Bob o LInk in Chicago.......

[mark chalfant]

Great club ......but hows the design. Rolling terrain,very good greens ?  variety, memorable par 3s.  equal of Beverly or Sh'acres ?

[cary lichtenstein]

Bob o Link was a top 100 course for a long time. I never understood why people thought so highly of it. I think it may have been political. It is an all male club and they did eventually give in and put a public phone both in the parking lot.

Mike Ditika was a member there and there are a bunch of great stories.

[Tommy Williamsen]

Bob o Link is a little like Milwaukee CC.  They are both good tracks and top 100 contenders.  The atmosphere at Bob 0 Link is better.

[PCCraig]

There are hundreds of stories thatcome out of this club and it's all male membership...and I admit, it does have a fun atmosphere about it.

As for the golf course, while it is a good and solid, it mostly strikes me as a very well maintained country club course...in many ways no different than a normal north shore chicago club. I think they members have a way of talking the club up more than it deserves.

One neat thing about the place though; all of the trees' (lots of willow) branches are cut something like eight feet off of the groud...tall enough that you always have a swing in the deepest parts of the forest.

[Marty Bonnar]

One neat thing about the place though; all of the trees' (lots of willow) branches are cut something like eight feet off of the groud...tall enough that you always have a swing in the deepest parts of the forest.

Pat, Pat, Pat,
I apologise, but THAT is one of the dumbest statements I have ever seen on GCA (and I've read nearly all of Pat Mucci's Posts...)
Sorry, but maintenance of that sort is just plain wrong. If you're wild enough to put a ball in the deep 'forest', then you must be prepared to suffer the PROPER consequences.

FBD.

[Patrick_Mucci]

FBD,

It may have more to do with agronomics then a golfer's swing.

Willows are used in very wet areas.
They can have a shallow root system that can cause serious injury

It's hard to grow good turf under the drip line, hence the trimming may not be "play" oriented.

Just thought you'd like to read another dumb post.

[PCCraig]

whoa whoa whoa...haha.

I never said that cutting the trees that way would be my personal choice I just thought that it was 1) Maybe a good indication of how the course reflects the membership and 2) a little different than anything I have ever seen in the past.

[Jeff_Brauer]

I see many high end clubs doing the same thing in the name of "fairness" - one club I know spends $100K annually on tree trimming of this sort.  Presumably, it has to go down sooner or later.  However, if a member can ask why he shouldn't have the same shot out of the bunker as he has from the fw, why not ask if he should have the same shot out of the trees as he has from the fw?  

As to Bob O Link, the same neighbor who belonged to Medinah and introduced me to golf (No. 3 was my first play) also joined BOL as a second club, so I got to play there a fair bit.  It was there that I first lost a "Double Secret Chicago Press" bet, of course, not even knowing what it was, since it was, well....secret, until they announced it!

Pretty flat on the front nine, especially, but good holes nonetheless.  One of the few with the first hole also being no. 1 handicap hole.  It didn't seem particularly over treed 25 years ago, but a lot can happen in that time frame.

[PThomas]

if the trees are trimmed like that in the name of fairness  I think that is really dumb

why even have trees then?

such anti-tree talk I just don't get

solution:  learn to hit the ball in the fairway!

[tlavin]

Bob O'Link is a delightful and interesting golf course.  It is inferior to both Beverly and Shoreacres, but that shouldn't be taken as a demeaning statement.  I think that anybody knowledgeable in golf course architecture would find the course satisfying.  I'm sure that most would think it overplanted with trees, willows in particular.  Fortunately, most of the willows appear to be about thirty years old, so they should be falling down sometime soon.

[RJ_Daley]

If there is a crappier tree than a poplar, it is a willow.  Do they even have such a messy good for nothing tree in Scotland, Marty?

[Jeff_Brauer]

Cottonwoods are the worst for supers. Not only do they break up in every storm, but the bottoms of the leaves are white, causing many lost balls, so they must be raked very frequently.

The general rule in treedom is that the faster a tree grows, the weaker it is. Cottonwoods, Willow, Poplars and Silver Mapes all fit this pattern.

[PCCraig]

May I ask what exactly a "double secret chicago press" is? haha, sounds like something at bob o'link.

I know Jordan and Tiger go there to play every once in a while, and there was a story from a couple years ago on a weekday where the Head Pro had to tell them they had to stop hitting their tee balls on the first and wait another 10 min because the course was officially closed.