Beverly Country Club

Beverly Country Club is a historic Donald Ross design on Chicago's South Side, one of the oldest clubs in the Midwest. It has hosted the U.S. Open, U.S. Amateur, and Western Open, and remains a pillar of Chicago's private golf landscape.

Beverly Country Club in Chicago's Beverly neighborhood holds among the distinguished records of championship golf hosting in the American Midwest. Founded in 1908 and redesigned by Donald Ross into a course capable of challenging the game's best players, Beverly has hosted four Western Open championships and a U.S. Amateur, earning a place among the great private clubs of the Chicago region. The club was established in 1908 by a group of south-side Chicago businessmen who sought a private golf and country club accessible to the growing residential neighborhoods of Beverly and Morgan Park. George O'Neil, the club's first professional, designed the original course and served as the founding professional. Shortly after the club's establishment, architect Tom Bendelow helped strengthen the layout.

The transformative moment in Beverly's history came when club officials invited Donald Ross to create a master plan for a comprehensive renovation. Ross developed his plan around 1918, and over the course of nearly a decade the club adopted his full program — ultimately producing what members and critics have long recognized as one of Ross's finest inland layouts. The genius of Ross's work at Beverly lies in the routing: despite being laid out within a near-perfect rectangle hemmed in and bisected by three arterial streets and a railroad line, no two consecutive holes run in the same direction. The course feels entirely natural and unhurried, a remarkable achievement within the constraints of an urban parcel. Beverly's record as a championship venue is exceptional. The Western Open, one of golf's oldest and most significant professional events, made four appearances at Beverly: in 1910, 1963, 1967, and 1970.

The 1910 edition was won by Chick Evans Jr. in the first Western conducted at match play. The 1931 U.S. Amateur brought national championship golf to Beverly, with Francis Ouimet — already a sporting legend from his 1913 U.S. Open victory at Brookline — capturing his second Amateur title by defeating Jack Westland on the 32nd hole of the final. In 2002, the members adopted a plan to restore and rejuvenate the golf course. Under the direction of restoration architect Ron Prichard, the course was brought back toward the design concepts Ross had embedded in the original renovation — restored bunker shapes, reestablished green contours, and firmer, faster playing surfaces.

Prichard's initial work centered on felling trees to re-establish original playing corridors, rebuilding bunkers consistent with Ross's style, and expanding putting surfaces closer to the edges of the green pads. Prichard returned to Beverly in a Master Restoration Project conducted from August 2019 through June 2020, working alongside architect Tyler Rae. That second phase expanded fairways and greens further and continued the refinement of Ross's bunker character across the layout — completing a restoration program that now spans more than two decades and represents among the thorough Ross restorations in the Midwest. Beverly Country Club today stands as a rare example of a championship-caliber Ross design maintained within an urban setting, its routing discipline and historical depth continuing to distinguish it from newer courses in the Chicago metropolitan area.