Onwentsia Club

Onwentsia Club opened in 1895 on a piece of Lake Forest, Illinois land north of Chicago — making it one of the earliest country clubs founded in the Midwest, contemporaneous with Glen View Club a few miles south and the Chicago Golf Club farther west in Wheaton. The original routing was a Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. landscape-design project with golf-hole layout by club founders, and the course has been redesigned multiple times since — most significantly by Donald Ross in the 1910s and 1920s. Onwentsia hosted the 1906 U.S. Open (Alex Smith won at +6, in conditions that produced a championship scoring record at the time).

The course plays around 6,900 yards par 71 from the back markers, with bent fairways and a slope in the upper 130s. The yardage is short by modern championship standards, but the routing's mature tree canopy — the property has been a golf course continuously since 1895, and the trees have grown to championship-narrowing dimensions — gives the corridors a tighter defense than the back-tee yardage suggests. Onwentsia has not hosted modern major-rotation events since 1906, but the club's institutional history through American country-club golf is part of why the routing remains in architectural-survey discussion.

Onwentsia is private and access is members and accompanied guests only. The membership is regional Chicago North Shore business and professional families with multi-generation ties through the late-1800s founding era. The hospitality model is traditional country club, and the club has stayed largely outside the destination-private trend that has reshaped many Chicago-area clubs.

Chicago North Shore climate gives Onwentsia a playing season of April through October. The course closes through Chicago winter and reopens when the soil thaws. The mature oak canopy through the property gives the routing significant character distinct from the more open Lake Forest courses, and the autumn color through October is part of the property's seasonal signature.