La Grange Country Club
Designed by Herbert J. Tweedie
History
1899 was a good year for founding golf clubs in the Chicago suburbs, and La Grange Country Club took its place among a wave of communities eager to plant a course of their own within reach of the city. The founders were local residents drawn together by the same impulse animating dozens of nearby towns in that decade — a desire for a private club where members could golf, gather, and build the kind of social institution that would anchor the town for generations.
The membership turned to Herbert J. Tweedie to lay out the grounds, and Tweedie’s hand is part of what gives La Grange its place in the record of early Chicago-area golf. A Scottish-born professional who worked at several clubs in the region during golf’s formative American years, Tweedie brought with him the instincts of the game’s homeland — an eye trained on links courses before American course design had fully found its own voice. His work at La Grange reflects that transitional period, when architects were adapting old-world principles to new-world parcels of farmland and prairie turf.
Over the more than a century since its founding, La Grange Country Club has remained in continuous operation as a private club, a survivor among the many courses that sprang up across the Chicago suburbs at the turn of the twentieth century. It stands today as one of the older clubs in the region still tracing its lineage directly back to its founding architect, a thread connecting its current membership to the golfing culture of 1899.
Playing Notes
Expect a walkable round on rolling terrain typical of Chicago's western suburbs, with mature trees lining most fairways tight enough to put a premium on keeping the driver in check off the tee. Greens here tend to be smaller and well-guarded by bunkers, so club selection into the pin matters more than raw distance — take an extra club if you're between numbers and let the wind off the open stretches settle before committing. Bring your short game; recovery shots from under the tree canopy are a regular occurrence, and the putting surfaces can run quick and tricky when the club keeps them firm. Walking shoes are a good call if you skip the cart, since the layout moves comfortably between holes without long treks, but caddies or carts are readily available for those who prefer to save their legs for the back nine.