Several old-timers claimed Babe Ruth played at Palos Park GC several times when the Yankees had an off-day in town. Other notables said to have been regulars at Palos Park were Joe Louis, Machine Gun Jack McGurn and Al Capone. (Photos: Library of Congress)
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As a testament
to the burgeoning first golf boom in the 1920s, that year the district
earmarked 50 sites on district land in Cook County as suitable for
building golf courses. Half of them were nearby existing surface
transportation – in addition to the major railroads with passenger
service, there were a host of electric lines and trolleys reaching out
from the city in all directions. The farthest course from Downtown
Chicago was Palos Park Golf Course on 107th Street west of 104th Street
(Willow Springs Road), which opened in 1921. The trolley ran along
nearby Archer Avenue.
But the district did not want to go into
the business of constructing golf courses, so it agreed to lend the use
of the land to any community or responsible group of persons who wanted
a golf course.
However, the district did build several on its
own, and one of them, Palos Park GC, debuted with much fanfare. One
article in a 1922 issue of American Golfer excitedly claimed it “can
become the Pine Valley course of the middle west.”
Very little
written information exists on this course; same for any photographic
record. I’ve searched my personal resources and have used the
information gleaned there and through conversations with eyewitnesses
(one is the late Joe Jemsek, who before he worked at and later owned
Cog Hill caddied a few times at Palos Park GC). So this account is the
result of what a persistent, ink-stained wretch could cobble together
with accuracy.
The course was designed by legendary golf course
architect Tom Bendelow, who was based for a time in Chicago and did
over 800 courses in his career. He inherited a marvelous, if not wild
site, thick with forests and diving ravines high on the unglaciated
hills southwest of Chicago between the DesPlaines River and Saganaskee
Slough wetland areas.
Chick Evans was the top amateur in the country when he played Palos Park GC in a grand opening exhibition match.
Other local Bendelow courses include three
at Medinah and Olympia Fields, both of which have hosted U.S. Opens. He
also designed East Lake in Atlanta, recent home of the Tour
Championship.
From an inspection of the site, it appears
Bendelow moved very little dirt in building the course; most likely, he
carefully assessed the land and its elevations, did a routing and let
the district remove the trees.
Palos Park opened early for
public play after 12 holes were finished in spring, 1921. By fall, all
18 holes were complete, playing to par 70 over 6,220 yards. The course
featured the typical scruffy fairways, dirt tees, one water hazard and
“seeded greens” – considered quite the rage in those days. The
difficulty of the course came from the hilly nature of the land; very
seldom did a golfer find his ball on a flat lie. There was a clubhouse
at the end of a winding drive off 107th St., and in 1933 it cost 50
cents to play 18 holes; you could play all day for 75 cents (which is
the true meaning of the term “daily fee”). Caddies were paid 75 cents a
loop.
As part of a grand opening in the fall of 1921, the course
hosted a public exhibition featuring a pro versus and amateur: Charles
“Chick” Evans, Jr. and Jock Hutchinson.
A transplanted Scotsman,
like most golf professionals at that time, Hutchinson was head pro at
Glen View Club for thirty-five years from 1918 to 1953. For many of
those years, he held the professional course record of 64. He won the
1920 and 1923 Western Opens, the 1920 PGA Championship at Flossmoor,
and, returning to his birthplace, the 1921 British Open at St. Andrews.
