Calumet Country Club did not begin as a Ross course. The club formed in 1901 and first operated near Lake Calumet, where Herbert “Pops” Tweedie laid out the original course at the Burnside site. Industrial encroachment pushed the membership to seek a new home, and in February 1917 the club purchased a tract on 175th Street in Homewood to build a full replacement course. Contemporary local histories note that the club hired Donald Ross to design the new 18, with longtime club professional George Knox overseeing implementation of Ross’s plan. A small clubhouse went up that year and was enlarged in 1921.
Ross’s Homewood layout was not completed overnight. Chicago District Golf Association historian Tim Cronin has written that Calumet was “another multi-year construction project” that opened “to rave reviews” in 1920, a date that aligns with the club’s move and the rapid improvement of the new grounds during and immediately after World War I. The same account places Ross at Calumet in the sequence of his south-side work (Ravisloe in 1918, Beverly starting in 1918), reinforcing that Calumet was conceived and built in this 1917–1920 window.
There is no documentary evidence that Ross returned for a formal second phase at Calumet after opening. What fundamentally changed the course was not a Ross revisit but the 1956 decision by the Illinois Toll Highway Authority to run the Tri-State Tollway through the north side of the property. Club histories record that approximately 23 acres were taken, forcing a major reconstruction of the golf course thereafter.
The post-tollway rebuild fell to architect Larry Packard working with builder Brent Wadsworth. Their brief was to preserve what could be saved around the clubhouse and create a dozen new holes “in Ross’ style” on the remaining ground. Cronin’s CDGA history specifies that six original Ross holes near the clubhouse survived, with twelve Packard/Wadsworth replacements completing the present 18.
Unique design characteristics on the ground
Because of the 1956 interruption, Calumet today reads as a hybrid: a Ross core wrapped by sympathetic mid-century work. The greens are the connective tissue. CDGA’s championship fact sheet for the 2017 Illinois State Amateur—played here—emphasized “back-to-front sloped and fast greens,” a hallmark visible across the course and integral to strategy on short- and mid-iron approaches. Byron Nelson’s recollection on returning to Calumet in 2001 singled out the par-3 fourteenth specifically “because of the difficulty, the slope of the green,” a contour trait that still governs the shot selection on that hole.
cdga.org
Ross’s routing at Homewood originally worked with the site’s modest relief and the meandering branch of Cherry Creek. Even after the tollway era, the creek remains a central hazard in the northwest quadrant of the property. The club’s scorecard map and hole diagram show water directly influencing the par-3 second and eighth and shaping lateral decisions at the third and seventh, where angles into the green reward conservative placement away from the creek edge. These water-governed lines give Calumet an identity distinct from Ross’s north-shore Chicago work and are immediately legible in the current plan.
Greens in the clubhouse corridor—where the six surviving Ross holes were retained—best preserve the original feel. While the club does not publish hole-by-hole attributions, on-site play and historic commentary indicate that these survivor holes retain pitched surfaces and fall-offs that penalize short-sided misses rather than relying on encircling sand. Where Packard and Wadsworth added new holes, they echoed those cues with squared-off green pads and diagonal bunker placements that steer play away from hazards and toward preferred approaches, maintaining a Ross-like cadence even where the landforms are 1950s vintage. The State Amateur setup in 2017—using a modified routing to reduce congestion and playing the usual No. 10 as a par-4—illustrated how those green contours, more than raw length, provide the defense.
The clearest surviving examples of Ross’s work are thus the holes clustered nearest the clubhouse—identifiable today by their elevated-feeling green sites and stronger back-to-front bias. They show the same preference for approach-testing greens that made Calumet tournament-ready within a few years of opening, without the need for extravagant earthmoving.
Historical significance
Within Ross’s Chicago-area portfolio, Calumet mattered as his south-suburban, full-from-scratch commission coming on the heels of his Ravisloe improvements and near-contemporary work at Beverly. It quickly proved championship-worthy: Calumet hosted the Western Open in 1924 and the Chicago Victory National Open (a wartime version of the Chicago Open) in 1945, the latter won by Byron Nelson during his run of 11 consecutive PGA Tour victories. That 1945 win at Calumet is regularly cited in season retrospectives of Nelson’s record year.
In the modern era the course continued to serve the competitive calendar. The Chicago District Golf Association scheduled the 2017 Illinois State Amateur at Calumet and published a detailed championship fact sheet with yardages and a special routing—evidence that the club’s present configuration still meets elite amateur standards.
While Calumet seldom appears in statewide “best-of” lists dominated by longer, newer venues, its reputation inside the Chicago golf community has long rested on the quality of its putting surfaces and the authenticity of the surviving Ross core, traits reinforced by CDGA’s coverage and the club’s own archival messaging.
Current condition / integrity
Calumet’s integrity as a Ross design is partial but legible. The consensus narrative is that six original Ross holes remain near the clubhouse and twelve holes date to the mid-century rebuild by Larry Packard, built by Brent Wadsworth, after the Tri-State Tollway carved 23 acres from the property in 1956. The routing therefore reflects a blend: an inner loop of Ross-era greens and surrounds connected to outer corridors aligned to the altered property lines.
Subsequent maintenance cycles and smaller-scale renovations have focused on bunkers, tees, and infrastructure rather than wholesale re-routing. Aggregated course directories and tee-time sites sometimes list later architects (e.g., Bob Lohmann) alongside Ross and Packard, but published, primary-source documentation of a dated Lohmann project at Calumet is scarce in the public record; where those attributions appear, they typically come without scope or year. In contrast, Packard/Wadsworth’s role in the 1950s reconstruction is clearly attested.
Presently the course plays to a par of 71 at 6,619 yards from the back tees. The club’s official scorecard confirms the balance of three par-5s and four par-3s, with the central cluster of holes returning near the clubhouse. Cherry Creek hazards, tree lines, and target-oriented green complexes supply most of the course’s difficulty.
Citations
Tim Cronin, “The Enduring Genius of Donald Ross,” Chicago District Golfer (Nov. 2022). Notes Calumet’s 1920 opening, places Ross at Calumet during the 1917–20 period, and details the 1956 tollway taking with Packard/Wadsworth reconstruction and survival of six Ross holes.
Eric Crump, “Some of golf’s greats have played the Calumet Country Club course,” Homewood-Flossmoor Chronicle (Dec. 29, 2019). Provides 1901 founding, Tweedie authorship of the original Burnside course, 1917 Homewood land purchase, Ross commission with George Knox implementing, and the tollway’s 23-acre taking in 1956.
CDGA, “Illinois State Amateur Championship — Calumet Country Club Fact Sheet” (2017), documenting championship yardage/routing and describing the greens’ back-to-front slopes.
Where2Golf tournament archive, “Chicago Open/Chicago Victory National Open — 1945,” confirming Byron Nelson’s win at Calumet; also see local coverage of the club’s tournament history.
Calumet Country Club website (general course profile, present operations).
Disputed / uncertain points.
• Opening year of the Homewood Ross course. Cronin/CDGA places opening in 1920; some club and directory blurbs have quoted 1917 (design) or 1922 (completion). Without surviving minutes in the public domain, 1920 remains the most specific source-backed “opening” date; 1917 is best read as the design/ground-breaking year.
• Extent and identity of later renovations. The mid-century Packard/Wadsworth rebuild is well documented; later attributions (e.g., Bob Lohmann) appear on aggregator sites but are not corroborated by dated project reports accessible publicly. Treat those as provisional until club archives or architect portfolios supply specifics.
• Exact numbering of the surviving Ross holes. Multiple sources agree that six holes near the clubhouse are original; hole-by-hole identification is not published in accessible records and is thus left undesignated here pending plan or aerial confirmation.