Onwentsia at 125
Lake Forest club celebrates its 125th anniversary by reflecting on rich history
By David A.F. Sweet
This article appeared in the June 2020 edition of Chicago District Golfer.
The Onwentsia Club golf course sits unobtrusively behind a strand of trees just south of downtown Lake Forest, one of the jewels in the crown of Chicago’s North Shore suburbs.
The club’s quiet demeanor and devotion to privacy belie the significant place Onwentsia holds in the history of golf in the world, not just in the Chicago District. Onwentsia has played host to the country’s biggest tournaments, including the U.S. Open (1906) and the U.S. Amateur (1899). The club — which is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year — has impeccable ties to the cradle of golf, St. Andrews. Its first pro, Robert Foulis, grew up a few blocks from the Old Course, and his father manufactured golf clubs with Old Tom Morris. Its second pro, Willie Marshall, was raised next door to Foulis.
Those who have played the 6,600-yard layout encompass the biggest names in the history of the game. A few weeks before the famous 1913 U.S. Open at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, defending U.S. Open champion Ted Ray and former U.S. Open champion Harry Vardon played in a 36-hole exhibition match at Onwentsia. Nicklaus, Palmer and Trevino walked the course when woods were still made of actual wood. PGA champion Keegan Bradley etched a score in the 60s on the par-71 layout earlier this century.
How did this course — one of only five in the country to host the U.S. Open, U.S. Amateur, U.S. Women’s Amateur and U.S. Senior Amateur — come to be?
In 1892, soon-to-be-famous golf architect Charles Blair Macdonald laid out seven holes over 20 acres in Lake Forest at the home of Senator Charles B. Farwell, not long before Macdonald laid out Chicago Golf Club in Wheaton. A few years later, Macdonald and Foulis created a nine-hole course on a farm located just a booming drive from where Onwentsia stands today. It was known as the Lake Forest Golf Club, a place where sheep roamed, sometimes nibbling at errant shots.
In 1895, the Lake Forest Golf Club purchased a 175-acre farm from Henry Ives Cobb for $75,000. It included his sprawling home, which would be transformed into a clubhouse (the majestic one that now stands, designed by Harrie T. Lindeberg, was built in the 1920s). The club would be known as Onwentsia — an Iroquois name meaning both a meeting place of sporting braves and squaws as well as country (thus it’s never had reason to refer to itself as a country club). Founding members included famous Chicago names, from Cyrus Hall McCormick Jr., head of International Harvester, to Byron Laflin Smith, founder of the Northern Trust Company. Its first president, Hobart Chatfield-Taylor, also served as the first president of the Western Golf Association.
None of those facts is in dispute. But nearly 125 years later, the question remains: Who designed the Onwentsia golf course?
Macdonald, Foulis, H. J. Whigham and Herbert James Tweedie — four giants of the early game — are all credited with having a hand in its creation, starting in 1896. Among them, Macdonald’s role is perhaps the most debated — which is appropriate, as he is the best-known golf architect of them all.
What did Macdonald himself say? He claimed no role. In his book Scotland’s Gift: Golf, he gives his son-in-law Whigham — an Onwentsia member who captured the 1896 and 1897 U.S. Amateur tournaments — full credit for designing the entire 18 holes.
Golf historian Jim Healey disagrees.
“It’s safe to say Onwentsia was originally a Robert Foulis course,” said Healey of the original pro. “He liked small, round greens and flat bottom bunkers you could practically putt out of.”
The great debate may never be settled, but such controversies are not unique. A little over two miles south of Onwentsia, members of Old Elm Club touted for decades that Donald Ross designed the course — until research revealed it was actually the work of the legendary Harry Colt, with Ross taking on the task of construction.
Onwentsia pros have enjoyed an illustrious tournament history. Foulis and Marshall both competed in the 1897 U.S. Open. Of course, they were both upstaged by Onwentsia teaching pro Willie Anderson, who won four U.S. Opens, but somehow lost to Alex Smith at his home course of Onwentsia in 1906.
Aside from Whigham, other members also have flourished on the national scene, most prominently Robert Abbe Gardner. The 1915 U.S. Amateur champion captained three Walker Cup teams after joining Onwentsia.
Current Onwentsia pro Nick Papadakes — one of only seven golf pros across a century and a quarter (joined by only seven superintendents) — is awed by the history.
“The people who have walked these grounds are amazing,” he said. Those include three members who were president of the United States Golf Association: George Blossom (1942–43), John Ames (1958–59) and F. Morgan “Buzz” Taylor (1998–99).
One major renovation took place in the 1990s. Architect Tom Doak added new back tee boxes that lengthened the course, increased contours on greens and introduced prairie grass — often to the dismay of duffers.
And to the dismay of a club celebrating its quasquicentennial, the 103rd Western Junior Championship, scheduled to be played June 15–18 at Onwentsia, was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. The good news is Onwentsia will host the Western Junior — whose past champions include Jim Furyk and Rickie Fowler — sometime this decade. Said Papadakes, “We can’t wait to get some of the country’s best young golfers out here.” ●
Women Have a Novel and Distinguished History at Onwentsia
Women’s golf has enjoyed an extraordinary run at Onwentsia Club. Not only has the club hosted two USGA tournaments dedicated to females; its most famous woman golfer was portrayed in a seminal novel of the 20th century.
Onwentsia’s Edith Cummings won the 1923 U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship in Rye, New York at Westchester-Biltmore Country Club, a year after losing the tournament on the final hole. Cummings was close friends with fellow Chicagoan Ginevra King — the love of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who based the character of Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby on her. Less known is that the character of Jordan Baker in the book, a superb golfer, was based on Cummings, who met the author in 1915.
But there was a major difference between the real person and fictional character. In Fitzgerald’s telling, Jordan Baker was a cheat; Cummings never was accused of dishonesty on the golf course.
Onwentsia has hosted both the U.S. Women’s Amateur and the U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship. The former took place in 1915 on a course that extended nearly 6,500 yards and was a par 84. Mrs. C.H. Vanderbeck of the Philadelphia Cricket Club — whose qualifying round of 85 set an Onwentsia women’s course record — captured the championship.
It was fitting Onwentsia hosted the 3rd annual U.S. Girls’ for female amateurs 17 and under in 1951. After all, the championship was the brainchild of one of its own.
According to a September 1951 article in The USGA Journal and Turf Management penned by Mrs. Charles Dennehy of Onwentsia, she brought up the idea of a national girls’ junior event to Miss Francis Stebbins, then chairman of the USGA Women’s Committee, during a 1948 train trip to Pebble Beach.
The following year, the event was launched. In the 1951 finals at Onwentsia, Arlene Brooks of Pasadena, California earned the championship by sinking a 30-foot putt on the final hole. Dennehy later would become USGA Women’s Committee chairman.
Will there be another USGA tournament for females at Onwentsia? The odds are likely. Then USGA President Diana Murphy played the course a few years ago and was impressed enough to send a representative to tour it. She told Onwentsia pro Nick Papadakes that Onwentsia could play host to the U.S. Women’s Amateur, U.S. Girls’ Junior or the relatively new U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur with little modification.
David A. F. Sweet, author of Three Seconds in Munich and Lamar Hunt, is writing a book commemorating Onwentsia’s 125th anniversary.
