Olympia Fields Country Club - Illinois, U.S.A.

Olympia Fields Country Club, located about 28 miles south of downtown Chicago, hosted the 2003 U.S. Open won by Jim Furyk, 750 years after dapper Johnny Farrell beat Bobby Jones in a playoff in the 1928 Open. Founded in 1915, Olympia Fields was originally a 72-hole facility, with the No.4 Course, now the North Course, the site of the u.s. Open. The other three courses were combined into the South Course when the club was forced to sell land during the Depression. The stone clubhouse, with its famous 80-foot high Tudor clock tower, is one of golf's great landmarks. The North Course was designed by Willie Park, Jr., scion of the golfing dynasty of Parks from Musselburgh, Scotland. A classic parkland course laid out across ridges and farmland, the dominant design feature is the serpentine Butterfield Creek. Park was a talented and resourceful designer at a time when golf course architecture in America was in its infancy.

Harborside International Golf Center - Illinois, U.S.A.

There are many vaunted courses in Chicago's suburbs, but Harborside International Golf Center is an urban original, built within the city limits just 16 minutes from downtown, with stirring views of the skyline. Harborside consists of two municipal courses, the Port and the Starboard, built on 458 acres of industrial landfill and inorganic sludge near Lake Calumet on Chicago's gritty South Side. The transformation of urban wasteland into two verdant links courses was the work of Illinois golf course architect Dick Nugent and his son Tim. The entire site was capped with a thick layer of clay, dirt, and sand, which prevented the growth of trees. The Nugents then applied the same principles used to grow grass on the lava fields of Hawaii. The result is broad, exposed shelves of curvilinear fairways. The signature hole on the Port, named ''Anchor,'' is the par-three 15th with an island of green in the shape of a ship's anchor surrounded by sand. Lake Calumet comes into play on the final three holes. Former President Bill Clinton made his first and only hole-in-one on the par-three sixth hole at the Port Course. Harborside also has a red-roofed prairie-style clubhouse that echoes the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright.