Origins

Few public golf facilities in the Chicago area ask golfers to choose between two entirely different rounds before they even tee off. At Countryside Golf Club in Mundelein, that choice is built into the property itself: a tree-lined course dating to the 1920s sitting alongside a wide-open, prairie-style layout built more than six decades later.

The Traditional Course is the older of the two, dating to 1927, a period when Chicago's northern suburbs were adding public and private courses rapidly as the game spread beyond city clubs. It predates the Lake County Forest Preserves District itself, which was not formed until 1958, meaning the course operated independently for decades before becoming part of the county's public golf system. Its routing reflects that era: narrow, tree-lined corridors bordered by mature oak, maple, elm, and spruce, with small, contoured greens that reward accurate approach play over distance.

Design Philosophy

Narrow, tree-lined corridors bordered by mature oak, maple, elm, and spruce define the Traditional Course, with small, contoured greens that reward accurate approach play over distance — a style typical of Chicago-area public courses built in the 1920s, before the wider, more open routing later used on its 1992 companion course.

Development

Building a second full 18-hole course on the same property, divided by Hawley Street, created a practical problem: how to move golfers safely between the Traditional Course's own front and back nines without crossing traffic. The solution was a pedestrian and golf-cart underpass beneath the road, a detail that still shapes how a round there is played today.

Recognition

Countryside has been recognized for its environmental management, having been certified as an Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary, the third golf course in Illinois and the 14th in the United States to earn that distinction.

Today

Today the Traditional Course operates alongside the Prairie Course as one of three public golf facilities run by the Lake County Forest Preserves District, alongside ThunderHawk Golf Club in Beach Park and Brae Loch Golf Club in Grayslake, giving golfers an older-style parkland test on the same site as a more modern, open layout.