Lake Forest-Lake Bluff History Museum

The storied linkage between Lake Forest and the origins of Chicagoland golf begins at Fairlawn, the lakeside estate of Senator Charles B. Farwell. In 1892 Charles Blair Macdonald finally piqued the interest of his friend Hobart Chatfield-Taylor, Senator Farwell’s son-in-law, in a sport that had been largely ignored by Americans. A catalyst was the upcoming Chicago World’s Fair and the prospect of entertaining British representatives with time on their hands.The Fairlawn grounds filled the entire block bordered by Deerpath Road, Spring Lane, Mayflower Road, and Lake Road, sloping eastward across the street toward the lake park. Frederick Law Olmsted may have been the designer. Flower beds dominated closer to the house, but the golf grounds probably extended into the more naturalistic park beyond the house and trees.

Chatfield-Taylor and his wife, Rose Farwell, invited Macdonald to set up a course on Fairlawn’s grounds. He laid out seven tomato cans over 20 acres, utilizing both the decorative pond and the lake bluffs as hazards. The resulting course was the first in the Chicago area.The longest hole was about 250 yards along the bluff, giving long drivers in that period two chances to slice into Lake Michigan. As the “gutta percha” ball of those days was a sinker, a slice on number five not only cost a lost hole but the price of a fifty cent ball. One account of an early round played on the course relates that Frank Hall, being of a cautious and economical nature, played this longest hole with his putter, invariably winning from Dr. Alfred C. Haven, who couldn’t finish seven holes without having to stop for “an interesting event.”

“After a series of contortions which would have done honor to the rubber man in Barnum’s side show, I tore up a foot of turf without disturbing the equanimity of the little white object I had striven so viciously to hit. Macdonald laughed and I said damn. That was in April of 1892—and I have been saying it ever since.” – Hobart Chatfield-Taylor, on his first golf swing