In a match for the ages, D.J. and good friend Stephen Watson embarked on the top 10 public golf courses in Wisconsin in under 40 hours.

Beyond the top 25 walking courses in America, we offer 75 other great walkable, publicly-accessible golf courses from affordable munis to high-end resort courses.

Here are 11 of the most significant par-three elevation changes, the kind of exhilarating holes that mess with a golfer’s depth perception and leave them waiting with bated breath for a few extra beats before their tee shot lands.

Craig Haltom has completed another phase of a bunker restoration project he is leading on the Lawsonia Links course in Green Lake, Wisconsin.

Already known to Wisconsin golf fans, at the recent 2023 Chicago Golf Show, Illinois golfers got a first hand look at a portion of what created all the excitement over last year’s opening of the 27-hole putting course at Geneva National Resort, called The Dance Floor.

As audacious as Sand Valley’s growth is, so are the plans for its putting course. It’s set to be around five acres, or well over 200,000 square feet. That’s over twice as big as any other putting course currently in use, including the game’s old-school original: the Himalayas course at St. Andrews in Scotland. For further context, the average green size on the PGA Tour is about 6,000 square feet, so this would be approximately 35 times bigger.

In fact, the home of golf was its inspiration.

It’s a 30,000-square-foot putting green, patterned on the Himalayas putting course at St. Andrews. It is believed to be the largest public-access putting green in the U.S. unaffiliated with a course.

Keiser is the benefactor behind the transformation, and salvation, of a 9-hole municipal course in his hometown of Madison, Wis., that just might be a blueprint for a public golf facility focused on playability, ecology, and perhaps most importantly, community. The nearly 100-year-old Glenway Golf Course has given way to The Glen Golf Park, a muni modeled after the vision of the Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland, with golf coexisting with other community activities.

The village of Three Oaks, Mich. (pop. 1,622), is a sleepy destination in the southwest corner of the state, two miles from the Indiana border. Its terrain is largely flat and fringed with cornfields.

But in the heart of Three Oaks, in the shadow of a renovated factory building, lies a rumpled plot of ground that could pass for a rugged patch of Scotland.

In fact, the home of golf was its inspiration.

It’s a 30,000-square-foot putting green, patterned on the Himalayas putting course at St. Andrews. It is believed to be the largest public-access putting green in the U.S. unaffiliated with a course.

To play 12North, the new par-3 course at Trappers Turn Golf Club, you need only a wedge, a putter and a sense of humor. This place rocks. It also rolls, with green complexes featuring exaggerated mounds, sidewinding ridges, hole-in-one bowls and enough ups and downs to qualify as the Dells’ newest amusement park.

A new 12-hole par-three course co-designed by two-time US Open champion Andy North and Oliphant Golf has opened for preview play at Trappers Turn Golf Club in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin.