The park district was to make a golf course at no cost to taxpayers. There were more than 50 subscribers and well toward 200 were expected to join in the movement to provide Sycamore with a public golf course.
A paper was circulated stating that the members of the club proposed to build, equip and maintain a golf course in the Sycamore City Park and these members would pay an annual fee of $10, no other expense being incurred. It was expected by those who were promoting this enterprise, that enough signatures be obtained to enable them to lay out a course and commence playing golf within a few weeks.
D.A. Middleton, who had been circulating the petitions for members, in an interview, said, “Caddies will be trained this season. Few people, not acquainted with the game, realize the amount of money paid out for the hire of caddies. As an illustration, several boys acting as caddies at the Kishwaukee Country Club during the last school vacation period, earned as high as $200 each. Those were exceptionally good caddies, but all of them made considerable money, and there is no reason why the boys of Sycamore cannot earn the same amounts on the Sycamore golf course.” During the campaign for the park, the charge was made that the Sycamore golf players wanted the taxpayers to build a golf course for them.
Photo: Sycamore Golf Club, August 1937
Derived from columns from the Sycamore True Republican saved and recorded by the Joiner History Room and the minutes of the Board of Directors of the Sycamore Park District. Articles were condensed and rewritten by Dan Gustafson with the intent to keep them as factual as the original.
