Early High School Golf in Illinois
By ROBERT PRUTER
Chick Evans, 1910
Illinois has not produced a nationally renowned golfer since Charles "Chick" Evans, Jr. took his last national title in 1920, so the reputation of the state and the Chicago area in particular has been that of an also-ran when it comes to the game of golf. But it hasn't always been like that. When golf emerged as the new sports rage in the last decade of the previous century, Chicago was in the forefront, developing many of the first golf courses and producing many of the best homegrown golf talents during the first decades of the sport. Illinois reached its apogee as a golf power in 1909, when in the USGA national amateur tournament, which was then conducted by match play, seven of the eight quarterfinalists were Illinois golfers. Among them were Charles Evans Jr. of Evanston Academy, H. Chandler Egan of Rugby School (in Kenilworth), Mason Phelps of Harvard School, and Albert Seckel of Latin School.
Harvard School 1901 Golf Team, Chicago Tribune, 29 May 1901
In the interscholastic realm, Chicago's contribution was particularly pioneering and outstanding. But golf in the secondary schools arose only after the turn of the century and only after nearly a decade of flourishing growth and course building. The first Chicago area golf course was built in 1892, when Chicago golf evangelist and preeminent player in America Charles B. MacDonald, with the help and sponsorship from his friend Hobart C. Chatfield-Taylor, laid out an incomplete seven-hole course for the Lake Forest Golf Club. This course was only considered a rough start, and MacDonald found it unchallenging. The following year MacDonald laid out a more satisfactory nine-hole course for the newly founded Chicago Golf Club in the far western suburban town of Belmont (now Downers Grove). In 1895 the Onwentsia Club was founded and for it MacDonald laid out the Chicago area's second nine-hole course. The same year the Chicago Golf Club opened the country's first 18-hole course in Wheaton, which again was designed by MacDonald.
The building of other clubs rapidly followed, notably Exmoor Country Club (in Highland Park) in 1896, Glen View Golf Club (in Golf) in 1897, Midlothian Country Club in 1898, and Hinsdale Golf Club in 1898.
In 1899, the building of the Jackson Park Public Links in Chicago's Jackson Park on the South Side was important for the development of golf in the public schools. It was the first public golf course built in the Midwest and the only one in the Chicago area until 1907. Much of the genesis for the course's development came from the Quadrangle Club of the University of Chicago. The school's faculty and student fraternities became avid users of the course and undoubtedly helped spread the game to high school students below. Upon its opening the Jackson Park course, which did not charge a fee until 1920, was seen as opportunity for the masses to enjoy the game of golf. As might be expected most of the matches by Cook County League public schools in the early years of golf were held at Jackson Park.
Chicago's place in the golf world was solidified in 1897 when the Chicago Golf Club hosted both the United States Open and United States Amateur. Onwentsia, not far behind, built its 18-hole course in 1898 and the following year hosted the United States Amateur. In 1899 Arthur Brown of the Riverside Golf Club spearheaded the formation of the Western Golf Association (WGA), which inaugurated both the Western open and amateur tournaments. By 1900 there were thirty golf courses in the Chicago area.
Meanwhile, on the Eastern seaboard, where golf was likewise the rage and undergoing tremendous growth, interscholastic competition in golf was emerging. In October 1899 the Tribune reported on this phenomenon in a story on collegiate golf:
"Perhaps one of the greatest aids to college golf, both for the male and female students, is the fact that the private and preparatory schools as a general thing have provided golf links as the exercise for the boys and girls attending these schools ...Already these schools have placed players in the field, for it will be recalled that an interscholastic championship was played last spring on the links of the St. Andrews [Golf Club] at Mount Hope, N. Y. The event was quite successful, and among the players were several who have since been prominent among tournament players around the leading meetings. While no association has been formed by the interscholastic players, golf has been formally recognized by the Interscholastic Association and a committee appointed to look after its interests."
The meet at St. Andrews was in fact the inaugural New York Interscholastic, perhaps the earliest annual secondary school golf tournament in the nation. Much of the impetus for the event came from the Cutler School (of the New York Interscholastic Association), who sponsored the event in its first years. Cutler was probably inspired to sponsor the meet after participating in the one-time Lakewood Interscholastic in 1898. The New York Interscholastic was the precipitating factor that led to similar interscholastic tourneys in other cities. In March 1900 the Tribune in another article delineating the growth of golf reported on the importance and influence of the New York Interscholastic:
"The recognition of the existence of golf by the Interscholastic Association in New York is further fact of the many golfers throughout the country has led to the agitation for an interscholastic golf association. Such an organization is bound to come and perhaps this season may witness its formation...Since [the holding of the New York Interscholastic] many new schools have taken up the game, and a tournament now could be held which would have an entry list of a hundred good players. In and about New York, Boston, and Philadelphia there are many youngsters who are good players, some of them much better than their older brothers or parents. A great deal has been said of the early play having a tendency to produce better players, and no doubt this deduction is correct in the main."
Left unsaid in this report was the ulterior motive by the country's native champions of golf. The game was still thoroughly dominated by players from the British isles, and the nationalistic fervor of American golfers saw the youth as future conquerors of the foreigners. Said the Inter-Ocean:
"As an illustration of the kind of golf American school boys have learned to play in the last two years the Interscholastic championship tournament just completed on the links of the Garden City Golf Club was impressive and gratifying. When a youngster uses his driver with the same freedom as though it were a walking stick, and opens up his shoulders the way the boys at Garden City did last week, there is small cause for alarm as to the future of the sport in this country. We cannot beat the Englishmen now, but when these youngsters are grown up we will make our English golfing cousins strain for their laurels."
By the turn of the century in Chicago everything was in place for the emergence of interscholastic golf competition. Besides the availability of courses and the inspiration of East Coast developments, there was the evangelistic spirit of such clubs as the Onwentsia that avidly sponsored interscholastic events and sought to encourage the spread of the game into the prep school ranks.
Also laying the groundwork for the development of the sport in Chicago's secondary schools was the existence of flourishing interscholastic leagues, notably the Preparatory and the Academic, two leagues for preparatory students where one might expect to find young athletes whose fathers belonged to golf clubs and who played golf. The schools of the Preparatory League were the pioneers in the Chicago area, particularly Harvard School in Hyde Park. The league's players were invariably members of junior teams of the local golf clubs; some were even members of the senior teams. And as in the East, many of the young players were "much better than their older brothers and parents." Thus, one can find young players from the Preparatory League and Academic League schools competitive with the adult players of the day and competing at the various area clubs, notably Onwentsia, Exmoor, Glen View, and Midlothian.
The earliest record of any secondary school participation in golf in the Chicago area dates from June of 1899, when Harvard School played University School for the Preparatory League championship. Kenwood also had a team, but according to the news report "defaulted," which may mean its team simply did not show up. The three-man teams played each other at Onwentsia and the University School lads, led by future golf great, Walter E. Egan walloped the Harvard School team 19 to 4. The Tribune reported the banner could be held for one year, and then it would have to be contested again. There were no reports in the papers that year of an interscholastic match, but it would not be too much to surmise that the schools may have played some dual meets with each other.
The next evidence of interscholastic competition is found in 1900, when in late June Chicago Manual played Harvard School in a match. If Harvard played against any Preparatory League schools in 1900 it was not reported. Only individuals winners were determined in a series of one-on-ones match play. An intriguing item in the Tribune earlier in April tells of the formation of an Evanston High School team from among several students who belonged to various golf clubs. The paper reported that the team planned not only to play the universities of Chicago, Michigan, and Wisconsin, but also the top Eastern colleges.
Whether Evanston High managed to arrange any such contests was not reported, but among the team's members was William Holabird Jr. A high school golf team led by him would have been easily competitive with college teams. Although only a third-year student in 1900, Holabird had already developed a national reputation on the links. That year he took second in the Western Amateur. He played golf at the Glen View Golf Club, but was active in other sports as well, playing on Evanston High's football team and serving as captain of the school's indoor baseball team. Holabird was one of the few notable players in early days to come out of a public school rather than a private school. The private school golfers would dominate competition for the next two decades.
In 1901 the Preparatory League apparently resumed league competition after a lapse of a year, because the newspapers reported the golf contests among the schools as the inaugural year for the sport. The first match of the series between Harvard School and Latin was reported by the newspapers on May 26th. A second reported match featured University School defeating Rugby School on May 30th, in which each school featured a future famous golfer, two cousins, Walter E. Egan on the University team and H. Chandler Eagan on the Rugby team. The golf league got no more ink until mid-June when the papers reported that on Harvard being awarded the league title. The Harvard team then became a junior team, changing its name to the Midlothian Juniors. On June 15, 1901, Southside Academy played a match against Hyde Park, the first report involving a public high school playing a match. In 1902 Harvard School again won the Preparatory League championship, and there were some reports of more schools taking up the sport.
Until 1902, all the USGA Amateur champions had been older men, and all transplanted Scots and Englishmen. That year the golf world was stunned when a young 19-year-old from Glen View Golf Club, Louis N. James, came from last place in the qualifying round of 64 golfers to take the championship from Eben M. Byers. This was the first explosive evidence that the Chicago area was producing extraordinary golfers and significantly reshaping the game from a predominantly immigrant avocation to an American one. James was born on the West Side of Chicago and later moved to the North Shore with his family. Like so many young people of the upper classes in those days he was sent East to preparatory school, namely Hill in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. After two years, however, he returned to the Chicago area and attended Northwestern Academy, which competed in the Academic League.
The most notable early high school players from Chicago were the Egan cousins, Walter E. and H. Chandler. The New York Times noted their reputation in 1903, as well as that of a Louis N. James, saying, "no comment is necessary upon the prominent place held in the golf world of the United States by young players. The present amateur champion, Louis R. James [sic], now a freshman at Princeton, attained distinction as a school lad in Chicago, and the same is true of both the Egans, now freshmen at Harvard, H. Chandler Egan being the Western champion and the intercollegiate title holder as well. Two years ago in recognition of the abilities of the young players, the Chicago clubs offered a junior cup, open only to those under twenty-one years of age, and it has been a great encouragement to the young fellows."
H. Chandler Egan, who lived in Highland Park, was introduced to the game in 1896 when he visited his cousin at his summer home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. In 1899 his father joined the Exmoor Country Club and there Chandler developed his fast growing reputation. Walter E. Egan played at Onwentsia Club and attended University School on the north side of Chicago. There he helped University win the Preparatory League championship in 1899. The same year he astonished his elders by taking second to David Forgan in the Western Amateur. In 1902 he again took second in the event, this time to his cousin, H. Chandler, but finally won the brass ring in 1903 when he got revenge on Chandler by beating him by one stroke.
Chandler attended Rugby School in nearby Kenilworth and probably commuted to the school. But unlike his cousin's school, Rugby did not field a golf team in 1899, and Chandler contented himself with representing his club. He did play football at Rugby, however, where he was one of the team's most valued starters. By his senior year, Rugby had formed a golf team Chandler was the top player on the team in the Preparatory League contests during the spring of 1901. Chandler first achieved national renown when at Harvard University he won the intercollegiate championship in the fall of 1902. He also took two USGA amateur championships, 1904 and 1905. By this time he had emerged as one contemporary report stated, "unquestionably...our premier native player...and the only college golfer who has consistently maintained his place in the larger golfing world." He shares the distinction with Chick Evans as the only Illinois golfers to be elected to one of the three golf hall of fames.
What truly help break golf out of the confines of a few country clubs in the old rust belt was the image the sport presented to the American public. The image of clean cut wholesome and healthy looking college kids, such as H. Chandler Egan and Mason Phelps, helped immeasurably to erase the image from the 1890s of cigar smoking, bearded, somewhat soused Scotsmen. That the sport was played on elegant and beautiful landscaped courses in front of imposing club houses not only stamped the sport as one for the elite but one that was genteel and civilized. It was a sport that even the average man would want to relate to, and soon an ever greater number of golfers of more modest means were taking up golf. Joseph Edmond's comments in 1905 reveals something of this attitude: 'Thanks to the excellent public links and ever increasing number of private golf clubs with reasonable dues, amateur sports in Chicago and its tributary territory is no longer typified by 'Sports' with long cigars tilted a right angles from their lips, by trotters recklessly speeding on the boulevards, or by halfgrown boys or loafers playing baseball in vacant lots."
The Olympic Games in St. Louis in 1904 proved to be a prominent forum for displaying the exploding young golf talent from Chicago. It was mostly an American affair, as the Olympic organizers failed to see the deleterious effect the extensive trip required of competitors, most of whom came from Europe, to compete at a city deep inland in the North American continent. Team and individual competitions were held at golf clubs in the environs of St. Louis. The three competing teams were all from the United States and each represented a club. The winning club was the Western Golf Association, which was stocked by the best of young golfers in the Chicago area. H. Chandler Egan was the standout, taking two medals, a silver as an individual winner and a gold as a team member. His cousin, Walter, took a medal as a member of the WGA team. Mason Phelps, who had attended Harvard School a couple of years earlier, took fifth place in the individual competition.
Among the members of the team besides the Egan cousins and Phelps were also several players who were recent graduates of or still students in secondary school, namely Edward "Ned" Cummins (Lake Forest Academy), Kenneth Edwards (Armour Academy), Warren K. Wood (Harvard), and Robert E. Hunter (Southside Academy). Wood and Edwards, for example, were both still juniors at the time in secondary school. Hunter in 1910 would take an intercollegiate title.
1905 Western Interscholastic winner Kenneth Edwards (left) of Armour Academy
and runner-up Warren K. Wood of Harvard School. Chicago Tribune, 18 June 1905
The growing activity in Chicago of golf in the secondary schools culminated in 1903 with the establishment of the Western Interscholastic Golf Tournament. The Western Interscholastic was sponsored by the Western Golf Association (WGA). The exact week in which the event was held varied a bit over the years. In the inaugural year, 1903, it was held the fourth week of June, but the following year it was moved to the first week of June. From 1905 through 1908 it was held in the third week of June, and in its last years the last week of June or the first few days of July. For the first five years, the tournament was held at Onwentsia in Lake Forest, but in later years the tourney was held at various golf clubs in the Chicago area. In the first two years the winner was determined by medal play, but thereafter medal play was used only in the qualifying round to select the four finalists for the championship flight and the four finalists for the second flight. The four finalists in each flight would compete in match play to determine the winners.
The inaugural Western Interscholastic showed the extent of high school activity in the sport in 1903, in the public as well as in the private schools. Public school players who participated included boys from Oak Park, Wheaton, Jefferson, and Hyde Park. For the first several years of the tourney, however, the private schools dominated competition, undoubtedly because of the their upper-class demographics. The Preparatory League schools of Harvard School, Chicago Latin, Rugby School, Southside Academy, and University School and the Academic League schools of Armour Academy and Lake Forest Academy were particularly strong in producing top-notch golfers.
The Western Interscholastic, which drew from the entire Chicago area, was the most prestigious golf competition in the state. The Chicago Tribune would devote a full column and large headlines in covering the event. The Western Interscholastic was the equivalent of a similar tourney on the East Coast called the Eastern Interscholastic.
Winners of the tourney produced several noteworthy players who achieved fame in later competitions. The 1903 champion, William E. Clow of University School, won the 1906 intercollegiate championship, and the 1904 and the 1905 champions, Warren K. Wood of Harvard School and Kenneth Edwards of Armour Academy, won Olympic gold medals. The 1907 and 1908 champion, Charles "Chick" Evans Jr. of Evanston Academy, won a host of championships in his later years. Evans would have probably won the Western Interscholastic in 1909, but an operation for an abscess prevented his participation. The second-place finisher to Gordon Copeland (New Trier) in 1906 was Albert Seckel (Chicago Latin), who in 1909 while a student at Princeton won the intercollegiate title. He later built a reputation as a top amateur golfer.
Meanwhile, in 1908, schoolboys in Chicago-area public and private secondary institutions under the leadership of Chick Evans formed the Western Interscholastic Golf Association (WIGA) to provide team championship competition among high schools. The Western Golf Association had provided an individual interscholastic championship since 1903, but no team competition, and neither had any league in the area provided such competition. Evans became the league's first president. By this time, certain suburban public schools, such as New Trier and LaGrange, were as competitive as the private schools, although nobody could touch Evans, who led Evanston Academy to the league's first championship.
In 1910 the Cook County League began offering team and individual golf competition in 1911 and the WIGA series and Cook County series became almost identical. When the Cook County League was superseded by the Chicago Public and Suburban leagues, both offering golf team competition, it was obvious the public schools no longer had any need for the Western Interscholastic Golf Association and it expired after one more year of competition in 1914.
Lane Tech took the Cook County League's first championship. Hyde Park took the next two before the league broke up in the summer of 1913. The Chicago Public League and the Suburban Leagues that were founded in the wake of the split-up of the Cook County both included golf as a league sport.
Hyde Park High School Cook County League Golf Champions of 1913
While the Eastern Interscholastic continued for several decades into the 1940s, the Western for individual champs was terminated after the 1916 competition. One reason is because the Western Golf Association began the country's first junior tournament in 1914. It duplicated the interscholastic but unlike the previous tourney it did a better job of bringing in players from the entire Midwest. Another reason may have been because the WGA organizers felt that the University of Illinois state championship inaugurated in 1916 was broader in scope in taking in the entire state and thus it probably superseded their efforts.
Meanwhile, Chicago area high school golfers continued to make their mark in the golf world. Robert A. Gardner, a resident of Hinsdale whose father helped found the Hinsdale Golf Club, was one of the most notable. He played at many local tournaments while in secondary school, but instead of attending school in the Chicago area he went to Phillips Exeter. At Yale University Gardner emerged not only as one of the country's foremost golfers, but also a world-class track and field star in the high jump and pole vault. At one point he set a world pole vault record. At the age of 19 (presumably a few months younger than James was in 1902), Gardner was hailed as the youngest golfer ever to win the USGA amateur title, when he surprised the field in 1909. The following year, when he had a down year, a commentator wrote, "Gardner did not do so well during 1910, probably through not getting early enough into the game—his pole vaulting proclivities keeping him out of it until June." Gardner came close to winning in the amateur again when he took second in 1916 and 1921.
The player who beat Gardner for the 1916 USGA amateur title was the immortal Chick Evans. Earlier as a player at Evanston Academy, 1907-1909, observers were already predicting great things in his future. In 1910 he took the Western Open and in 1912 took second in the USGA amateur to the phenomenal Jerry Travers. Golfing writer Tom Bendelow commented on the rising star in 1910, "The number of his victims was certainly not the measure of his ability, as few would care to state that in many contests in which he took second place he was not the better man. He is still in his teens, to have plenty of nerve and confidence in his own ability—sometimes perhaps a little too much, which tends to make him careless. He is without peer in the West today." The carelessness to which Bendelow referred may have alluded to Evans's shaky putting. Through much of his career Evans had the reputation of blowing the big tourneys with weak putting.
Besides the 1916 title, Evans also took the 1920 title, beating Francis Ouimet. Runners-up came in 1922 and 1927. Evans also took the USGA open title in 1916, the only Illinois-bred golfer to take that championship. In the inaugural election for the Golf Hall of Fame in 1940 Evans was one of twelve selected.
Clearly Illinois youth were making a substantial mark in the golf world. One commentator on the sport in Chicago reported on the complaints of an older golfer, who said, "it remains a boys' game for chief scoring honors and we veterans have no chance to beat them...It's getting so now that it's champion this and champion that when a lot of these bronzed-faced youths appear at the tee." The article, which was titled "Supremacy of the Golfing Kids," goes on to profile some of Chicago's "bronzed-faced youths," namely Robert Gardner, Albert Seckel, Fraser Hale, Bob Hunter, and Charles Evans Jr.
The 1909 USGA national amateur, held at the Chicago Golf Club, in Wheaton, in September, stunned the golf world when seven of the eight quarterfinalists were Chicago products, and mostly young products. The seven Chicago players were Robert Gardner (Phillips Exeter), H. Chandler Egan (Rugby School), Charles Evans Jr. (Evanston Academy), Mason Phelps (Harvard School), Albert Seckel (Latin School), Paul Hunter (school unknown), and D.E. Sawyer (school unknown). The lone Easterner was the oldster, Walter J. Travis. Gardner, Egan, Phelps, and Evans Jr. advanced to the semi-finals; and Gardner bested Egan in the finals.
The extraordinary achievements of Chicago young golf cracks at this time was subject of considerable comment. Tom Bendelow, writing a feature called "Golf Around Chicago" for the Spalding Official Golf Guide, reported in 1910, "The quality of golf displayed during the past year was the best we have seen yet. Records were broken at almost every open tournament, and the principal star in the golfing tournament was none other than the redoubtable 'Chick' Evans...Altogether the young players around Chicago are about the best that can be got together in the United States, no section barred."
The University of Illinois had been conducting a state meet in track and field since 1893, and a state meet for singles and doubles tennis since 1912. Therefore it was only fitting to add a golf tournament in 1916 to crown an individual champion. After a two-year hiatus during World War I competition resumed in 1919 and continued under the aegis of the university to the early 1930s. The Illinois High School Association (IHSA) took over state meet from the University of Illinois in 1938 and turned it into a team competition. If team champions had been crowned during the years of the individual tourney, some of the schools who would have emerged as team powers were Hyde Park, University, Deerfield-Shields (Highland Park), and Rockford.
Two notable golfers in the Illinois secondary schools during the 1920s were Harold Martin of Deerfield-Shields (now Highland Park), who took both the Western Junior (in 1920) and a second (in 1921) and a first in the state (1922), and Tom Cooley of Kankakee, who took second the Western Junior (in 1928) and a second (1926) and a first in the state (1927).
A notable golfer in the 1930s was Joe Jemsek. He graduated from Argo in 1931, but only played in the state tourney as a freshman. He lost, but in a money game afterwards he beat the "rich boys." For the rest of his high school days he had to work and had no time to play golf, and considered not winning the state title one of his big disappointments. As the Chicago area's foremost teaching pro, he earned the sobriquet "Mr. Public Golf." In 1991 he was named the PGA Golf Professional of the Year.
Published with permission. All rights are reserved by the author.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Illinois High School Association.