Olympia Fields Country Club — North Course

Olympia Fields was founded in 1915 south of Chicago and once had four courses. The Depression forced the membership to sell land, and two of them closed; what remains is Tom Bendelow’s South and, above all, Willie Park Junior’s North, built as a championship test and still used as one.

The North plays to a tight par of 70 over about 7,350 yards from the back markers, with a course rating of 76.6 and a slope of 150. It has staged two U.S. Opens, in 1928 and 2003, two PGA Championships, in 1925 and 1961, a U.S. Amateur in 2015, a U.S. Senior Open in 1997, five Western Opens and the 2017 Women’s PGA Championship.

What it asks of you

Par 70 over 7,350 yards is the whole brief. Only two par fives means there are almost no holes where a good player gets a shot back, and several par fours that would be par fives anywhere else. Slope 150 is close to the maximum the rating system awards, and it is earned.

The land does more work than a flat Chicago suburb suggests: there is real elevation change, walkable but constant, and a creek that winds through the property and crosses the line of play more than once. The trees are mature and close, which narrows the corridors further than the fairway lines imply.

Park’s bunkers are deep and penal rather than decorative, and his greens move. Between the two, the miss you can afford is short and in the middle of the fairway; anything else costs a stroke rather than a half.

What players say about it

This is a private club, so the public record comes from championship coverage, 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

• Conditioning is described as excellent, year after year, and that is the most consistent point across accounts.
• The North is treated as one of the significant Willie Park Junior courses in the United States, and architecture writers take it seriously.
• The terrain, the creek and the tree cover give the round a variety that surprises visitors expecting flat prairie golf.
• The championship record is long and current, which for a course of this age is not a given.

What comes up against

• Access is closed: private club, play by invitation.
• Par 70 at this length is relentless, and reviewers say the course gives a mid handicap nothing back.
• The bunkering is penal by modern standards, which some visitors find dated and others find the point.
• The tree cover has grown in over a century and several accounts argue it has narrowed Park’s original strategic width.

Getting there and when to go

The club is in Olympia Fields, about forty minutes south of downtown Chicago by the interstate and an hour from O’Hare.

The season runs roughly from April to October. June and September give the best conditions; Chicago summers are humid and the shoulder weeks are when the greens are quickest. 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, the architects and the championship record, and public course records for par, length, rating and slope. 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.