Old Elm Club

Old Elm Club sits on Highland Park’s North Shore, just inland from Lake Michigan, on a tract of gently rolling ground uncommon for suburban Chicago. It is a private, men’s club with a low public profile; visitors today encounter an 18-hole layout that emphasizes width, firm-fast turf and short-grass surrounds rather than rough, an effect driven by significant tree removal and mowing-line expansion in the last decade. Practice amenities include a driving range and putting green adjacent to the clubhouse. The present course character reflects a rare, historically specific pedigree: Harry S. Colt laid out and staked the course in 1913 during one of his few North American trips, then left detailed drawings and instructions for Donald Ross to execute during construction. In recent years, architect Drew Rogers, working closely with superintendent Curtis James and later with shaper/architect David (Dave) Zinkand, has re-established the course’s scale, restored Colt’s rugged, “torn-edge” bunkering aesthetic, and expanded original green perimeters, while preserving the push-up putting surfaces Ross built in 1913. The net result is a strategic, walkable course notable for crowned greens (especially at the second and fifth), center-line and diagonal bunkers in the driving zones, and a distinctive double green shared by the sixth and seventeenth holes with a Biarritz-like swale between the two targets.