Golf & Race Tracks

[Colin Sheehan]

Donal,
Thank you for the suggestions. I added four of them to the slideshow and to the list on my earlier post.


I already had the one for Paris CC included. The other one nearby looks like a few tiny practice greens so I didn't include. Originally, I was looking for proper holes that played over and into the center of the track and then played out, like the examples that are at the start: Musselburgh, Great Yarmouth, Northumberland, Ludlow and Wien in particular.

[Daryl "Turboe" Boe]

Brickyard Crossing?


It's cars, not horses, not sure if it counts.

I was scrolling through to see if anyone else mentioned this.  Brickyard, Brookline, and Old Musselburg were the three that popped into my mind immediately when I saw this subject line.


I have been blessed to have been there twice when the Indy cars were doing practice and time trials! The Golf is vintage Pete Dye and having cars flyby at 200 miles an hour is kind of a cool distraction!

[Paul Rudovsky]

The first time Golf was included in the Olympic Games was in 1900...at Compiegne Golf Club, northeast of Paris (not far from Morfontaine) and as I recall from prior readings was inside a horse race track.  The course is a NLE having closed permanently in 2017 (per Wikipedia and confirmed to me by the GM at Morfontaine).  It is the only Olympics golf course I have not played.  Opened in 1896 and designed by W. Freemantle...par 70 5551 meters.


I do not think it has been mentioned before on this thread.

[Colin Sheehan]

Thanks, Paul.
That's an interesting one. I added an image from 2010 to the slideshow and of it presently in its shuttered state. It had some attractive-looking bunkering. Surprised it died off so recently.

There's some interesting weaving of the various tracks. And I really liked the figure eight of the additional interior loop of the track. I had not seen that at any of the other locations.

[Jim O’Kane]

Although I rarely visit GCA much these days, as I rarely have anything worth contributing or writing other than silly experiences or questions to people I don't even know, I found it surprising no one has mentioned Arlington Park, in Arlington Heights IL, the recently demolished thoroughbred race track, later owned by Churchill Downs, who sold it and tore it down in hopes of the Chicago Bears NFL team moving from the Chicago downtown lakefront out to the NW suburbs 12 miles away, and also where Secretariat ran a race in 1973 a few weeks after becoming the first horse in 25 years to win the Triple Crown.

In fact, the crazy thing about this board is there are a couple of guys on here that I realized grew up in or near Arlington Heights as well.

I'm still looking for aerials, but back in the day, Arlington Park was a very cool and interesting place...something you don't realize until later in life when you move away or it all gets torn down for good.

It was a massive thoroughbred race track complex.

It had a top of the line Hilton Hotel with a water park, and Las Vegas lounge that was huge and lured Las Vegas type acts and singers to its hotel concert hall. Frankie Valli and people like that. It was like a little bit of Las Vegas. Behind the hotel and adjacent to the racetrack was a lighted 9 hole golf course. I think there was also a driving range. The course was not much to speak of that I remember, but it was still a fun little course that you could play up until 10pm at night.

Right next to the golf course was the western-most part of the racetrack, the clubhouse first turn.

Also, the racetrack was lighted. You might think this was for night-time harness racing, but it wasn't. Arlington Park hosted night-time flat track motorcycle racing under the lights for only a couple of years in the early 70's until the neighboring residents of Rolling Meadows to the south and Arlington Heights to the north, south, and east complained to city officials of the noise, smoke, and rowdy fans late into weekday nights in the summer. I think the last race was in 1971 or so.

I could go on and on about Arlington Park. My late brother and I both worked at the racetrack, he at the Classic Club, high above the grandstands where the aristocratic thoroughbred owners gathered and other captains of industry to eat, drink, and watch their horses, or the Catherine Brach, the heiress to the Brach's candy fortune whose horses were juiced by vets recommended by the Chicago Outfit, and, whose murder has still never been solved to this day, or how the grandstands mysteriously burned to the ground in 1984, and was never solved.

When I was back in those neck of the woods 2 weeks ago and drove by, all that's left of the area is the hotel, which has been converted into apartment residences, and some of the stables on the far NW end of the property.

Man, Arlington Park golf course. That place was great. I still love golf and horses to this day.

If anyone has any pics or knows more of the history, please share. I hang on to Arlington Park memorabilia like a hoarder.

[Jim O’Kane]

I did find this incredible written history, btw, here at this link:
https://dnrhistoric.illinois.gov/content/dam/soi/en/web/dnrhistoric/preserve/recordation/il-habs-ck-2023-3.pdf
...and goes into thorough detail of the history of Chicagoland horse racing back to the late 1800's.

I however, much prefer the strange and often weird oral history you learn from those that were there, or experienced it, that when you read stuff like the document above, you can hear that person's story if you read between the lines closely.
On page 20 of the document is the first mention of the golf course and the double-decker driving range in 1963, LONG before the nonsense of TopGolf came about. They were ahead of their time.