Sunset Valley Golf Club in Highland Park, Illinois

Jacobson Re-Opens Sunset Valley Golf Club

By Brian Weis

The re-opening of Sunset Valley Golf Club in Highland Park, Illinois concludes a summer in which the work of golf course architect Rick Jacobson has been featured prominently in top professional and amateur tournament settings.

Jacobson's 18-hole renovation of Sunset Valley succeeded in re-establishing the course's original 1920's architectural style while making infrastructure and design improvements essential to its continued vitality for decades to come.

"The goal in renovating Sunset Valley was to restore the beauty and challenge of the original layout while addressing practical issues such as stormwater management, improving playability for a broad spectrum of golfers, and upgrading playing surfaces," Jacobson said.

Golfers immediately will notice visual changes to the course, which now has a unique British Heathland aesthetic characterized by a combination of links and parkland-style golf courses with wide vistas, flowing masses of native grasses, and strategic landforms, he said.

Players also will notice expanded multiple teeing areas aimed at accommodating various levels of golfers, contoured greens with more strategic pin placement zones, and undulating fairways (no longer flat) designed both to efficiently move water off the playing surface after storm events and give the course a subtle flowing characteristic, he said.

In the 1920s and '30s, Sunset Valley hosted the North Shore Open, which featured legendary players, such as Walter Hagen, Tommy Armour and Jock Hutchinson. Horton Smith played in the 1931 North Shore Open, three years prior to becoming the first player to win The Masters in 1934.

This summer, five Jacobson courses - either original designs or major renovations - hosted tournaments, including:

* Kemper Lakes Golf Club in Kildeer, Illinois (renovation/Dick Nugent-Ken Killian) - hosted the Women's PGA Championship, an LPGA major title won by Sung-Hyun Park in a sudden death playoff;

* Sei Young Kim won the Thornberry Creek LPGA Classic at Thornberry Creek golf course in Oneida, Wisconsin, a Jacobson original design near Green Bay;

* Sunset Ridge Country Club (renovation/William Diddel) - host of this year's Western Amateur championship won by Cole Hammer.

* Ibaraki Kokusai Golf Club in Osaka, Japan, host of the Japan LPGA's T-Point Ladies Golf Tournament

* In addition, North Shore Country Club (renovation/Harry Colt & Charles Alison), host of the 2011 Western Amateur and three subsequent PGA Tour Champions events, reopened this summer after all 18 greens were reconstructed to USGA specifications and all bunkers were reconstructed to visually reflect the design character of 1920's golf course architecture.

"Whether designing a new course or renovating an older one, our philosophy is to give the course a dynamic 'look' while giving it the kind of flexibility it needs to accommodate beginners, mid-to high handicap golfers as well as professionals and scratch players," Jacobson said. "It's easy to make a golf course difficult for the average player. The challenge is to make it a strong test for the best golfers and fun for everyone else."

During his career, Jacobson has renovated Ridgemoor Country Club in Chicago; Glen Oak Country Club in Glen Ellyn, Illinois; Oak Park CC in River Grove, Illinois.; Des Moines G&CC in West Des Moines, Iowa., in preparation for the 1999 U.S. Senior Open; Cantigny Golf in Wheaton, Illinois., in preparation for the U.S. Public Links.

Jacobson also has designed a number of highly-praised courses across the United States, including local courses such as Bowes Creek CC in Elgin, Illinois and Strawberry Creek in Kenosha, Wisconsin. In recent years, he has been one of the more prolific American golf course architects working in China.

Prior to starting his own firm, Jacobson worked for several years with Florida-based Jack Nicklaus Golf Services. Jacobson was involved in some of the Golden Bear's best-known courses, including PGA West-Private & Resort in LaQuinta, California; The Club at Nevillewood outside Pittsburgh; Wynstone near Chicago; English Turn in New Orleans, former home of the PGA TOUR's annual New Orleans event; Desert Mountain-Renegade Course in Scottsdale, Arizona, and others.

A native of Glenview, Illinois, Jacobson received his degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has served on the board of governors for the American Society of Golf Course Architects and is a member of the American Society of Landscape Architects. For more information visit www.jacobsongolfcoursedesign.com.

Revised: 08/29/2018 - Article Viewed 13,827 Times - View Course Profile

About: Brian Weis

Brian Weis is the mastermind behind GolfTrips.com, a vast network of golf travel and directory sites covering everything from the rolling fairways of Wisconsin to the sunbaked desert layouts of Arizona. If there’s a golf destination worth visiting, chances are, Brian has written about it, played it, or at the very least, found a way to justify a "business trip" there.

As a card-carrying member of the Golf Writers Association of America (GWAA), International Network of Golf (ING), Golf Travel Writers of America (GTWA), International Golf Travel Writers Association (IGTWA), and The Society of Hickory Golfers (SoHG), Brian has the credentials to prove that talking about golf is his full-time job. In 2016, his peers even handed him The Shaheen Cup, a prestigious award in golf travel writing—essentially the Masters green jacket for guys who don’t hit the range but still know where the best 19th holes are.

Brian’s love for golf goes way back. As a kid, he competed in junior and high school golf, only to realize that his dreams of a college golf scholarship had about the same odds as a 30-handicap making a hole-in-one. Instead, he took the more practical route—working on the West Bend Country Club grounds crew to fund his University of Wisconsin education. Little did he know that mowing greens and fixing divots would one day lead to a career writing about the best courses on the planet.

In 2004, Brian turned his golf passion into a business, launching GolfWisconsin.com. Three years later, he expanded his vision, and GolfTrips.com was born—a one-stop shop for golf travel junkies looking for their next tee time. Today, his empire spans all 50 states, and 20+ international destinations.

On the course, Brian is a weekend warrior who oscillates between a 5 and 9 handicap, depending on how much he's been traveling (or how generous he’s feeling with his scorecard). His signature move" A high, soft fade that his playing partners affectionately (or not-so-affectionately) call "The Weis Slice." But when he catches one clean, his 300+ yard drives remind everyone that while he may write about golf for a living, he can still send a ball into the next zip code with the best of them.

Whether he’s hunting down the best public courses, digging up hidden gems, or simply outdriving his buddies, Brian Weis is living proof that golf is more than a game—it’s a way of life.