The sun sets on Gleneagles

Saturday, July 30, 2022

 Gleneagles Country Club, a bastion of the game since 1926, will close today when the last paying public customer drives out the now-unlogoed gate. After Sunday’s private outing for employees, that will be it for the 36-hole complex on McCarthy Road that has hosted people, both prosperous and pauper, for nearly a century.

The reason for the closure – and the sale by the McNulty family, which has owned it since 1951 – is money. The family was offered a great, though not yet disclosed, price by a real-estate developer over the winter, and took it. Commerce wins, 9 & 8.

So ends a grand 97-year run, highlighted by two years of the Gleneagles-Chicago Open, the 1958-59 brainchild of brothers John and Ed McNulty, the Chicagoans who bought the course from the Wymer family. That brought the stars of American golf to the course, brought Ken Venturi back-to-back titles, and brought ignominy to Billy Casper in 1958, when he drove a ball into a bush, hacked at it like a weekend duffer rather than take an unplayable lie, and made a 10. Without that double-digit pockmark on his scorecard, he would have beaten Venturi comfortably.

The McNultys knew the value of publicity, though two years of red ink – they lost $100,000 the first year, much less the second – was plenty. They put up a $50,000 purse in 1958 and $57,000 in 1959, as much or more than the Masters paid, and more than most every other tournament on the circuit. That lured the stars, brought in galleries, even local TV in 1959, and placed Gleneagles in the forefront as a place to play where the tour played.

Gleneagles Country Club on Thursday, two days before the final public rounds. (Tim Cronin/Illinois Golfer)

Some people have called the place Gleneasy over the years. It was never long – the Red Course was stretched to 6,350 yards for the tournaments – but neither it nor the White was really a pushover, either.

Back in 1958, Sam Snead said going into the tournament, “Somebody’s going to do a 60 or 61 around here or there ain’t no hound dogs left in Georgia.”

Snead was doing the barking after tying for 15th and breaking 70 but once. His wayward drives of Gleneagles narrow fairways – then and now – left him scrambling for par more often than not.

Gleneagles was a place to relax playing golf. The food was superb, and the second clubhouse – the original burned down in 1955 – was a big place similar to Cog Hill’s clubhouse. Alas, Gleneagles clubhouse No. 2 burned down in 1978. The third, was functional, but less lavish. The food remained superb.

Your correspondent has fond memories of Gleneagles. It was where we first played golf, graduating from miniature golf and the like, on a warm August day in 1970.

Why Gleneagles? Because of the Chicago connections. My dad was a downtown lawyer, and my godfather Ed, my dad’s best pal, was a Chicago policeman. The McNulty’s were Chicago policemen in a former life. Inexorably, we and Ed’s son rambled out to this utopia of the game for 18 holes of real golf. A bogey was the numerical highlight of the day.

Watching my godfather Ed hammer his Titleist to a fairway or two to the left with a hook that rose over the ever-present trees, and then drill a recovery shot that invariably produced no worse than a bogey, and occasionally a par, was a marvel. What ran to a six-hour round – with a sit-down lunch in the grill room at the turn, believe it or not – was the day of days.

There was also the winter day where we set up a surprise party for my grandmother on my dad’s side. She wondered why she was being taken to dinner at a golf course on a cold Sunday until she walked in the door and had a “This is Your Life” experience. Plus, we could sneak a look at the NFL playoff game in the bar – on color TV!

For a youngster, Gleneagles was posh. Even then came the realization that the course conditions were at a country-club level. Gleneagles was not only green, but playable.

Years later, when putting together the Daily Southtown’s annual golf guide, a call was placed to Gleneagles to see what they would charge for the year. A second-generation McNulty answered and provided the details. The question was then posed why, given how the parking lot was generally full, even on weekdays, the course was advertising on local cable TV.

“Same reason Coca-Cola advertises,” he said. “You’ve got to keep your name out there.”

A trip in the late afternoon Thursday to snap a few photos of the course as it was at the end revealed a mostly full parking lot. Gleneagles was popular to the end.

Hail and farewell.

– Tim Cronin