Golf bag slung over my shoulder, I hail a cab from in front
of a Chicago hotel, ride seven blocks to Randolph Station and
board a southbound Metra train, which rolls out of the Loop at 7:48 on a Saturday morning. The Sears Tower and
John Hancock Building receding into the skyline behind us as the train passes
meatpacking plants and northbound payloads of timber, coal and sulfuric acid. It
skirts the southern edge of Lake Michigan, easing its way through the suburbs of
Hazel Crest and Calumet.
Fifty minutes later, my train slows and the green meadows
appear to the left. The clock tower of the clubhouse looms in the distance and
dozens of teenage boys and girls wearing light blue shirts mill about the caddie
shack. I collect my gear, disembark and walk through a pedestrian tunnel beneath
the tracks. Emerging into bright sunlight, I enter Olympia Fields Country
Club.
Olympia Fields’ charter was signed in July 1915, with
University of
Chicago football coach Amos
Alonzo Stagg serving as first club president. The club had 36 holes by 1918, a
third course two years later and four courses by 1922.
A mammoth Tudor clubhouse was completed in 1925. Its stucco
walls and red-tiled roofs meander seemingly forever over the
seven-and-a-half-acre site the building occupies, making it the largest
clubhouse in the world. There are 40 sleeping rooms and meeting rooms upstairs.
Other than golf, early pursuits included tennis, horseback riding, polo,
swimming, bridge, table tennis, bowling, shooting, skating, archery and
trapshooting. There was even a barbershop and 24-hour staffing by a nurse.
The club hired Willie Park Jr., the noted Scotsman and
two-time British Open winner, to design its fourth course. Park was doodling in
course renovation as early as 1890 but didn’t make his mark until unveiling two
prized English courses, Sunningdale and Huntercombe, in 1901. He plowed new
ground in golf architecture with his raised greens and tees, tiered putting
surfaces and manmade hazards. Park lived in America from 1916 to 1924, authoring some 70
courses, including Maidstone on Long Island.
Olympia Fields was one of the last commissions he accepted prior to falling
fatally ill in 1924.
His 18 holes—today known as the North course—are the only
intact remnants of the original architecture at Olympia Fields. The first three
courses were decommissioned following World War II, casualties of the club’s
need to retire debt. Surviving holes from each of the three were combined to
produce the current South course, itself a difficult and winsome layout.
Park was charged at the outset with building a course that
would confound the nation’s top players. In 1925, just three years after
opening, Olympia Fields hosted the PGA Championship, won by Walter Hagen. Johnny
Farrell edged Bobby Jones by one shot in a 36-hole playoff for the 1928 U.S.
Open title. Jerry Barber won the 1961 PGA in a playoff with Don January.
Over the years, the North has remained a formidable
examination, and it provided an able test for the 2003 U.S. Open, won by Jim
Furyk. Prior to that event, under the direction of Mark Mungeam, the club
rebuilt all 87 bunkers, digging them out and lowering each an average by two
feet. Over time the floors of the bunkers had risen, and some fairway bunkers
were hardly any lower than the fairways they bordered. Mungeam also rebuilt the
greens, improved the irrigation system and added length wherever possible.
Meanwhile, it’s still just a pleasant train ride south from
the bustle of the Loop—golf fields where
wanna-be Olympians play for the love of the game.
