Evanston

Evanston Golf Club’s course made its appearance on the Chicago golf scene in 1917. Some eighty years later, a sympathetic renovation by Ron Prichard breathed new life into the old Donald Ross-designed layout.

The club was formed in 1898, moving to 9-hole properties in 1899 and 1903 before finally settling in its current location. Donald Ross not only designed the existing 18-hole course, he spent time on site overseeing construction of the layout.

John Revolta, the 1935 PGA Championship winner, worked at the club for thirty years before one of his protégés, Hal Miller, took over in 1965. He retired in 2002 and the current incumbent, Eric Barnes, has been in post since 2006.

The club hosted the US Senior Amateur championship in 1962, won by Merrill L. Carlsmith, a prominent attorney from Hilo, Hawaii, who retained his title the following year at the Sea Island resort in Georgia.

In The American Private Golf Club Guide, Daniel Wexler writes: “The front nine’s most memorable tests come at the 202-yard 4th (featuring a wildly shaped green flanked by a long right-side bunker) and the 416-yard 9th, a sharp wooded dogleg left.

The back nine opens with the tricky 377-yard 10th and the tough 452-yard 11th, and later closes strongly with the 437-yard cross-bunkered 16th and the 473-yard 18th, a dogleg left requiring a long approach across a fronting pond and bunkers.”