The members at Olympia Fields Country Club near Chicago have voted to undertake a comprehensive restoration and upgrade of their South Course.
The South Course comprises half the holes at Olympia Fields. The other 18-hole layout at the club is the North, which has hosted many elite competitions including two U.S. Opens (1928, 2003) and two PGA Championships (1925, 1961). The PGA Tour’s BMW Championship was held on the North in 2020, with Jon Rahm taking the playoff title.
The South Course is ranked No. 159 on Golfweek’s Best Classic Courses list for layouts built before 1960 in the United States. The North Course is No. 55 on that list. The South is also ranked No. 10 on Golfweek’s Best Private Courses list for Illinois, with the North No. 4 on that state-by-state list.
Course architect Andy Staples will oversee the project on the South, which includes drainage improvement, bunker renovation, fairway expansion, tree work, naturalized native rough and more short grass around the greens. Teeing grounds also will be configured in the project, which has a budgeted cost of $4 million.
Olympia Field’s South Course near Chicago (Courtesy of Olympia Fields Golf Club)
The work – which should showcase the ground game with firmer conditions than available now – will be completed in two phases, starting in the fall of 2021 and continuing again in the fall of 2022. Staples is basing his restoration efforts on his study of photos and design plans in the club’s archives as well as his study of classical design elsewhere. Staples’ previous restoration work includes Meadowbrook Country Club in Detroit, and he is now at work on Mount Bruno Golf Club in Montreal and Delray Beach Golf Course in Florida.
The South dates to a 1916 route designed by Tom Bendelow that was revised by Willie Park Jr.
Olympia Fields in the 1920s had four 18-hole courses, but some land was sold off in the 1940s. Sixteen holes of the original No. 1 course and two holes of the No. 2 course were combined to complete 18 as what became the South.
