designed Spanish Peaks is a scenic mountain course set 7,000 feet above sea level. Weiskopf built nearly every hole to have panoramic views of the surrounding forest and mountains, immersing the golfer in the beauty of the Montana landscape. The course can be demanding off the tee, with native grasses and dense forest guarding most fairways.
View Course
Save for later Public
5. Wilderness Club
Eureka, MT
4.1
9 Panelists
Previous rank: 4
Sitting far closer (just eight miles) to the Canadian border than any major city in Montana, Wilderness Club was an ill-timed residential development venture a decade ago. Thus, the once-private club now accepts outside play, much of it from day-trip Canadians. The stunning design benefits from quick-draining sandy soil native to the site, some of which is used in free-form waste bunkers on several holes. There are many lakes in play, including long Grob Lake that dominates the left side of the par-3 17th and par-5 18th. Three mountain ranges surround the site: the Whitefish, Purcell and the Rockies. Pine trees are prevalent but not imposing. In an age of destination golf, Wilderness is still undiscovered by most American tourist golfers. Perhaps its appearance on America’s 100 Greatest Public will change that.
View Course

More From Golf Digest

Golf Digest Logo
America's 100 Greatest Public Courses
Save for later Private
4. Iron Horse Golf Club
Whitefish, MT
Previous rank: 5
The Tom Fazio-designed Iron Horse Golf Club is located in northwest Montana between the steps of Big Mountain and the shores of Whitefish Lake. The picturesque golf course meanders through thick forests and over constant elevation changes with fairways protected by tight driving windows and tricky bentgrass greens requiring accurate approaches from sloping lies. The routing displays an obvious connection to the natural surroundings as wildlife often roam the fairways and greens built to follow the existing slopes of the terrain.
View Course

More From Golf Digest

Golf Digest Logo
America's Second 100 Greatest Golf Courses
Save for later Private
3. Stock Farm Club
Hamilton, MT
4.4
12 Panelists
Previous rank: 3
Situated in the Bitterroot Valley in western Montana near the Idaho border, Stock Farm Club was developed in part by finance executive Charles Schwab. The club features a Tom Fazio design ranked among the best in the state, with terrific views of the Sapphire Mountains. Fazio took advantage of the dramatic setting by creating numerous elevated tees, which were restored in 2019 along with the greens and bunkers. Other activities at this exclusive private club include fly-fishing, horseback riding and shooting. Over the decades, Fazio's new courses have frequently debuted in high positions in the top 100 and Second 100 Greatest rankings, but Stock Farm is the rare specimen that has matured into the club, gaining in stature in the 25 years since it first opened.
View Course
Save for later Private
2. The Reserve At Moonlight Basin
Big Sky, MT
4.5
14 Panelists
Previous rank: 2
The Reserve at Moonlight Basin was just the third course from Montana to appear in the national rankings when it debuted in 2023, joining Tom Doak’s Rock Creek Cattle Company and Robert Trent Jones’ Yellowstone Country Club, which surfaced in the 1960s on the list of America’s “Toughest” courses (a fourth joins this year, Tom Fazio's Stock Farm at 185th). Located near Big Sky at an elevation of 7,500 feet above sea level, the Jack Nicklaus design is the highest (in altitude) in the rankings. Big Sky is apt—the course was built on the site of an old ski mountain with 360-degree panoramas of the surrounding Rockies, and the impressively large holes race, slalom and dive across circuits of terrain that twist in different directions through the wilderness. With numerous downhill shots through the thin air, the championship yardage of 8,000 yards doesn’t seem egregious, and scoring well actually requires a high degree of control in judging where the ball will carry and settle. The epic vistas of holes like the par-4 first and par-5 17th (at over 700 yards) are sights to behold, for golfers and non-golfers alike.
View Course
Save for later Private
1. Rock Creek Cattle Company
Deer Lodge, MT
4.7
20 Panelists
Previous rank: 1
In the Rocky Mountain foothills north of Deer Lodge, Mont., Tom Doak fashioned a splendid inland links from a working cattle ranch. His broad, looping routing starts in pasture, makes a slow but steady climb to the seventh tee, then plays through pines and over the ravines of Rock Creek, as gorgeous a fly-fishing stream as can be imagined. At the ninth, the course bursts back into the open, atop rolling hills offering hogback, punchbowl and sideslope fairways, then rolls downward and homeward, finishing back along the stream. Doak moved little earth because it was so rocky. Greens are huge to fit the scale, and bunkers are shaped to emulate those blown out by constant winds. Rock Creek Cattle Co. is high-country golf at its finest.
View Course

More From Golf Digest

Golf Digest Logo
Our Complete Ranking of the Best Golf Courses in Every State

• • •

Explore Golf Digest's new Course Reviews section where you can submit a star rating and evaluation on all the courses you’ve played. We've collected tens of thousands of reviews from our course-ranking panelists to deliver a premium experience, which includes course rankings, experts' opinions, bonus course photography, videos and much more. Check it out here!

Share story

Trending Now