Of course, they don’t have bent grass fairways, but they’re very well-kept bluegrass. I have no complaints. In fact, if they can keep prices low and retain the near-perfect green complexes and nice tee boxes, then this place is going to stay busy every weekend morning for a long time. You really can’t go wrong. Both courses have nice layouts, there are very few houses in sight, and it’s super easy making a tee time on EZ Links.

Once again, I dragged myself out of bed at 4:00am on Saturday to make a 6:01am tee time. This gave my buddy and I plenty of time to stop for an Egg McMuffin (drive-thru). There was one foursome in front of us and they were professional speed golfers. We got through the round in less than 3:30 and never saw them.

Check out my pictures on Flickr. Once again, it was a dark day. I have not played many rounds this summer in blazing sun, but nary a drop of rain has fallen on me so far. I did get a decent picture of the tricky par three 4th hole. See below.

The Traditional course that we played Saturday is pretty hilly. Both seventeen and eighteen finish on a hill top. They aren’t long, but they’re solid golf holes. Here is the approach to the seventeenth.

The first curve ball was this insane weather we’ve been having lately. In the last month we’ve had two massive rain storms in the region that stretched the limits of any golf course to shed water, even those renovated and modernized. The result is that there were a lot of rough spots in the fairways at Chevy Chase on Friday. I talked to the staff and the fairways (all bent grass) should be grown in by late August so don’t worry (barring another weather fiasco). This is just what happens when you get six inches of rain in an evening then the sun comes out to bake it for the next few days. You can’t do anything but hope for mild weather, a rare occurrence in Chicago.

The second curve ball was an outing with a shotgun start that went off at about 1pm, right before my tee time. The people in the pro shop were even surprised the automated tee time system let someone make a tee time during the outing. Anyway, they said that the outing was only taking up 13 holes and they gave our group a massive discount. I certainly appreciate it.

Given those two things, it was still a great afternoon, even though we ended up leaving after 13 holes. I didn’t get many pictures because of the short round and lack of sun. Here is a link to the set on Flickr.

I think the best picture may be this one of the short par three 6th hole.

The party is certainly over for me in terms of my play. My streak of great golf seems to be a thing of the past, but I’m not going to get down. I played the Burnt Red tees and got my teeth kicked in, but kept a smile on my face.

Hot streaks don’t last forever huh?

This is a great course and I will be back next year for sure. Check out the Chevy Chase page for more general details on the course.

Let me start off with the signature hole, the par five 15th, which I highly anticipated.

Approach to the short par five 15th at Foxford Hills in Cary, IL

The tee shot is daunting but I still hit the driver. It was a stupid decision though and I got lucky with a good bounce off a tree and lucky hop off the cart path. The best play may be a four wood (205 yards) and a five iron (175 yards) to leave a short iron approach, like the one you see on the left.

Conditions were good but the place is drying out fast. We need some rain in the region for sure. They were running the sprinklers in-round and had staffers throwing water on trouble spots on greens and tee boxes. You can see some of the brown in the rough in the picture above. But I never had a bad lie and the greens were smooth with decent speed. The fairways on the 15th and 16th were fine, which is a credit to the maintenance staff because there isn’t much air moving in those fairways.

The 5th at Foxford Hills viewed from behind.

This place has a lot of great holes. I love the the par four 5th hole. It’s a great looking downhill par four with a potentially tricky pin placement on the right. You can see from the picture at the right that the day was pretty cloudy so I couldn’t get all of the detail in the pictures. I played the second tee from the back and this hole played all of it’s 382 yards.

The tee box I played, the Gold, ran 6,590 yards and posed a fair test. The par fours, however, were beautiful to look at, but didn’t have much teeth today. There was only one lengthy par four (the 18th) where I had to take something greater than a six iron in. Granted, I had the driver dialed in, but I don’t hit it much farther than 230 yards that often (see my note in the first paragraph). I could have played the back tees, but I probably would have crumbled under the pressure and gotten bludgeoned.

The view from the tee on the par three 12th at Foxford Hills.

The par three 12th was looking nice. It was playing about 165 yards yesterday from the Gold tees. It shares a lake with the short par four 11th and both have big, nasty bunkers guarding things. Visually, they are cool holes to look at. The official website refers to those large, meandering bunkers with lots of fingers and inlets as “MacKenzie-style bunkers,” which seems to be an accurate description. Check it out in the picture at the left. I would love to get a professional’s opinion on that usage of the term “MacKenzie-style.”

I didn’t hit the practice range, didn’t try the food, and didn’t see if they had a locker room. But it was a great facility regardless. The scorecard is one of the best. I’ve seen the same style at Village Links of Glen Ellyn, it has the yardage book built in to each card.

This is classic Chicago area public golf; beautiful bent grass all over the place, challenging design by a local guy, municipally owned, and with a fair price.

Nice, very nice.

View Larger Map

The parking lot is on the far right just east of South Rawson Bridge Road. It’s easy to scroll around and get close. The first tee is in the very southeast corner of the course. I can’t tell, but I think the path to the 1st tee goes under the road. It looks like the range is right next to the clubhouse on the east side of the road. Alright, no worries on getting around the place.

You can see the par five 15th running straight north in the upper right next to the address banner. That approach over the pond to a shallow green looks tough.

Then I hammered through their site and found their internet specials. They have a coupon for a deal on a Saturday round. Wow, cool. A coupon for prime time Saturday AM tee times don’t happen that often. It will only be $69 for eighteen with a cart (or without).

And finally, I’m playing at 6:26 am so I may be able to take advantage of their fine restaurant, which includes “breakfast options ranging from a danish, egg sandwich or a breakfast platter.” Whoa, count me in. That could eliminate the McDonald’s stop on the way.

Okay, that’s enough for now. We’ll talk after.

I’m still fired up for this Nugent designed beauty. I played Foxford Hills when it first opened in 2003 and a few of the holes were pretty raw. The tree-lined 15th, which is a near-replica of the 11th at Kemper Lakes, didn’t really have any grass on it at all. I’m hoping that’s different this weekend with all of the rain and recent nice weather we’ve had. When I played it in 2003 I bumbled around in a 93 (ESC 89) on the 6,590 yard tee rated at 70.9/125. They’ve since re-rated that tee box to 71.9/133. It’s the one I’m playing for sure.

I’ll tell you all about it this weekend.