Quirky Lake Zurich GC thrives despite invisibility
Photographs by Charles Cherney
This article appeared in the June 2025 edition of Chicago District Golfer.
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The three story clubhouse, built in 1896, contains bedrooms whose walls are packed with signed Masters flags and toerh memorabilia.
It’s hard to pinpoint the most engagingly eccentric feature of Lake Zurich Golf Club. Could it be the Lady of the Shanks statue o the ninth tee box? The Lake Zurich “Him” Book, from which members belt out songs at Saturday night dinners while wearing red jackets? The private bedroom where an old golf bag with clubs hangs on the wall while a skeleton rests on a chair? Or the fact that when a member’s wayward drive strikes a tree only to bounce out on the fairway, another member yells “Saint Barnabas!”– an homage to the club’s patron saint, who supposedly once aced nine holes in a row?
“Lake Zurich has always been a bit tongue in cheek,” said club historian Ed Rutledge. Never heard of Lake Zurich Golf Club? That would not be surprising. Few have, even though it has thrived since the 19th century. Lake Zurich can be as elusive as it is ancient.
It was founded in 1895 as the first men’s golf club in the Chicago area and is one of the oldest golf clubs in Illinois.
According to club history, attorney Charlie Wood prevailed in a lawsuit and, for payment, accepted 12 acres of land that would become the club before leasing 78 more. Jim Foulis – who with his brothers would lay out about 40 golf courses in the Midwest – created the nine-hole layout, his first commission. For decades, hundreds of sheep grazed to keep the fairway grass low, and one ram was always on hand to guarantee reproduction.
Many early members were University of Chicago professors, as Wood lived in Hyde Park. Others have included Daniel Burnham Sr., Leo Burnett, ITW head Harold Smith and Chester Gould, creator of the Dick Tracy cartoon. A drawing of Tracy graces a wall in the three-story clubhouse, built in 1896, and Gould’s caricatures of club presidents can be found near the bar – one crafted out of cherry wood by Burnham Sr.
“My father took more pride in this creative achievement than in most of the buildings designed in his more than 50 years as an architect,” noted Burnham’s son Daniel Jr. – himself the architect of the fountain in front of the clubhouse – in recollections he wrote for the club.
The interior design of the living room has been heavily influenced by the male members over the decades (since World War II, women and children have been allowed in the clubhouse and on the golf course). Aside from the large moose head and the etching of St. Barnabas that hangs above the fireplace, pictures of club members wearing red coats with green collars – which are believed to have been modeled on those of the Royal Liverpool Golf Club – adorn one wall. German guns from World War I are also displayed.
On the second floor, there are 10 bedrooms, walls packed with signed Masters flags and other memorabilia. The golf pros, former PGA Tour player Lon Hinkle and his sister Jennie Hinkle, live there in the summer. Also ensconced upstairs is the Dead Man’s Closet, where red jackets hang from those who have gone to meet Saint Barnabas for new members to wear.
“You try them on and find one that doesn’t smell like gin,” said club president Bob O’Connell.
The third floor used to house cots. Today, it’s more of a storage area; the club’s original “President’s Cup” – which was made from a kitchen pot – stands near a wall.
The club has about three dozen members, comfortably near its limit of 40, which seems to have been an aspirational number back in the early days.
“No one knew if the club would make it. This was out at the ends of the earth then,” said Mark Fedota, a two-time president. (Near the clubhouse sits a restored surrey – one that conveyed 19th-century members from the train that stopped six miles away to the club.)
In fact, the club almost didn’t make it because of a railroad. In 1912, the Chicago and North Western wanted to run a line that would have destroyed the northeast corner of the course. Members discovered there was one type of property a railroad couldn’t take by eminent domain – a cemetery. Four unclaimed bodies from a Cook County morgue were placed under gravestones near the third hole, and the line was rerouted elsewhere.
The course itself runs 2,651 yards and is a par 35 (a bogey chart also appears on the card). There is no golf shop to check into or tee time to procure; players merely sign a register near the first tee box. A glance at the scorecard shows the local rules are forgiving.
“A lost ball is penalty enough. No further penalty is extracted,” reads one.
There is one sand bunker on the course, off the green on the first hole (I found it, but it is perhaps the least penal bunker in the Chicago District). The greens, such as the par-3 fifth, are often steeply sloped, and they are immaculate, thanks to superintendent Marcos Lira, who previously worked at Lake Geneva Country Club and Old Elm. He asked for the club to purchase a greens roller, which may have been its first. After all, local rule No. 3 had long been in play: “Any dandelion or weed growing on a putting green may be plucked without penalty.”
Off the eighth hole is a bench, painted pink since Marilyn Monroe once admired the beautiful view from there. She and her husband, Joe DiMaggio, were invited to Lake Zurich Golf Club by Leo Burnett. A long-ago member hosted his great friend Ernest Hemingway, who shot skeet at the club.
Members buy and drive their own electric carts (there are no caddies), and some vintage pull carts were picked up at estate sales. Golf bags of deceased members were often left behind in the cart house, and those among the living have benefited.
“I got a ginty out of there,” said Fedota, referring to a club popular in the 1970s that he used during our round. “I’ve pulled clubs out of there, cleaned them up and had them re-gripped.”
With that collection, he may even be ready to take on St. Barnabas.
David A. F. Sweet is the author of “Onwentsia at 125,” “Three Seconds in Munich” and “Lamar Hunt.”