County Rankings / Maryland
The Best Golf Courses in Montgomery County, Maryland
No county in America concentrates private golf power like Montgomery County. Congressional, Burning Tree, Chevy Chase, Columbia: within a few miles of the DC line sit clubs that have hosted presidents, majors and the game's governing class for a century. Twenty courses make the county list. Almost all the great ones are private, which is itself a finding, and the ranking below says so plainly while scoring the golf first. The public game here is better than its reputation, but it is not beating this private lineup, and pretending otherwise would be a lie told for balance.
1Congressional Blue Course
Opened May 23, 1924, twelve miles northwest of the U.S. Capitol, founded so members of Congress could meet business leaders. Devereux Emmet built the original 18, Robert Trent Jones Sr. split the routing in 1957 to create the Blue, and Andrew Green transformed it in 2020, removing trees, widening fairways and rebuilding greens across nearly 50 new acres of natural areas, winning Golf Digest's Best Transformation in 2021. The Blue has hosted U.S. Opens in 1964, won by Ken Venturi, 1997, and 2011, when Rory McIlroy won at a record 16 under par, plus a PGA Championship in 1976, a U.S. Senior Open in 1995 and the KPMG Women's PGA in 2022. Golf Digest ranks it No. 67 in its 100 Greatest for 2025-26 and No. 1 in Maryland, with a PGA Championship in 2030 and a Ryder Cup in 2037 ahead. No argument survives against that record.
2Burning Tree Club
C.H. Alison designed it in 1924 in Bethesda and Gil Hanse has recently refined it, emphasizing strategy over brute force. Golf Digest ranks it No. 4 in Maryland. The membership has included presidents, cabinet officials and ambassadors for decades, and the golf matches the guest list: rolling terrain, subtle greens, positioned bunkers. It concedes Congressional the championships and counters with the purer members course.
3Chevy Chase Club
The deepest restoration story in the county. Donald Ross remodeled the course in 1910, C.H. Alison's redesign, built by William Flynn's firm, was completed in 1923, and Andrew Green's $18 million restoration, modeled on Alison's early 1930s design from period aerial photography, opened in 2025. Maryland summaries call it among the state's fastest rising courses after the work. A club founded in 1892 spending that money to recover a century old design is a club that knows what it owns.
4Columbia Country Club
Walter Travis work in Chevy Chase, host of the 1921 U.S. Open, ranked No. 4 in Maryland by GOLF Magazine in 2024-25 in the club's telling, behind only Congressional, Baltimore and Burning Tree in that ordering's company. Private, tight and short by modern championship standards, which in a county of stretched modern tests reads as character rather than limitation.
5Four Streams Golf Club
Steve Smyers and Nick Price built it in 1998 in Beallsville farmland, northeast of Bethesda. Golf Digest calls it a stout players course with sweeping cape and bay bunkers, one of the four Maryland courses outside the Baltimore to DC corridor worth the drive, and the Washington Golf Monthly panel ranks it No. 10. The rural setting is the point: the county's power clubs cluster at the DC line, and Four Streams proves the farmland end of Montgomery County can hold a serious course.
6Bethesda Country Club
Ed Ault's 1949 course, completely renovated by Arthur Hills beginning in 1992. It hosted the LPGA Championship, a women's major, four straight years from 1990 to 1993, won by Meg Mallon in 1991 and Betsy King in 1992. A private club with a major championship run of its own, ranked No. 45 in the Washington Golf Monthly panel, and the strongest of the county's second private tier.
7Lakewood Country Club
The current championship course in Rockville is a Rees Jones design, Edmund B. Ault having worked the property before him: par 72 at 7,119 yards, a 74.4 rating and 134 slope. GolfStyles Magazine ranked Lakewood the 6th best private course in Maryland and 4th in greater Washington. The 11th is rated the toughest hole on the course; the short downhill par 3 17th produces the most holes in one. Length and teeth, in a county that rewards both.
8Blue Mash Golf Course
The best public course in the county, and the first name on this list a visitor can simply book. Arthur Hills designed it in Laytonsville in 2001: par 71 at 6,885 yards, a 73.0 rating and 134 slope, mixing links style, parkland, woodland and water holes, with a 10,000 square foot putting green. Visit Maryland calls it a top course near Washington DC, consistently. At No. 8 in this company, a public course has nothing to apologize for.
The rest of the twenty are not filler. Congressional's Gold Course, built in 1977 from the other Emmet nine and nine from Tom and George Fazio, Argyle's recently renovated 6,500 yard par 71 in Silver Spring, Kenwood's short walkable parkland from 1930, Manor, Woodmont's two courses and TPC Potomac complete a private bench most states cannot match, while Hampshire Greens, an upscale municipal built on a former landfill in the county system, and Little Bennett, Michael Hurdzan's hilly 6,770 yard test under Sugarloaf Mountain views, carry the public flag with Blue Mash. The county's honest weakness is access, not quality: the top seven doors are all closed to the public. Set against the Maryland state ranking, Montgomery County is the state's engine room, and Congressional Blue, reborn under Andrew Green with a Ryder Cup on its calendar, is the engine.