Chicago Public Golf

I played it a few years ago, but last week my wife and I just grabbed dinner on the deck at Arcadia Bluffs. Absolutely stunning. Check out this picture as the sun begins to set over Lake Michigan. I suggest you grab the larger version and do what my buddy did and make it your desktop wallpaper. You’ll be the envy of the office.

I talked to a guy the other day that did it in a single day (about 8 hours round trip from downtown Chicago). Sound crazy? It’s not, the place is incredible.

Click here for larger view.

Here’s a link to the Erin Hills photoset at my Flickr page. A review will be coming shortly. Let me just say, it wasn’t as bad as Bradley Klein said it was going to be.

Vital Stats
Date Played: 5/27/07
Tee Time: 1:40
Turn Time: 4:10
End Time: 6:25
Price: $45 (walking)
Tees Played: Blue (6,133 yards, 68.9/123)

My Glenview Park Golf Club photo set at Flickr.

Summary
Glenview Park Golf Club is a North Shore municipal course that ranks somewhere south of middle-of-the-pack when compared with the group of muni courses you find stretching from Winnetka to Lake Bluff. It’s short (6,133 all the way back) and there’s only so much you can do with a par 70 layout, but there are some interesting holes. The conditioning was decent, but they just got socked with some hard rain so it precluded them from doing some maintenance that morning.

Golf Course
The problem with the layout is that there is a certain level of monotony. It’s a par 70 so there are 12 par fours. This wouldn’t be so bad, except that they string par fours of the same distance together. Here’s how they do it on the front nine:

• #2 - 402 yards
• #3 - 411 yards
• #4 - 416 yards
• #5 - 409 yards

And on the back nine:

• #11 - 372 yards
• #12 - 385 yards
• #13 - 345 yards
• #14 - 349 yards
• #15 - 347 yards

As you can see, there is a little variation, but not enough to keep you interested. My favorite par four is actually #15 because of the unique approach shot that has a tree partially blocking the green. They need to do more of that to give this place some zing.

The two long par threes at the turn are pretty solid. The take you over and around a few picturesque ponds and are long and challenging. But, once again, they put them right next to each other.

Conditions were decent. The fairways are bluegrass, but it’s a very tightly mowed bluegrass. I think it’s in a low lying area (kind of like Winnetka) so it doesn’t shed water very well. The fairways were spongy, but I didn’t have any bad lies. The greens were nice bent grass and rolled true.

Facilities
It has a nice, spacious clubhouse with a great selection of equipment in the pro shop for a muni. There is no driving range, so if you need that to loosen up, be warned.

Service and Other Items
I can’t blow any holes in their service. The starter parks himself about 25 yards from the first tee so we had to battle a little to get our starting time right, but no big deal.

I messed up because there was a coupon in the Wednesday Tribune that I missed, so I could have played it for about half price. Oh well.

Rating
In the end, I just feel a little uninspired by it all. The reason they have to put a discount coupon in the paper is because Winnetka Golf Club is about 10 minutes away and only costs $1 more, so Glenview really can’t compete unless they discount. Winnetka has a range, bent grass fairways, and a challenging par 71 which measures almost 6,500 from the back tees. It’s a no-brainer, go there instead. On my 100 point rating system, I’m giving Glenview a 41. Play it if you’re a resident of if you get the coupon, other than that, you’re better off at another North Shore muni.

Vital Stats
Date Played: 5/19/2007
Tee Time: 12:20
Turn Time: 2:15
End Time: 4:20
Price: $89 (18 holes, cart)
Tees Played: Gold (2nd longest tee, 6,751 yards, 72.9/133)

My White Deer Run photo set at Flickr.

Summary
White Deer Run is a Nugent designed golf course running through a housing community in North suburban Vernon Hills. It has a lot of great holes, it’s always well-conditioned, and it’s never very crowded. The lack of crowds is probably reflective of a pretty stiff price tag relative to courses in the surrounding area. If I haven’t planned golf for the weekend but find myself wanting to play late in the week, I can usually call up White Deer on a Friday afternoon and get a prime Saturday tee time without fail.

Golf Course
Nugent put together a great design with an especially challenging second tee from the back (Gold). I played those very tees and on this beautiful spring day and they knocked the snot out of me. I shot a 98 (92 with ESC), which is as high as I’ve been in years. It just so happens that the very same set of tees also hosted my best round of golf in the last decade. I think this is a testament to Nugent’s design, if you’re on, you’re going to score well, but if some aspect of your game is awry, Nugent is going to bloody your nose. This is how it should be.

I love the par three 4th hole (152 yards from the Golds). You tee off from an elevated to a green with a mote around it. I think it qualifies as an island green because you have to take a bridge, but the green complex is so large it doesn’t feel like an island. The the mote is bordered by large rocks, which provide a nice visual.

Nugent has also tossed in a pretty decent twist on “Amen Corner.” Holes 9, 10, and 11 are three punishing par 4s that have distinctly different sorts of trouble. Here are some short descriptions with Gold tee lengths.

• #9 (385 yards) Short dogleg left with an extremely tight driving area, bordered on the left by the lake and a creek right and long. It’s an intimidating tee shot.
• #10 (411 yards) A longish par 4 requiring a wetland carry to a tight and rolling landing area with the same creek on the right. The approach is not that daunting, but there is water on the left.
• #11 (397 yards) Not that long and with a huge landing area off the tee. But the approach is over water to an elevated green surrounded by bunkers. Tough, very tough.

Conditions were near perfect and I didn’t have a bad lie all day. The tees, fairways, and greens are bent grass and immaculately groomed. I love playing on nice bent grass and I’ve never been disappointed with conditions here.

The only course-specific drawback is that the homes are right on top of the course and there aren’t many trees to hide them from view. The homes are huge and not my style. I think they detract a lot from the views.

Facilities
White Deer has a nice new clubhouse with a bright and well-stocked pro shop. There is a small men’s locker with at least one shower. I am not sure about the women’s facilities. The hot dog is decent and they have a large banquet room. Solid facilities all-in-all.

The range is a cart-ride from the clubhouse on your way to the first tee. Everybody takes carts here. The price includes carts but not range balls. The range is both grass and mats and even has a bunch of heated stalls for cold weather. I’ve never had good luck with the grass on this range though, I don’t think it’s bent and it’s always longer than the fairways but shorter than the rough on the course.

Service and Other Items
Like I said, I called on Friday afternoon to get a Saturday tee time because of a change in weekend plans. An accommodating guy answered the phone. I told him I wanted to go off around noon. He reels off a bunch available times and adds that at 1PM the rate drops to $69 from $89. I like that a lot? Very rarely do you get that kind of information out of a pro shop attendant. I would like to think that it reflects how they treat people in general. I’ve always had good customer service here.

They have an organized bag-drop system, the starter is always on top of things, and they seem to have a few good rangers prowling the course. When I ran into a group on the back nine, the ranger very nicely grouped me with the guys in front.

They cheapen it a little by making you pay separately for the range balls. Most high-end courses just throw them in so I usually forget to ask when I’m paying close to $90.

Rating
As I said in the last review, I will talk more about my rating system later. It’s in its infancy right now and I’m sorting through just how to describe it. Let me say that it’s a 100 point system, and a Golf Digest Places to Play 4-star rating (out of five) should be close to a score of 80 on my scale. I’m going to give this course a 78 rating. Basically, I agree with the 4-star rating that it gets from Places to Play. But for an 80+ rating, the course can’t have any huge houses looming over the course. For that reason alone, I’m not going to let it break that coveted 80 point barrier.

Vital Stats
Date Played: 5/12/2007
Tee Time: 10:20
Turn Time: 12:42
End Time: 3:10
Price: $64 (18 holes, cart)
Tees Played: Blue (back tees, 6,432 yards, 71.6/135)

My Hilldale GC photo set at Flickr.

Summary
Hilldale Golf Club is the only 18-hole public design in Chicagoland by late, famed American designer Robert Trent Jones, Sr. It’s a great layout with well-conditioned greens and fairways, but lacking in certain aesthetic and service aspects. The management (it’s privately owned) focuses on keeping the short grass in great shape but do little else to enhance the overall golf experience.

Golf Course
As you would expect from Jones, the design is solid. The par 71 course is challenging yet very playable and features a good variety of holes. The three par fives are especially interesting:

• #2, 550 yards - Mid-length hole with two lakes in a play; one on the left reachable from the tee and one on the right by the green. For me, it played as a double-dogleg.
• #11, 602 yards - Massive beast with an elevated tee and water in front of the green. The green is very shallow with OB behind making the approach very difficult.
• #14, 524 yards - Finally, some normalcy, but no cupcake. Straight with bunkers, a small pond, and a slightly elevated green. Unfortunately, it’s ruined by the expressway and the huge billboard for the course.

You get a yardage book on each cart and it contains plenty of information to plot your strategy on even the most difficult of Jones’ par fours. I loved the 421 yard 17th. It’s a gentle dogleg right with water in front of the green. The fairway is thin but if you hit the drive perfectly, you get the benefit of some roll off the downhill about 150 yards from the green. Decent risk/reward hole.

The greens (bent grass) are as good as it gets for Chicago area daily fee courses. They are smooth, fast, and well-conditioned. The fairways (bent grass) are also in great condition and I didn’t have one bad lie in them all day.

On the downside, the rough is generally thin and not very penal. Around the greens, the rough is patchy at times and I had a few green-side lies in ruts. The bunker maintenance was almost non-existent the day I was there. There were a lot of bunkers with too little sand and several bunkers were facing erosion. Hardly any of the bunkers were edged and it did not look they had the maintenance crew do a Saturday morning raking. The cart paths run most of the course but are very close to the fairways in a lot of places. All of these matters of sub-par conditioning are more noticeable when contrasted with the nice greens and fairways.

Facilities
This place has a great range. It’s bent grass and they keep it groomed very well; not mowed quite as tightly as the fairways, but close. It has flags marking the distances and you can hit drivers.

The clubhouse is dated and the pro shop is dark and cramped. I checked out the men’s locker room and it was also old and dark, but has a full wall of showers and looked pretty clean. There’s a restaurant on-site called CK Mulligan’s Bar and Grill. I didn’t check it out, but I did have a dog at the turn, which was good.

But for the range, nothing stands out with the facilities.

Service and Other Items
In general, the service was lacking. You get a receipt in the pro shop then just have to wander out and find your own cart. It’s mandatory cart on Saturday mornings and they don’t sell yardage books, so we took the cart. It would have been nice if somebody official-looking pointed at a cart said “take that one, it’s juiced,” but we had no such luck. Don’t get me wrong, I hate it when some youngster or senior citizen is prowling the parking lot looking to sell me a cart and his bag handling services, but I do need to at least know which cart I can use.

The ranger was pretty much non-existent and it was a long and arduous round. We played in 4 hours and 50 minutes and waited on every shot. We did see what looked like a ranger on 3 and 12, but he just waved. We got our tee time the night before and it didn’t look that crowded, so I was surprised by the almost five hour round. Plus, they use a much-advertised 10 minute tee time interval. Bottom line, they just aren’t doing anything proactive to speed play.

Finally, two points about the rating, slope, and tee positions. First, this didn’t feel like a place with a slope of 135 from the back tees. And second, they don’t even use the back tee box on the “signature” par five 11th. These are some of my pet peeves.

A slope of 135 should have the potential to beat me up, if not just kick the living crap out of me. I was getting off the tee as well as ever, so maybe that made it feel easier. But even the tight fairways are abutted by rough that is not that penal and trees that aren’t that numerous. I think it needs to be re-rated. And I really get mad when they dumb down the tees on long, tough holes to speed up play. When I noticed that the back tees were moved up on the 602 yard par five 11th, I trekked up the hill to real back tee box. It was mangled and unkempt, so they aren’t using it. Here’s my suggestion, if you want to speed up play, make the ranger do something about it. Pulling this tee box trickery is false advertising and probably has Jones turning over in his grave.

Rating
I will talk more about my rating system later. It’s in its infancy right now and I’m sorting through just how to describe it. Let me say that it’s a 100 point system, and a Golf Digest Places to Play 4-star rating (out of five) should be close to a score of 80 on my scale. I’m going to give this course a 65 rating. I disagree with the 4-star rating that it gets from Places to Play, so I’m giving it something akin to a 3.5-star rating, which is still good. As you will come to find out, a score of 80 is for a stellar course in all respects, and a score of 90 is reserved for the very best courses around.

The 65 probably doesn’t mean anything right now until you see how I rate other courses and you get the underlying theory on my rating system. Let me sum it up by saying that this a great course from tee to green, but it has conditioning and service issues that keep it from fulfilling its potential.

The TPC is on TV a lot for the next four days. Remember, the course was rebuilt in the last 12 months, so this is first time we are seeing the new course. But keep in mind that Florida has been mired in a serious rain shortage along the Atlantic coast (it was really bad south of Vero Beach) so conditions could be affected.

If you are so inclined, check out the Hooked on Golf blog for the TV times. I usually watch most of this tournament, but since I haven’t played any golf in the Chicago area yet this year, I feel the urge to sacrifice some HD time for actual playing time. That’s the price the PGA is going to pay for having the tournament in May…they have the weekend all to themselves without the distraction of the NCAA tournament or the Masters in two weeks, but the weather is nice in Chicago so most of us are going to be out playing. Nice call Finchem.

I haven’t played yet in the Chicago area. That gets me down. I need to get my life in order. However, I was heartened with some great news and some decent coverage in the local papers today.

PINE MEADOW SAVED
I had been hearing that Pine Meadow was on the brink of being closed. The story that I’d heard was that Jemsek and the Chicago Archdiocese couldn’t agree on a deal. Well, Len Ziehm says in the Sun-Times today they have reached a deal, but no time frame was released. Great news.

BILLY CASPER GOLF PURCHASES WHISPER CREEK
Len Ziehm also released this news about Whisper Creek today, but I don’t necessarily think it’s news. I think I’ve known this since early in the year, but maybe it was just rumor. Or maybe I just know more about golf than Len Ziehm (doubtful). Regardless, Billy Casper Golf has done wonders with George Dunne, so I’m sure they’ll do great things with Whisper Creek. I’ve never played it, but I will definitely make the long haul out to Huntley this year.

SUN-TIMES LISTS AREA GOLF SCHEDULE…
…but they forgot to mention the US Bank Championship in Milwaukee and other key tournaments. I don’t get it. Here is the schedule the Sun-Times posted for TOUR EVENTS in todays paper:

May 31-June 3 LaSalle Bank Open, The Glen Club (Nationwide Tour)
June 1-3 Aurora Health Care Championship, Geneva National (Futures Tour)
June 8-10 Horseshoe Casino Classic, Lost Marsh (Futures Tour)
June 29-July 1 Team WLF.org Classic, Kankakee Elks (Futures Tour)
July 12-15 John Deere Classic, TPC Deere Run (PGA Tour)
Sept 6-9 BMW Championship, Cog Hill, (PGA Tour)

That’s all!

I’m not quite sure why they left out the three events below. Kohler and Milwaukee are both closer than the John Deere Classic in Silvis, IL. I don’t think they’re anti-Wisconsin either because they list the Futures Tour event in Wisconsin. Oh well, that’s what I’m here for.

June 14-17 Mich. Ultra Futures Tour Players Championship, Decatur, IL (Futures Tour)
July 5-8 U.S. Senior Open, Whistling Straights (Champions Tour)
July 19-22 US Bank Championship, Brown Deere Park (PGA Tour)

One last thing, check out Ed Sherman’s comments about John Daly in today’s Birdies and Bogeys. You go Ed!

For some reason, I’m infatuated with the question of whether golf is a sport. I think it’s a sport and I think people who play golf are athletes. However, I don’t often refer to it as a sport. I usually call it a game or a sports and gaming pursuit just to avoid the argument. Sometimes arguments about the sport vs non-sport issue clutter up conversations about how great the game is, so I avoid them.

It’s clear that many great athletes feel that golf is a sport and that people who play golf are athletes. Golf Digest has a big article this month on athletes that play golf. Or if you want, just check out Ed Sherman’s take from the Chicago Tribune.

There are a couple of things to take from this. First, Ed Sherman rules and if you’re a Chicago golf fan and not reading his blog, you lose. Second, I’m on the cutting edge because I’ve been compiling stories about athletes playing golf for awhile. Check out my posts below:

• Sterling Sharpe
• Brian Urlacher
• C.C. Sabathia

This will be an ongoing theme (athletes playing golf), so let me know now if you are sick of it and maybe I’ll dial it back.

Picture it, it’s a completely calm day out as you walk up to the green yet you notice the flag is not drooping, but stiffly standing parallel to the ground. And in fact, there’s an advertisement for Joe’s Bar and Grill on it with a coupon code for a half-price burger if you mention the name of the golf course. How would that make you feel? Would it cheapen the serene beauty and intense competition you are embroiled in? Would you lose focus as you are hovering over that four-footer for the match?

I think not. I don’t have any problems with a little sponsorship on the golf course. And neither does Rockford based Midwest Golf Managment (looks like a division of a company called Fetelli). They’ve invented a flag that is about half rigid and half fluid called the Ad Flag. On the rigid half you can put your course name or an advertisement and you never have to be concerned about it being obscured on a calm day when the flag droops. But, it still retains some of the features of a loose flag because half of the flag flaps in the wind.

I read an article about this in Golf World. The little article talks about the interesting take on income opportunities that Midwest Golf Management has. They propose charging the advertiser on an advertising-view basis that is positive Google-ish. You, as the golf course owner, go to the potential advertiser and say, “I get 20,000 paid rounds per year on my golf course so I can guarantee that many sets of eyeballs on your advertisement annually if you sponsor an Ad Flag on my first hole. In fact, I will only charge you for each “view” so you only pay $0.08 per view.”

Check out the link and let me know what you think. Sounds reasonable to me I guess. You can see for yourself if you play a Rockford park district course his summer, because they’ve apparently incorporated it on their greens. The industry has been doing it for years on tee markers, but may not be using the “advertising view” model to charge advertisers. Heck, if it makes the industry healthier, I’m all for it, because this sponsorship model is here to stay.

Alright folks, the links page is coming alive and I’ve added a bunch of new features. At the left is a little screen shot of what you get when you go to del.icio.us/chicagogolfcast. I have 183 bookmarks so far that encompass a ton of Chicagoland golf course information.

I’ve bookmarked the home pages of about 129 Chicago area golf courses and grouped them by price range, region, architect, and the expressway you would take from downtown. The other 50 or so bookmarks are for things like local architects, golf road trips, online tee-time companies, and local periodicals.

Keep in mind that it is still in process and we will be tweaking this thing throughout the year. If it looks a little daunting, take a look at this post where I write more about the links page and how it works.

I got out this Sunday and hit a few buckets then chipped and putted some. I have not yet played 18 holes in the Chicago region yet this year and it is killing me. I probably won’t be able to get out until May because of the cold weather and my travel and work plans, but then I’m going to go crazy with golf.

Look for posts upcoming about some special features in the links page.