Brown Deer Park Golf Course

Brown Deer Park was designed in 1929 by George Hanson and belongs to the Milwaukee County parks system. Its place in the record is fixed by one week. In August 1996, Tiger Woods played the Greater Milwaukee Open here as his first tournament as a professional. He made a hole in one at the fourteenth, finished tied for sixtieth, and collected the first money of a career that changed the economics of the sport.

The GMO was played here for years before and after that week, which is the unusual thing about the course: a county-owned municipal that held a PGA Tour event for more than two decades. Very few public courses in the United States can say the same, and fewer still are still open to anyone who books a tee time.

What it asks of you

Tree-lined and tight off the tee, with small greens and enough length from the back tees to trouble good players. A creek runs through eight of the holes and is the defining hazard, in play off the tee on some and on the approach on others.

The ground rolls more than Milwaukee’s flat reputation suggests, and the routing uses it. The par threes carry real length, and the par fives are set up as risk-and-reward rather than as three-shot holes, which is what made the course a workable tour venue at a modest yardage. It plays firm through the short Wisconsin summer and is exposed to wind off Lake Michigan a few miles east.

What players say about it

This is a public course with a substantial review record. The notes below summarize recurring themes across specialist golf sites, traveler review pages and player discussion threads. They are other people’s opinions, not ours: we have not played the course. We report what comes back repeatedly rather than isolated remarks, and we do not name or quote individual reviewers.

What comes up in its favor

• Conditioning is praised consistently and by a wide margin, with greens described as true and quick enough for the standard of course.
• Reviewers repeatedly rank it among the very best municipal courses in Wisconsin, and more than one puts it second in the state.
• The design is credited with being difficult without being punishing, which is the balance a county course most often fails to strike.
• The Tiger Woods history is a genuine draw, and the fourteenth in particular gets played with more attention than it otherwise would.

What comes up against

• Green fees have risen well beyond what most players expect of a county course, and value is the point on which reviews divide most clearly.
• The course is tight off the tee, and players who spray the ball find the tree lines unforgiving.
• The season is short. Wisconsin golf here runs roughly April to October, and shoulder weeks can be cold and wet.
• Being popular has the usual consequence: weekend tee times go early and rounds on busy days run long.

Getting there and when to go

The course is fifteen minutes north of downtown Milwaukee and around half an hour from Milwaukee Mitchell airport. It combines naturally with a Wisconsin trip built around Erin Hills, Whistling Straits and Blackwolf Run, at a fraction of the cost of any of them.

The season runs from roughly April to October, with midsummer giving the firmest turf and the busiest tee sheet. Booking goes through the Milwaukee County golf system.

Green fees

Rates and tee times are handled by the county golf system and vary by day and season. See the course’s own site.

How this page was made

The factual frame comes from public sources: OpenStreetMap for the location, Wikipedia and published reporting for the history and the tournament record, and the county golf system’s own site for access and booking. The opinion section summarizes public reviews and player discussions read in September 2026; we report recurring themes rather than individual voices, and we do not reproduce or attribute quotes.

We have not played this course, and nothing here is a substitute for that. The course has not paid for this page, has not seen it before publication and has no say in what it says. If you know the course and something here is wrong or out of date, write to us and we will correct it.