The Tiger Woods Chicago Golf Course On Lake Michigan Is Actually Happening

Carl1/03/2019 7:15 PM

CHICAGO – Tiger Woods is set to design a public golf course that will benefit the whole of Chicago. The former world No.1 and his team are lead architects on a proposal to redevelop the Jackson Park and South Shore Golf Courses in downtown Chicago. The scheme, which will be privately funded, will involve a newly restored 18-hole golf course and a shorter family course on the urban banks of Lake Michigan with substantial views of the city’s skyline. Woods said, “To build a public golf course in Chicago is as good as it gets. You can see the skyline, it feels right down the road. It is truly amazing. We have the opportunity to create something so special.”

The golf development, which includes community programs such as a caddie scheme for youngsters, was given the potential go-ahead at a meeting of Chicago Park District’s Board of Commissioners in mid-December. Work could begin in 2019 with the Chicago Park District recently approving to fund the engineering services for the next 3.5 years. This represented the largest hurdle to clear in the process of breaking ground.

This story has been kicked around for what feels like years and it’s popping back up because it looks like the developers are finally about to get this party started. In reality, this is just classic Chicago politics holding things up because everyone needs to get a piece of the action. Whatever. The goal is still late 2020 and there’s no indication they won’t get it done but that’s not the point of the blog.

The point of this blog is to explain just how sweet it would be to have a World Class golf course hosting World Class golf tournaments on the former site of the World’s Fair. Golf.com had this to say last week:

“The PGA Tour is basically saying that’s their intention is to have this on the schedule,” Project Lead Mark Rolfing said. He suggested 2022 would be a safe bet and envisions a scenario in which the tournament would showcase the different neighborhoods and styles of golf that Chicago has to offer.
“What I would love to see is that a plan gets settled for every four years and goes north to [2017 host] Conway Farms, then west to [2019 host] Medinah, then southwest to [2020 host] Olympia Fields and then to Jackson once,” Rolfing says. He also teased the possibility of an even larger tournament landing at Jackson Park: the Presidents Cup. While the 2021 edition will be held at Quail Hollow and 2025 at TPC Harding Park, 2029 remains unclaimed. “We’ve got involvement with a president of the United States, and the architect of the renovation is the captain of the Presidents Cup team,” Rolfing said. “I’ll let you do the math from there.”

I knew it was going to be a nice course but seriously I didn’t think that meant sanctioned PGA events much less the mere MENTION of hosting a Presidents Cup. That is absolutely fucking bananaland to me and should be to anyone who has ANY clue about Jackson Park and the southeast side of Chicago. The existing golf course is literally 5,000 some odd yards of unkempt anarchy. There are homeless people everywhere. It’s surrounded by violence. There are dead bodies in the lagoon. The fact that we’re months away from breaking ground on a project to flip this piece of Chicago into an international golfing destination has my brain in a pretzel.

But then I started thinking about Devil In The White City

This is a phenomenal book that should be required reading for all Chicagoans with an excise tax on people who don’t read it. Then take that money and invest it in the Maywood Park horse track and thank me later but I digress.

Point is, back in 1889 when the smartest architects in the world were figuring out how to host the World’s Fair in Chicago, they used the part of the city that would later become Jackson Park. They spent almost a year trying to find the right spot. Best soil, best sunlight, best natural landscape. All that shit. They needed hundreds of acres. And the guy who just built Central Park (Fred Olmsted) ultimately settled on this piece of Chicago for the World’s Fair. It was the absolute very best place to showcase Chicago’s beauty they said. And showcase it they did.

Obviously over the next 130 years the area would turn into a shithole for countless reasons. But the park itself is still perfectly capable of making you feel like you’re not in Chicago: