Olympia Fields Country Club is a private golf club in the central United States, located in Olympia Fields, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, about 25 miles (40Â km) south of The Loop.
It contains two eighteen-hole courses, North and South. The North Course is considered one of the top three courses in the Chicago area, and is generally ranked in the top 50 courses in the United States. The South Course is regularly ranked in the top ten in Illinois. Olympia Fields is one of the few private clubs in the U.S. with multiple courses ranked, and it is on the National Register of Historic Places.
History
Olympia Fields Country Club 2017 -
The club was founded 103 years ago in 1915. The North Course was designed by two-time British Open champion Willie Park, Jnr, and was lengthened prior to hosting the U.S. Open in 2003. It features some significant elevation changes, a meandering creek and hundreds of native oak trees. At one time it was one of four courses at the club, but after the club fell into financial difficulties during World War II, it was forced to sell off half of its land. Course No. 4 became the North Course, and the remaining holes from the other three courses were reconfigured to make the South Course.
Olympia Fields has hosted four major championships: two U.S. Opens (1928, 2003) and two PGA Championships (1925, 1961). It has also been the site of the U.S. Senior Open (1997) and the U.S. Amateur (2015); the Women's PGA Championship is scheduled for mid-2017. In addition, the Western Open on the PGA Tour was played at the club five times.
Olympia Fields is famous for its enormous clubhouse, which was finished in 1925 at a cost of $1.3 million. It is a half-timbered English Tudor-style building with an 80-foot-high (24Â m), four-faced clock tower that has become the trademark of the club. The western boundary of the property is bordered by a commuter rail line, Metra Electric District, and its Olympia Fields station is just west of the clubhouse; the line was previously the Illinois Central Railroad.
In 2005, the club began a $9.5 million renovation project to improve the practice facilities, revamp some of the bunkers, and make other improvements.
Tournaments hosted
Major championships
Includes amateur and professional major championships
- Bolded years are major championships on the PGA Tour.
- The PGA Championship was match play until 1958
Other tournaments
The Western Open was historically an important event in golf, a near-major.
Scorecards
Source:
Source:
References
External links
- Official website
