The Reserve At Moonlight Basin

About the club

The Reserve at Moonlight Basin was just the third course from Montana to appear in the national rankings when it debuted in 2023, joining Tom Doak’s Rock Creek Cattle Company and Robert Trent Jones’ Yellowstone Country Club, which surfaced in the 1960s on the list of America’s “Toughest” courses (a fourth joins this year, Tom Fazio's Stock Farm at 185th). Located near Big Sky at an elevation of 7,500 feet above sea level, the Jack Nicklaus design is the highest (in altitude) in the rankings. Big Sky is apt—the course was built on the site of an old ski mountain with 360-degree panoramas of the surrounding Rockies, and the impressively large holes race, slalom and dive across circuits of terrain that twist in different directions through the wilderness. With numerous downhill shots through the thin air, the championship yardage of 8,000 yards doesn’t seem egregious, and scoring well actually requires a high degree of control in judging where the ball will carry and settle. The epic vistas of holes like the par-4 first and par-5 17th (at over 700 yards) are sights to behold, for golfers and non-golfers alike.