Evergreen Golf & Country Club, CLOSED 2012

Detailed description of Evergreen Golf & Country Club, CLOSED 2012

Evergreen Golf & Country Club is a Public, 18 hole golf course located in Evergreen Park, Illinois.

Evergreen Golf & Country Club first opened for play in 1921. Closed 2012.

The Evergreen Golf Course plays to a par-72 and maximum distance of 6,353 yard. This narrow course has several trees that can alter your shots. The small greens are fast, and there are water hazards on three holes. The terrain is flat and easy to walk. It was not a beautiful golf facility by any means. But it was cheap, fun, and relatively easy to get on.

It had hills and old, old trees (Often called it the "Poor Man's Beverly CC" because it backed up to Beverly and shared the uneven terrain). It had train tracks running right through the middle of it. One hole had an impossibly high hill to hit over. And there was a dog that lived on the course.

The course had character - though not nearly as much as it's former owner. Anna May "Babe" Ahern.

After years of pressure, the colorful centenarian gave in, selling her golf course and home to the village of Evergreen Park just a month before she died. Anna May "Babe" Ahern lived her entire life on the green acres of the Evergreen Country Club in Evergreen Park. She inherited it from her mother, who had turned it from a farm into a golf course in the 1920s. She once said she knew every blade of grass by its first name. She died in December 2012, a few weeks after selling the course to a developer. She was 103 years old at the time of her death, having lived in 3 different centuries.

Among her possessions was a bat and ball autographed to her by Chicago Cub Ernie Banks, who was appreciative that she allowed him into her golf club when other clubs turned blacks away.

For much of the 20th century, Ahern was a legend, good and bad, in her patch of the South Side. Both she and the course will be missed.