Every Chicago golfer who has ever paid a park district rate, walked nine holes after work, or waited on a first tee next to a total stranger owes something to a stretch of South Side landfill. Before country clubs were a thing most people could afford, before simulators and twilight leagues, Chicago decided golf should belong to everybody. That decision is the reason the city's public golf scene looks the way it does today, and it's a story most of us who play here every weekend have never really heard.
So here it is: a quick history of public golf in Chicago, from the first free tee times in Jackson Park to the courses we're still grinding around in late October.
1899: Jackson Park Changes the Game
The land that became Jackson Park Golf Course had already hosted one world-famous event, the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Six years later, on May 11, 1899, it opened as a municipal golf course designed by Tom Bendelow. It was the first public golf course west of the Allegheny Mountains, and here's the part that still hits: it was free to play.
Think about what that meant at the time. Golf in America was mostly a private-club game. Chicago looked at that and said no, the working guy from Woodlawn gets to play too. Bendelow, a Scottish transplant who laid out a huge number of early American courses, built a layout meant for regular people, not members. That philosophy is baked into Chicago golf to this day.
In 2024, Jackson Park celebrated its 125th anniversary. Not many public courses in the country can say they've been around that long, and none can say they started the whole movement in the Midwest.
The Chicago City Amateur and the Chick Evans Connection
Public golf in Chicago was never just casual hacking. It became competitive fast. Jackson Park has been home to the Chicago City Amateur, one of the oldest running amateur championships around; the 119th edition was played there in 2024.
The most famous name tied to that event is Chick Evans, a Chicago kid who started as a caddie and won the City Amateur five times. In 1916 he became the first player to win the U.S. Open and U.S. Amateur in the same year. He's the reason the Evans Scholars program exists, the full-ride college scholarship for caddies run by the Western Golf Association. If you've ever caddied in Chicagoland, or known someone who did, that legacy runs straight back to a guy who grew up in this city's golf culture.
The Park District Courses That Built the City Game
Jackson Park was first, but it didn't stay alone. Today the Chicago Park District operates six golf courses, each with its own personality and its own regulars:
- Jackson Park on the South Side, the original. An 18-hole Bendelow design that's recently been restored to its early-20th-century character.
- South Shore, a lakefront layout next to the South Shore Cultural Center, which was completed in 1916 as the clubhouse for what was then a private club. The course went public decades later, and now the sixth green sits right up against Lake Michigan while the second hole gives you a long look at the skyline.
- Columbus Park on the West Side, a nine-holer that opened in 1921. Flat, wide-open fairways make it a go-to for beginners, and it's about ten minutes off the Eisenhower from the Loop.
- Marquette Park on the Southwest Side, another nine where the park's lagoon puts water in play on more than half the holes. The eighth, with its forced carry over a pond, is the one people talk about.
- Sydney R. Marovitz, the lakefront nine everyone still calls Waveland. The views of the lake and skyline are the reason tee times go fast.
- Robert A. Black on the Far North Side, a compact nine that rounds out the North Side options.
Together, these courses are proof that the 1899 idea stuck. You don't need a membership, a referral, or a dress code that costs more than your bag. You need a tee time and some patience on a Saturday morning.
Chicago Becomes the Capital of Public-Access Golf
The city's public-first attitude spilled into the suburbs too. Starting in 1939, Joe Jemsek, the son of Russian immigrants, began buying and building courses with one mission: give public golfers private-club conditions. His biggest swing was Dubsdread at Cog Hill in Lemont, opened in 1967, which went on to become the permanent home of the Western Open starting in 1991. A pro tour event on a course anyone could book. That was very Chicago.
Around the same time, Kemper Lakes in Long Grove hosted the 1989 PGA Championship, another public course on golf's biggest stage. By the 1990s, public courses made up well over half of the roughly 275 courses in the metro area, and Chicago was widely recognized as the national leader in public-access golf.
If you want a rundown of where to play right now across the whole region, our Chicagoland public golf tier list picks up where this history leaves off.
The Community That Kept Public Golf Alive
Courses don't survive 125 years on their own. People keep them alive. At Jackson Park, the Chicago Women's Golf Club, the oldest African American women's golf club in the country, founded the Bob-O-Links Junior Golf Club in 1954 to bring young players into the game. In 1989, the Jackson Park Golf Association formed to support the Black and minority golfers who have called the course home for generations.
That spirit shows up all over the Park District today: adaptive leagues, veterans leagues, weekday men's and women's leagues, high school teams, First Tee programming, and a Kids Play Free program for juniors. The muni crowd in this city has always been the most diverse, most loyal, and most entertaining group of golfers you'll find anywhere.
What's Next for Chicago Public Golf
The South Side lakefront is in the middle of a real moment. With the Obama Presidential Center rising nearby, there has been years of talk, including Tiger Woods' TGR Design being tapped back in 2017, about tying Jackson Park and South Shore together into a championship-level public golf destination. Plans have shifted over time, and nothing about the timeline is locked in, but the ambition fits the history perfectly: the city that invented public golf in the Midwest wants to show the country what it can be next.
Meanwhile, the lakefront is also where some of us keep pushing for more creative ideas, like the case we made for night golf at Sydney Marovitz.
Why This History Matters When You Tee It Up
Next time you're standing on a Park District tee box, layered up against a late-October wind off the lake, remember you're part of a 127-year-old Chicago tradition. Golf here was never meant to be stuffy. It was meant to be open, a little rough around the edges, and full of characters. That's the energy we try to bring to everything we make.
Our gear is built for exactly that golfer: the one who plays the muni, knows the lake wind, and wears the city on the course and off it. The Lake Golf Association Hat is our nod to public golf heritage, and the Lakeshore Golf Society Hoodie and Windy City Par Club Hoodie will get you through the last cold rounds of the season. Browse the full Chicago Golf Co. collection and rep the city that made golf public.
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