Chicagoland Golf Scene

The four-man scramble is one of the most enjoyable formats for team competition in golf. After all, finding one decent shot out of four is a welcome proposition to many golfers. Beginning this spring, golf clubs across the country will be able to compete in The Great American Scramble and vie for the coveted title of National Champions in Las Vegas.

After the longstanding Buick/Oldsmobile Scramble shut down in 2005, golfers were left without a national scramble competition. PGA Professional Wayne Stone decided to change that. Stone created an event aimed at bringing excitement, camaraderie and team-building experiences back to golfers through the scramble format.

Stone, who is the director of Golf at Windermere Country Club in Windermere, Fla., decided there was enough interest to create a national scramble just by gauging the response of his members to the loss of the Buick event. Encouraged by the feedback, Stone set out to create the national tournament that was currently missing from the golf world.

Learn to Score Better

It is the Catch-22 of golf. If we only scored a little bit better, we’d be more excited about practicing more, which would lead to even better scoring. Yet most every infomercial you’ve ever watched says the “key” to a better score is a new club or a training aid when what we probably need is obvious; some time with a teaching professional who is passionate about helping us improve our score so that we can conquer that Catch-22.

But we’re afraid to break the cycle. “Golf School” sounds more like a prison sentence than an opportunity for a golf epiphany. We fear we’ll be embarrassed in a group of players who are better than we are.

The United States Golf Academy at the Indiana National Golf Club at Swan Lake Resort in Plymouth, Indiana wants to smash that stereotype. The Academy has some revolutionary thoughts, and passionate pros, who want to change the way you think of “golf schools” and get you on the road  to enjoying the game more than ever. 

For a perfect resort golf experience without leaving Chicagoland area proper, look no further than to Foxford Hills Golf Club in Cary.

At a charming, Southernstyle clubhouse Foxford Hills Golf Club, with a spacious veranda evokes the Carolinas. Inside, it’s bright and airy with a well-stocked pro shop, an inviting bar and grill, and accommodating locker rooms. Hospitality is friendly, not fussy, and always courteous. Attention to detail is everywhere. It’s resort golf ambiance, and you haven’t yet set foot on the golf course.

Ah, the golf course. The first six holes are relatively wide open, with expansive greens, spacious, undulating fairways, and discrete water and wetlands. The look is windswept and coastal; you almost expect to hear the muted thunder of the ocean and cries of gulls. Many of the next 12 holes, especially the back nine, meander up and down hills framed by mature hardwood trees. Sixty distinctive MacKenzie-style bunkers populate the course. The flavor is vintage Carolina...the conditioning, consistent with what you’d find at elite private clubs. 

GALENA, Ill. - Eagle Ridge Resort & Spa holds itself in high esteem, claiming to be the ultimate Midwest golf destination. Recent accolades heaped upon the course back up those assertions.

The golf program is central to the resort and was recently named "Best Course in the State" (2008) by GolfDigest and "Best in the Midwest" (2007) by Travel + Leisure Golf magazine.

Located 150 miles west of Chicago, this hidden gem is situated in the Mississippi River Valley's natural landscape of rolling hills and panoramic scenery.

If you can find better greens, play them!

Like Lee Iacocca, the automaker icon, Tim Miles, Sr., a longtime golf course operator in northern Illinois, is just that passionate about Oak Grove Golf Course in Harvard. One of Golf Digest’s Top 20 Places to Play in Illinois, Oak Grove has garnered raves from those who’ve ventured out to the quiet, gorgeous layout just 75 minutes northwest of Chicago, near the Wisconsin border between Woodstock and Lake Geneva.

In fact, Miles will go a couple of steps farther, stretching his claim of “best public greens you’ll play” to a 300-mile radius of the course, and promising that if you don’t agree with the quality and value of the Oak Grove experience, he’ll make it right for you.

There was a time when this 27-hole Greg Martin design really was a hidden jewel, literally a “diamond in the rough” in Plainfield. But with the western growth of Chicagoland over the past few years, the Links at Carillon isn't on the outskirts any longer. In fact, while this former piece of Illinois farmland inside the gated community of Carillon still feels like a getaway, it is now right in the backyard of thousands of avid Westside golfers, and has never been more ready to be explored by your foursome or group outing.

Owned by a group of golf lovers, the The Links at Carillon gets all of their attention, and it shows in the lush landscaping of the course (the group also bought a Michigan tree farm years ago and transplanted over 1,600 trees to the golf course) and its spectacular conditioning.

When it comes to high-quality golf at an affordable price, Chicagoland golfers can find a gem of a course just down I-90 in Rockford.  The Aldeen Golf Club is an 18-hole Rockford Park District golf course featuring manicured bentgrass greens, challenging water features, beach bunkers, and breathtaking landscape.

Aldeen is rated 4-stars by Golf Digest “Places to Play;” listed as one of the Top-30 new public courses built in 1991; and named one of the “Top-50 courses in the USA under $50” by GOLF Magazine in September 2004. Last year, a story in the Chicago District Golf Association Magazine included Aldeen as one of the CDGA’s toughest 25 public golf courses, called “Chicago Bears.”

The folks who operate Klein Creek Golf Club in Winfield like to stress that their course is in the best shape of any in Chicagoland’s western suburbs, that the greens are the best maintained and the layout’s true beauty is in the detail work of the mnicuring of this Dick Nugent masterpiece. Golf Digest’s Places to Play agrees, awarding this course located just 10 minutes off I-355 and only 45 minutes from Downtown Chicago, 4-Stars!

Besides the immaculate landscaping of the 230 acres, you’re likely to notice very early on there’s a whole lot more water to this layout than just Klein Creek, the course’s namesake, with water coming into play on 15 of the 18 holes. On the very first hole, water impacts both the tee ball and the approach shot and water runs down the entire right side of the par-4 second just to confirm the premise. 

Klein Creek Golf Club isn’t terrifically long (only 6,700-yards from the tips with a par of 72), but knowing your own game and where you can place the ball is paramount given all the water throughout the course. With the water and lack of enormous length, there are risk-reward opportunities on just about every hole, with the intermediate tees measuring from 6,300 yards to just under 5,800 yards and the forward tees at about 4,900 yards.

How well is Tiger Woods playing these days? Well enough that we can reinstitute a measuring stick for this week’s PGA that we thought had been put away for good with the rise of Phil and Vijay and all the Australian—Tiger vs The Field.

After all, the last time a major was played at Medinah’s #3 Course, Tiger won it (the ’99 PGA), beginning a run of 5 out of 6 majors that ran through the ’01 Masters. If that weren’t enough to make him the favorite, he’s won his last two starts, and finished second the other start since July 1st (at the Western Open at Cog Hill, also in Chicagoland). And if you forget the fiasco at Winged Foot when he tried to make his first tourney back from the death of his father the U.S. Open, he’s finished first, third, fourth, first, second and first in his last six majors.

It doesn't take a lot of detective work to figure out just how intriguing the golf is at Cantigny Golf and Tennis, the 27-hole Roger Packard-designed layout on the 500-acre McCormick estate in suburban Wheaton. But just in case, there's a bunker in the middle of the ninth fairway of the Lakeside Course shaped in the silhouette of the famed comic strip crime fighter Dick Tracy.

The Tracy bunker is just one homage to the great past of Cantigny (pronounced can-tee-nee and named by Col. Robert McCormick for the French city where the first allied offensive of World War I took place). The golf courses, annually rated 4-1/2 Stars in Golf Digest's Places to Play, were built to honor a pledge in Colonel McCormick's will that the estate serve as a source of recreation, education, and welfare for the people of the state of Illinois.