9 holers- Downer's Grove & Tam O'Shanter

[Steve_ Shaffer]

9-holers are still common. 9-holers blending the pasts and presents of Downers Grove Golf Club and Tam O’Shanter Golf Course are tough to replicate...

There are 3,676 9-hole golf facilities in the United States, according to the National Golf Foundation. Scattered among all 50 states, each 9-holer provides respites and joy to millions of small-town, mega-city and suburban golfers. Eighty-five percent of 9-holers are open to the public. Doug Myslinski, a golf construction and design devotee employed by Wadsworth Golf Construction Company, considers courses of this ilk “the heartbeat of what golf is and how we can grow it.”
Myslinski lives in the sprawling Chicagoland region, an inland golf mecca supporting an abundance of 9s, 18s, 27s, 36s and gargantuans. Within every golf subset, a few courses possessing incomparable pasts demonstrate modern vitality. Downers Grove Golf Club and Tam O’Shanter Golf Course operate in this subset.
Downers Grove and Tam O’Shanter are municipal facilities occupying contrasting Chicagoland tracts. Owned and operated by the Downers Grove Park District, Downers Grove Golf Club is a hilly site in a prosperous southwest suburb. Owned and operated by the Niles Park District, Tam O’Shanter is a relatively flat northwest suburban course flanked by dense industrial, commercial, residential and Forest Preserve District of Cook County plots.

Read more:
http://magazine.golfcourseindustry.com/article/may-2022/historic-heartbeat-golf-downers-grove-tam-oshanter-chicago.aspx

[Tim_Cronin]

Nice find.

[Jim O’Kane]

A thoroughly enjoyable read. Thanks for posting this. I grew up in Arlington Heights, so naturally I had to devour this.

[Adam Lawrence]

The Downers Grove course is Macdonald’s original Chicago GC course from 1893, before the club moved to Wheaton, iirc the first eighteen hole course in the US. I have long been keen to know how much, if any, of it survives.

[Buck Wolter]

I ran into Andy "The Fried Egg' Johnson in the bar at Lawsonia last week as he was hosting an event there the next day. Dimitri from Downer's Grove made the mistake of trying to defend DGGC. Andy led a very impassioned critique of what a wasted opportunity DGGC is -- how terrible several of the holes are and that it could be a Winter Park comp with a good plan. A couple of old ladies enjoying their Friday Night Fish Fry looked a little shocked.


Later I said I liked Mammoth Dunes and he dropped his head and walked back to his bar seat.

[Steve_ Shaffer]

Not bad:




Downers Grove and Tam O’Shanter combined to host more than 80,000 rounds in 2021 despite cold-weather climates.

[Buck Wolter]

Not bad:




Downers Grove and Tam O’Shanter combined to host more than 80,000 rounds in 2021 despite cold-weather climates.

That was Dimitri's defense -- Andy was unmoved by the commercial success. In general that seems to be public golf in Chicago -- doesn't have to be good to be busy.

[Ira Fishman]

Tam was our “upscale” course when we were kids versus our rota of Edgebrook, Billy Caldwell, and Chick Evans. I am of course biased, but Chicago golfers are a bit obsessed. My Father played well over 200 rounds a years in retirement which is not easy when you factor in Chicago weather.


Ira