20 Years of Golf: Heritage Bluffs Reaches an Anniversary Milestone

Much has changed in and around the Village of Channahon since Heritage Bluffs Public Golf Club opened 20 years ago.

Little has the course been affected.

And that’s a good thing, according to first-year golf course manager and head pro Brian Smith.

Heritage Bluffs, built by Wadsworth Golf Construction Company and designed by famed golf architect Dick Nugent, was widely acclaimed right from the get-go and remains a staple on Golf Digest’s Place to Play list.

Smith, who worked at Heritage Bluffs as an assistant pro during its infant days, has returned just on time to help mark the course’s 20-year anniversary. He is putting together a number of events leading up to the Anniversary Scramble on Aug. 4.

The event—a two-person rotating format scramble­—will be staged 20 years to the date after Heritage Bluffs celebrated its opening on Aug. 4, 1993.

“We’re hoping to get our season rolling here soon,” Smith said. “Hopefully the weather will change and we’ll have a good golf season ahead of us with some good temperatures and some nice weather.

“It is our 20th year, which for our community is a big deal. This golf course, when it was built in 1993, Channahon was a very small little town. And now there is an awful lot of stuff in here. It’s been a big change.”

Two decades of Memories

Smith has been around to serve witness for much of that change. He worked under former Heritage Bluffs golf pro Mark Fehrenbacher before taking the head pro job at Coyote Run in Flossmoor.

Smith commuted from his home in Shorewood to the south suburbs for eight years before landing back at Heritage last June following Fehrenbacher’s retirement.

“Three years ago, we added GPS to the carts, which was a new thing for us and it has gone well,” Smith said. “We really enjoy having that for our golfers and giving that kind of experience to them.

“The landscape of the golf course has not changed much. We haven’t changed a lot of the holes or the layout. But we have done some tweaking. This was undisturbed land at one point on this bluff. Over the years, when we designed the course and built the holes—when Mr. Nugent did that—there were some areas that had an awful lot of brush within them.

“We’ve sculpted that to fit in with the golf course, not so much cutting down trees, but the underbrush and all of that. That’s been one of our focuses over the last year or so is cleaning up. Over 20 years, things have a tendency to go wild, so to speak.

“Now, we’re getting to back to the way it was when we opened.”

Smith said the grooming has improved the play-ability experience for many golfers.

“Now, you’ve got areas that, for the past 10 years or so, when that ball went in there, it was unplayable,” Smith said. “Now, they can actually find that ball and can actually play it from of those spots.”

From Day 1, Heritage Bluffs set itself apart from the rest of the golf crowd because of its unique track, the feeling of travel from a North Carolina experience on one hole to the beaches of Florida on the next. The course plays to a par of 72 and a length of 7,171 yards from the championship tees.

“The golf course, when it was built, was built the right way,” Smith said. “And it was built on a great piece of property. We have hole routings that aren’t typical of Illinois golf courses.

“We have elevation changes. We’ve got some holes that seem kind of like a links course, but then three holes later you’re back in the trees and the pines, almost like a ’Carolina golf course. Then, there are some holes where we have beach-bunkers where you’d swear you’re in Florida.

“There are a lot of different design-type techniques out there that Mr. Nugent used to really make this stand out from the rest of the golf courses in Illinois, and we’re really fortunate for that. We continue to have great customer feedback on the layout of the golf course.”

Smith monitors that feedback, if only to stay in touch with public perception of Heritage Bluffs.

“I’ve talked to a ton of guys, and they all say, ‘Oh, I love that golf course,’ ” he said. “It’s a great place. We don’t have any houses on our golf course. So, when you’re out there, you’re out there in nature. This morning our superintendent brought in a video of two wild turkeys fighting each other by one of our greens. You don’t see that in most other places.”

20-Year Anniversary Events

• May 12: Mother's Day brunch
• May 25: Four-person scramble
• June 7: Family Golf Night (games, contests, special golf rates, 3 holes, 6 holes, 9 holes)
• June 16: Father's Day Scramble (four-person scramble; extra shots for family members)
• June 17: USGA Pub Links Qualifier
• June 19: U.S. Kids Golf Tournament
• July 12: Family Golf Night (games, contests, special golf rates, 3 holes, 6 holes, 9 holes)
• July 20: Four-person scramble (rotating tee event)
• Aug. 2: Family golf night
• Aug. 4: Anniversary scramble (two-person rotating format; 6 holes four-person best ball, 6 holes of scramble, 6 holes alternate shot)
• Sept. 7: Heritage Bluffs Open
• Sept. 21: Fall scramble
• Sept. 27: Family golf night
• Oct. 26: Slash and Bash scramble
• Nov. 23: Turkey Shoot