A golfer standing on the ninth tee at Tam O’Shanter Golf Course in Niles faces a short shot across the North Branch of the Chicago River. The green ahead was once the 18th green of a championship course. In 1953, Lew Worsham sent a wedge shot across the same stretch of water, watched it drop into the hole for an eagle and won the World Championship of Golf by one stroke.
The shot would have been remarkable anywhere. At Tam, it happened during the first golf tournament broadcast nationally on television. Millions could see the kind of finish that previously belonged only to the people gathered around a green. That moment captures why this modest public course has an outsized place in golf history.
From Private Club to George May’s Showplace
Tam O’Shanter began as an 18-hole private country club designed in 1925 by Charles D. Wagstaff. Its early years were disrupted when a fire destroyed the clubhouse in 1936. George S. May acquired a controlling interest that year and invested heavily in rebuilding the property. A second fire damaged much of the clubhouse in 1946, but by then May had already begun turning Tam into one of the most talked-about tournament venues in America.
May understood that a golf tournament could be more than a competition. It could be a spectacle that drew stars, spectators and attention far beyond the host club. His approach began taking shape with the 1940 Chicago Open at Tam. In 1941, he launched the Tam O’Shanter Open with a purse designed to attract the game’s best players…