An excellent thread, and nearly certain to break that well known maxim that as a thread approaches 5 pages, hell breaks loose etc.
I recognize that we have some big personalities and knowledgable GCA buffs here in Chicago, but I wish we could see a thread like this for some other cities in the US as well.
Terry, if you were to have written this thread ten years ago, would your hidden gems have been the same? Put differently, have you seen a dramatic shift in maint., conditions, redesigns, etc. in the last 10 years? (the "lost decade")
Mike,
The last decade has been characterized by a certain number of clubs seeing "the light" and others resolutely sticking their heads in the sand. The past ten years has featured a number of clubs that have had thoughtful renovations and major tree clearing. Others have done absolutely noting but watch their bunkering look more "tired" and their trees grow horizontally into lines of play. Some have done a little bit.
Let's take Rolling Green for an example. It's your typical 6400 yard from the tips, jammed into a small piece of land suburban community country club with enough money to do things right. Nice little golf course. It's also your typical midwestern country club that screwed the pooch on the tree issue starting in the 1960's when the Dutch elm disease hit. Most clubs had dozens of elms that provided the shade that everybody thought their courses needed, even if the course was built, like most in this area, on old farm land. When the elms died, with their majestic upward branching pattern, they were replaced mostly by maple, ash and river birch trees, which are really not suitable for golf courses. Rolling Green is a disaster of a place tree wise. It's hard to see the golf course sometimes. In any event, a couple years back, they redid the bunkers in a nice fashion, even put in the expensive, synthetic white sand, but they didn't cut down a single silver maple, pine or locust tree and they should cut down 1000.
Contrarily, Flossmoor woke up one day and realized that they were sitting on a golf course that had been slowly damaged by decades of neglect and decided to get educated and repair the gem. I introduced an influential member to Brad Klein and the rest is history. Brad educated my friend and my friend educated the club and they redid their golf course, buffed up their historical treasures and burnished their south suburban jewel. AND they cut down 1000 trees.
Olympia, Beverly, Exmoor, Skokie, Park Ridge, Butterfield and many others accomplished variations on the same theme, perhaps only Olympia South and Butterfield with the same panache as Flossmoor. It's a small tragedy that so many great clubs with great golf courses won't deal with the tree issue in the right way. Mark Studer started all this with Oakmont and the influence has been just terrific around the country. The progressive clubs have moved in the right direction while the others still deal with the dark ages, having to punch out laterally from underneath an austrian pine or a frickin' hawthorne tree to get back in play.
Socially, with the notable exception of places like Westmoreland, the country club life is twisting on the vine, dying. Sad, but true and it's a cultural shift that is unlikely to be reversed.