# The Best Golf Courses in Whitefish

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-whitefish-mt/

[The Course Rankings](/)

Town Rankings / Montana


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

Whitefish is a ski town on a lake at the edge of Glacier country, and its golf has an unusual spine: a 36-hole public facility that has anchored the town's summers since 1936. Thirty-six public holes, the only setup of its kind in Montana, in a town that could easily have gone the gated-resort route and mostly did not. Against that stand a private club of national ambition and a small course out at West Glacier for the park crowds. Three courses, three different Montanas. We score the golf first, then the day, then access, and the top of this list is the purest fight on that rubric anywhere in the state.

Because here is the tension. The best golf in Whitefish is private. The best thing about Whitefish golf is public. A ranking has to choose which sentence it believes, and say why.

## 1Iron Horse Golf Club

Iron Horse gets the top spot on the golf, and it is not a reluctant call. The private club above Whitefish Lake was built to a national standard, the kind of mountain-lake project that gets discussed well outside Montana, and it delivers the most complete course in this ranking: the strongest test, the deepest conditioning budget, and a setting on the lake's high ground that the public facility below cannot match for drama.

The concession is the whole private story, sharpened. Iron Horse is a luxury enclave attached to a ski and lake town, and its No. 1 ranking here will be read by almost nobody who can act on it. Estimates for entry into clubs of this tier run well into six figures, and that figure is an estimate; the club does not publish its numbers, and neither will we. The ranking answers which course is best. On that question, Iron Horse wins Whitefish.

What keeps this from being the runaway it might be elsewhere is the quality of the runner-up. Plenty of private clubs coast past weak public competition. Iron Horse has to beat the best public golf story in Montana, and it beats it on polish and test, not by default.

## 2Whitefish Lake Golf Club

Whitefish Lake Golf Club is Montana's only 36-hole public facility, a ski town's summer anchor since 1936, and if this ranking rewarded what a course does for its game rather than only what it is, it would finish first and it would not be close. Thirty-six holes means two full courses of public golf: room for the town, the visitors, the leagues, the juniors, the twilight crowd, all of it, all summer, at public prices, in one of the prettiest settings in the state.

Ninety years of that is an institution, not a facility. Generations of Whitefish golfers learned the game here while the private money built up the hill. The golf itself is honest public golf in a lake and mountain frame, two courses' worth of variety, and the sheer availability of it changes what kind of golf town Whitefish is. Resort towns across the West priced the public out. Whitefish kept 36 holes for everybody. That is the town's real golf achievement.

It finishes second because the rubric scores the golf first, and Iron Horse's golf, hole for hole and dollar for dollar of maintenance, is better. We note for the record that if you are planning a trip, this is your course, both of them, and the ranking above changes nothing about your week.

## 3Glacier View Golf Course (West Glacier)

Glacier View, out at West Glacier, plays a different role entirely: the course at the park's doorstep, golf for travelers between Glacier National Park days. Its pleasures are situational and real. A round in the morning, the park in the afternoon, mountains in every direction that make a modest layout feel like it is borrowing grandeur, because it is.

Third place reflects the golf, which is the lightest test on this list, aimed at vacationers rather than at examination. Nobody at Glacier View claims otherwise. It is on this list because a ranking of Whitefish area golf that omitted the West Glacier option would fail the travelers who are half its audience, and because a simple course under that scenery has ended more good days than many famous courses you could name. The setting at Glacier View is the headline and the headline is true.

The snow comes off Whitefish Lake's two courses and the town flips from skis to golf without changing its mind about who golf is for. The private club up the hill has the best holes. The public has the best story. We ranked the holes first and the story a very close second.

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