Midlothian Country Club

Midlothian was formed in 1898 south of Chicago, and Herbert J. Tweedie laid out the course for the members. The club took a central place in American golf almost immediately: it staged the U.S. Women’s Amateur in 1907 and the U.S. Open in 1914.

That Open is the reason the name is remembered. Over 6,421 yards to a par of 72, a twenty-one-year-old Walter Hagen opened with a record 68 and held off the amateur Chick Evans by a single stroke. He birdied the eighteenth in all four rounds, which no U.S. Open champion has managed before or since, and it was the first of his eleven major titles.

What it asks of you

Tweedie built in the idiom of the 1890s, on flat prairie ground with bunkering placed where a hand-made ball of the period would finish. Distances have moved on and the course has been adjusted over a century, but the bones are still those of an early Chicago layout: modest length, small targets, and trouble close to the green rather than out in the fairway.

On that kind of course the drive is rarely the shot that costs a round. What costs it is a mid-iron pulled slightly left onto the wrong side of a green that is defended tight, and a recovery played from grass that has been mown for a century in the same direction.

Check the current card with the club before you go. The 1914 numbers are the ones history records, not the ones you will play.

What players say about it

This is a private club, so the public record comes from championship history, guest accounts and specialist reviews. The points below summarise what recurs. These are other people’s opinions, not ours: we have not played the course, and we name and quote no one.

What comes up in its favor

• The 1914 Open is the club’s calling card, and visitors say the place carries it without labouring it.
• The layout is described as a good surviving example of early Chicago golf, from a period most clubs have modernised away.
• Conditioning is reported as good.
• The club is considered friendly by the standards of Chicago’s older private clubs.

What comes up against

• Access is closed: private club, play by invitation.
• The course is short by modern measures and gives a long hitter little resistance.
• The ground is flat, and visitors who came for the history sometimes find the golf ordinary.
• Public material is scarce, and any summary, including this one, rests on a narrow base.

Getting there and when to go

The club is in Midlothian, about forty minutes south of the Chicago Loop and reachable by Metra.

The season runs roughly from April to October. June and September give the best conditions. Play is by invitation of a member.

Green fees

Guest conditions are set by the club. See the club’s own site.

How this page was made

The factual frame comes from public sources: OpenStreetMap for the location, encyclopaedic entries and the club’s published history for the founding and the architect, and championship records for the 1907 U.S. Women’s Amateur and the 1914 U.S. Open, including the par and yardage played that week. The opinion section summarises public reviews and guest accounts read in September 2026; we report recurring themes rather than individual voices, and we reproduce no quotations.

We have not played this course, and this page is no substitute for a round. The club has not paid for this page, has not seen it before publication and has no say over its content. If you know the course and something here is wrong or out of date, write to us and we will correct it.