# The Best Golf Courses in Iowa City

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-iowa-city-ia/

[The Course Rankings](/)

Town Rankings / Iowa


A deep sand bunker guarding a green. Photo: Santeri Viinamäki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Iowa City runs on the university, and its golf does too. The Hawkeyes play their home golf at Finkbine, students learn the game there between classes, and the rest of the town drives a few minutes into Coralville when it wants a public tee time without the college crowd. That is the whole bench. Two courses carry this ranking, and we would rather say that plainly than dress it up.

What the town has is a split that a lot of college towns would envy: one course built for a Big Ten program, one course built for everybody else. We score the golf first, then the day, then what it costs you to get on. On the golf alone, the order is not close. On the day, the second course makes its case.

It is also worth saying what Iowa City golf is not. This is not a resort market and there is no private club hiding behind a gate to complicate the argument. The golf follows the academic calendar. Spring and fall are the seasons that matter, summer belongs to whoever stayed in town, and winter is a rumor you wait out. A two course town with that rhythm lives or dies on whether its two courses cover the two jobs, the serious test and the regular game. Here, they do.

## 1Finkbine Golf Course

Finkbine is the Hawkeyes' home course, a Dick Phelps design from 1953, and it plays like a course built to sort out college players. Phelps worked in an era when a university course was expected to be a real examination, not a student amenity, and Finkbine has kept that character across seven decades of Big Ten golf. It is the home ground of a Division I program, which means it is maintained and set up to a standard no other course in this town is asked to meet.

The honest concession is access and atmosphere. A university course belongs to the university first. Tee sheets fill with students, alumni weekends swallow Saturdays whole, and a visitor can feel like a guest at somebody else's family dinner. None of that changes the golf. If you get one round in Iowa City, this is the round, because it is the only one in town that was designed to test players who are actually good.

## 2Brown Deer Golf Club (Coralville)

Brown Deer, just over the line in Coralville, is the public pick, and the town treats it that way. This is where Iowa City golfers go when Finkbine is full, when they want a round that moves, or when they are bringing somebody who does not need a Big Ten examination before lunch. It is everyday golf done at a public standard, and every golf town needs exactly one course that fills that role without apology.

The concession runs the other direction here. Brown Deer does not pretend to be Finkbine, and ranking it second is partly a ranking of the calendar: it is open to you, on your schedule, in a way the university course is not always going to be. What it cannot do is give you the top end. There is no hole at Brown Deer that a college coach would use to find out who can play.

That is fine. Most rounds played in Iowa City in a given year are played by people who want a fair course, a tee time that exists, and a walk that does not punish them for having a lecture at two. Brown Deer wins that year, every year, and only loses this ranking because the ranking starts with the golf itself.

So the list is short because the town is honest about what it is. One course for the Hawkeyes, one course for everybody, and a short drive between them on a fall Saturday when the whole place is wearing black and gold.

**Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.