Ask ten people who've played everywhere in Chicago to list their Top Ten in town and the lists will look remarkably similar. Here's mine.
MY TOP TEN IN CHICAGO
1. Olympia Fields North: Best combination of terrain, architectural diversity and shot demands in the district. The only so-so hole on the course is the rebuilt par-3 sixth hole and that's one of the tougher birdie holes out there, even if it is a relatively easy par. The 3d and 14th holes are two of the very best two-shotters in the country and the par-3 16th is one of the best one-shotters in Chicago.
2. Butler National: It completely fulfills its mission statement to provide a stern test for the best players in the game. Every single hole on the property is demanding and not only because of length or created hazards; the angle of attack into each green is ridiculously demanding, requiring a very high and accurate ball to shallow pin locations. Not the most scenic golf course in town, but you're so damned mad at your score that you're reluctant to look up anyway.
3. Medinah #3: For those of us who grew up playing difficult, narrow, tree-lined parkland golf courses, this is the hardest and best example in town. Some complain that it is monotonous, but if so, the monotony comes from its relentless length, narrowness and demanding greens. Three of the par-3's cross Lake Kadijah and look too similar for diversity's sake, but all are terrific holes in their own right. The par-4 12th hole is one of the best par-4's in the world.
4. Chicago Golf Club: Part museum, part funeral parlor, part architectural template hall of fame, this golf course is sublime and delightful at every turn. It's quiet, stuffy and nothing but fun...as long as you're on the golf course trying to decipher some of the golf engineering feats, that is. The redan and punchbowl are two of the best examples that you'll find anywhere.
5. Shoreacres Club: This is probably my favorite golf "experience" in Chicagoland. Located hard by Lake Michigan without a decent view of the water, save a glimpse from the 9th and 18th greens, this course is nonetheless singular because of its landforms, with multiple ravines that pierce the course at different spots and a couple ingenious burns, ditches and ponds. Redan, Biarritz, Cape, you name your Seth Raynor pleasure and you'll have a great example here. The two-shot 11th hole is surely the best short par-4 in town. The simplicity and elegance of the Locker Room/Card Room are just a mere appetizer for what lay awaiting if you're lucky enough to have dinner on the bluff. Oh, My, as Dick Enberg might say.
6. The Beverly C.C.: My internal bias probably has this a couple places too high, but there is something entirely beguiling about the Bev. Two demanding nine hole rectangular plots divided by an arterial street and hemmed in on each side by another arterial street and a freight line and located a half mile from a trauma center and on a direct line to Midway Airport, there is absolutely no reason to suspect that you're in for anything other than urban terror when you pull up to the door. To the contrary, you find golf as the way it was meant to be played on a golf course that is plenty demanding for the low handicapper even if the pros would now tear it apart. Best set of par-5 holes in Chicago and an argument can be made that the five par-3 holes are one of the best sets in town. Having said that, the two-shot 15th hole is the best hole on the course. Just make sure you get a bag of Buds for the first tee and have the phone number to the locker room ready for refills.
7. Excepting the fact that it is located in bucolic Glencoe and that it is not populated by a bunch of traders, lawyers and steel parts company owners like Beverly, Skokie is as close to Beverly as you'll find in town, since it's a Donald Ross course, renovated smartly by Ron Prichard, the same tag team as the Bev. Some really great holes, from the demanding starting hole to the phenomenal 8th hole with the plateau green to the crazy hard (if played as a par-4) finisher, this is great old-time golf that can keep up with today's equipment.
8. North Shore: Sort of off the radar in recent years, this is the only golf course with Alister Mackenzie's name on the blueprints in town. It's probably entirely Colt & Alison's work, but some great work it is, especially considering that it's on a dead-flat piece of property. They turned vanilla into mocha here with gargantuan bunkers carved on angles into fairways, demonic and demanding putting surfaces and long par-4's that test the mettle of great players. Just a phenomenal track.
9. Knollwood: Another Colt & Alison tester that is in the process of being renovated by the very capable Keith Foster, Knollwood is a great suburban sanctuary for the game. Not overly difficult unless you're playing from the tips to Brazilian-waxed greens, Knollwood is nonetheless a superb test of the game. A lot of great holes here, but the short dogleg left #2 and the par-5 tenth are real standouts. There's only one bad hole on the course.
10. Flossmoor: This is a bit of a stretch, but because I was a longtime member at Flo-Mo, I had to stick it in the list. Even before Ray Hearn retooled Flossmoor recently, it was a tremendous track with amazing history. They hosted the PGA back in the 20's and Bobby Jones once carded seven straight 3's, including an eagle at the tenth. The front side is pretty flat with only a creek and a couple irrigation ponds, but the back is a hilly plot with Butterfield Creek jutting in and out on a bunch of the holes. The four finishers are really good, but would be better if 17 was converted to a par 5 and 18 to a par-4. Without a doubt this is the best set of 18 greens in the Chicago district, with a lot of internal contour and side to side break, as compared with the standard, rust-belt back to front tipping.
HONORABLE MENTION: I haven't played Black Sheep, but hear great things. Same for Old Elm. Olympia South would make the top ten except for a couple holes on the back nine. It's front nine just might be the best nine hole set in town, however! People quietly talk up Glen View Club, but I've never made it out there. I made it back to Kemper Lakes last year and absolutely loved it. As compared with Conway, which has slipped in my estimation, Kemper has grown. It is demanding, but fun and a reasonably easy walk for such a big golf course. Also, if one wants to stretch the geographical boundaries and include Southwest Michigan, Lost Dunes is an exceptional golf course and Doak did a terrific job of figuring out the routing on a tough piece of property that is bisected by an interstate highway. The Dunes Club, Keiser's nine-holer in New Buffalo is one of the special places in golf in America, plain and simple. Finally, Point O' Woods is a great RTJ track in Benton Harbor where I've lost several dozen Titleists trying to hit the ninth green.
I thought it might be fun to list the top so-called hidden gems in Chicago. These are courses that are hidden sometimes by exclusivity and difficulty of access, but more often because the club tends to draw only from its immediate community for members and doesn't therefore generate much talk outside of town. This list is all private clubs, I'll leave it to others to compile the list of publics.
Top Ten Hidden Private Club Gems in Chicagoland
1. Exmoor: Just a terrific golf course on a jagged edged piece of property in Highland Park. It's a much better track than its neighbor, Bob O'Link, which gets most of the chatter. This is a Ross/Prichard special, in the mold of Skokie and Beverly. It's not nearly as formidable as either of those courses, but it's plenty difficult, interesting and demanding. It has a pseudo-Redan par three that's just diabolical and a beautiful looking 18th hole that ends with a great view of their West Wing lookalike clubhouse.
2. Butterfield: Even before the recent Steve Smyers renovation, Butterfield was one of those clubs that nobody really talked up, because it was only known as a pretty tight Oakbrook area community club located near the beastly Butler. Smyers' renovation just might put it on the map, although there's the typical carping by a certain percentage of the membership bemoaning the bunkers, mounding and internal contouring on the greens, not to mention the fact that four or so of the 27 holes feature rectangular greens. Too many angles for the Micks with Money crowd I guess!
3. Glen Oak: The course needs a haircut here and there, but it's on a gently rolling piece of property ideally suited for a parkland golf course. Solid set of par 4's and par 3's.
4. LaGrange: This is a Bendelow/Langford/Mark Mungeam offering in the western suburbs. They did host a Women's Open about twenty years or so ago, but it's still under the radar. Mungeam is the architect who redid Olympia North in advance of the Open and you'll see reminiscent bunker shaping at LaGrange, but on a smaller scale. They have a phenomenal short par 4 (#12?) that is probably only second to Shoreacres #11 in that category. A great test of golf on a small plot of pretty flat land.
5. Edgewood Valley: A neighbor of LaGrange, Edgewood just celebrated its 100th Anniversary of being ignored by most of us idiots in Chicago! The course is set on a huge, hilly parcel of land and features some of the most severe but still fun greens I've ever played in Chicago. All 18 holes are fun and there are only one or two that try to over-quirk the modern player. Great fun.
6. Indian Hill: Home to the Murray brothers in the caddying days, this bit of Blue-blood Americana is quite possibly the hardest "short" course you'll find in Chicago. I'd send them Pete Dye's chainsaws, Thunder and Lightning, if I thought they'd use them, but they love their willows and silver maples up there in La-di-dah Winnetka, I guess. The par 3's and most of the par 5's are short, but they have a raft of stout par 4 holes. It's on a small piece of land surrounded by $5 million dollar homes of the social ruling class, but their locker room is straight out of the 1920's, complete with a loft level and a table of Republicans playing dominos! A great experience and a vastly underrated golf course in terms of difficulty.
7. Sunset Ridge: Its neighbor North Shore rightly gets a lot more attention, but this William Diddel gem is nothing but fun. It doesn't kill you with length or ridiculous bunkering, but the doglegs and the greens will conspire to make you shoot higher than you'd like. Another course that desperately needs barbering. I counted thirty conifers within thirty yards of a green on a couple holes, but if you Photo-shop them in your mind, you can see what a special place it is.
8. Medinah #2: Ryan Potts doesn't want anybody to know about Medinah # 2 because the members all refer to it as the Ladies Course. The # 1 course is plenty tough for me, but the #2 course is all about fun. Wedges into a bunch of greens and some great old-time Tom Bendelow greens that are pretty much untouched. It's a great course to play in the afternoon after you only had two pars on #3 and you want to enjoy the bag of Budweisers on the cart. Yes, Melvyn, we like to take a cart on the back 18, but really it's only to hold the beer, vodka and cigars, all of which are medicinal after the big course slayed us in the morning.
9. Oak Park: A great old-fashioned neighborhood club in a western suburb nearly adjacent to the city of Chicago. It's a Donald Ross course that needed renovation and a chainsaw party. It got a Rick Jacobson re-do and a huge thunderstorm that the grounds crew took great advantage of and removed hundreds of trees without having to take a vote that probably wouldn't have turned out the right way.
10. Old Elm: Okay, unlike the others I haven't played it, but if I haven't played it, it must be a hidden gem, right Bunky? I'm TOLD that it had original Ross greens, short but fun par 5's and that the tunnel-vision tree problem has been eradicated. All I need to do is suck up to Mike Keiser a lil bit to get out there, but I haven't set about that task yet. Maybe next year!
I don't have the balls to print the Ten Private Clubs in Chicago to Claim Sickness if Invited, but I will say that Rich Harvest Links is at the top, even though Jerry Rich is one of the great men in golf. He ain't no architect and he's hamstrung the men who have attempted to fix the many issues with the course.