Beverly Country Club

Beverly Country Club was founded in 1908 on Chicago’s South Side, with a course laid out by George O’Neil, who was also the club’s first professional. In 1918 the club asked Donald Ross to draw up a plan to bring the course back to championship standard, and over the following years the whole of Ross’s plan was carried out. That slow adoption, rather than a single rebuild, is why the course reads as coherent Ross work today.

The competitive record is longer than the club’s low public profile suggests: four Western Opens, in 1910, 1963, 1967 and 1970, the U.S. Amateur of 1931, Western Amateurs in 1930 and 2014, and the U.S. Senior Amateur in 2009.

What it asks of you

Chicago parkland on sandy ridge ground, which is better soil than the flat clay most of the city’s courses sit on and lets the course play firm. The front nine runs along a prehistoric glacial ridgeline that influences all but two of its holes, and the back nine rolls more than any visitor expects from a course inside the city limits.

Ross’s greens are the examination: crowned, subtly pitched and surrounded by tightly mown collection areas, so that the approach which misses runs away from the hole rather than stopping beside it. The recovery shot from short grass, played with anything from a putter to a wedge, is the skill the course keeps asking for. Length is not the defense here and never was.

A substantial tree removal programme led by Tyler Rae has changed the character of the place in recent years, opening the landforms that had been hidden for decades and restoring the sightlines the routing was built around.

What players say about it

Access is by membership or a member’s invitation, so the public record is made up of guest accounts, architecture writing and course-rating panels rather than a volume of visitor reviews. The notes below summarize themes that recur across those public sources. They are other people’s opinions, not ours: we have not played the course, and we do not name or quote individual reviewers.

What comes up in its favor

• Conditioning draws consistently strong marks, and the greens in particular. More than one guest account describes them as among the fastest surfaces they have played anywhere.
• The property itself surprises people. The glacial ridge and the movement on the back nine are repeatedly called the best land any Chicago course sits on.
• The tree removal work is well received. Reviewers describe it as having transformed the course by letting the ground do what Ross intended.
• The routing is admired for using the ridge without ever repeating itself, which is the technical compliment architecture writers pay it most often.

What comes up against

• Access is the obvious limit. This is a private club with no visitor tee sheet, and most golfers who would like to see it will not.
• Green speed cuts both ways. The same surfaces that impress guests are described by some as bordering on too quick for the amount of contour Ross left in them.
• The course is not long by modern standards, and players who measure a course by its yardage tend to underrate it before playing and revise afterward.
• Reviews are few. The public record here is thin enough that any summary of it, including this one, rests on a small number of accounts.

Getting there and when to go

Beverly is a neighborhood of large houses in the far south of the city, twenty-five minutes from the Loop and served by Metra, which makes this one of the very few clubs of its standing reachable by commuter train. Midway airport is fifteen minutes away and O’Hare closer to an hour.

The season runs from roughly April to November. Late spring and early autumn give the firmest conditions on the sandy ridge; midsummer in Chicago is humid and the course plays softer. Guest play is arranged through a member.

Green fees

Guest conditions and rates are set by the club and are not published. See the club’s own site.

How this page was made

The factual frame comes from public sources: OpenStreetMap for the location, Wikipedia and published architecture coverage for the history, the design and the restoration work, and the club’s own site for access. The opinion section summarizes public commentary and guest accounts read in September 2026; we report recurring themes rather than individual voices, and we do not reproduce or attribute quotes.

We have not played this course, and nothing here is a substitute for that. The club has not paid for this page, has not seen it before publication and has no say in what it says. If you know the course and something here is wrong or out of date, write to us and we will correct it.