The site of the Chicago PGA Tour event is set to change after this week when the BMW Championship ends. It has been three beautiful years at Conway Farms.
The short tenure at Conway Farms differs from the previous sites used for the championship.
Butler National Oak Brook hosted the then Western Open from 1974 until when the event was moved to Cog Hill in 1990. Cog Hill in Lemont hosted the event from 1991 to 2011. The Western Golf Association decided to rename the event in 2006, changing it to the BMW Championship. They moved the event up north for a change but retained its exclusionary membership policies that the PGA Tour frowned at.
The WGA preferred a rotation of sites in and out of Chicago. However, with the move to Conway, there has been a switch in spectators’ viewing for the Chicago golfers. There were top names as members even though there was not enough space for things like parking et al.
Conway had former world no 1 Luke Donald as a member with other top sport names like former Cubs pitcher Scott Sanderson, former Bears lineman Olin Kreutz and Blackhawks general manager Dale Tallon.
Conway Farms used to host amateur events like the US Mid-Amateur and Junior Amateur events, the NCCA Division I men’s championship and others before it became a PGA Tour event site. It has hosted the event three times in five years and has proved to be a very worthy host of the championship. The BMW Championship is set to rotate to Aronimink in Penn next year before it returns to Chicago at the famed No. 3 course at Medinah in 2019.