Spirit Hollow Golf Course

Rick Jacobson got the Spirit Hollow commission in 2000 because he was the only one of the three architects owner Randy Winegard interviewed who told him his original design ideas were bad. The 7,550-yard course winds through 400 acres of Mississippi River Valley bluffs about 10 minutes southwest of Burlington, a former cattle ranch reshaped into one of the most architecturally serious public courses in the Midwest. Golfweek named it the #1 Best Course You Can Play in Iowa in 2018 and 2019, and Golf Digest and Golf World currently rank it #2 in Iowa. The course rating is 74.8 / 134 from the Gold tees, with multiple tee options that bring it down to manageable distances. Greens fees sit in the $-to-$$ band, well below the design quality would suggest. For Midwest road-trip groups it's the headliner of an Iowa loop alongside Tournament Club of Iowa.