Bartlett Hills GC, Bartlett. A beautiful July day. Caught the early train out of Union Station at 5:39. And in Bartlett, a small, untouched old farm town with a GC that you can walk to in ten minutes, I played a bucket of balls on the range, putted a while, and then went over to the Starter who put me out immediately.
There are maybe a half-dozen golf courses in NE Illinois that have their own rail station; most are private, like Medinah, Olympia Fields, and the Chicago GC. This one, Downers Grove on the Burlington Line, and Ravisloe on the Illinois Central in the south suburbs are the only three that have gone public. But it is just another reason that this area is one of the best places for a golfer to live in the whole world! I still have over 100 golf courses I can reach by public transit from my home on the northside of Chicago!
Can you imagine in the 1890's (Chicago was one of the first places outside of Scotland to build golf courses), taking a city trolley down to Union Station to meet your golf partners? Then embarking on a steam train ride through farm fields, oak openings, and broad prairie? While white-coated stewards served your foursome breakfast in the Dining Car? And in Bartlett, a horse-drawn carriage ride down a narrow dirt road to this mecca for the new sport? And spending the day hitting balls of gutta percha with brassies and mashies, across roughly tended links, while sheep grazed in the distance?
Now THAT was golf!