CHICAGO _ Stroll into the men's locker room at some of Chicago's most moneyed and prestigious golf clubs, and you'll think you've gone back in time.
Metal lockers. Benches with spike marks. Forget about gold-plated faucets in the bathroom. You're more likely to find a jar of blue Barbicide liquid to disinfect the small, black combs.
Spend a few minutes looking around, and you might start to feel a drip of sweat go down your back. The locker rooms, you see, do not have air conditioning.
"Some days you come out of the shower," said one member of an elite club, "and you feel no cooler than when you walked in."
Here's the weird thing: That's exactly how many of Chicago's wealthiest golfers want it.
Minimalism reigns at North Shore clubs such as Indian Hill and Exmoor and at Chicago Golf Club in Wheaton. Fans and open windows trump climate control. The prize for a closest-to-the-pin contest might be an old book. This is where billionaires bet $1, like Randolph and Mortimer in "Trading Places."
"If we wanted, we could afford to turn the whole clubhouse into a Ritz-Carlton," said a member at Indian Hill, the Winnetka club where the Murray brothers once caddied. "We choose not to."
OK. But why?
Stubbornness? A rejection of new money? The reluctance of members to complain and sound whiny?
Yes, yes and yes. But there's more. Call it "old-school charm," as many members do.
The legendary C.B. Macdonald laid out Chicago Golf Club in 1894 as the first 18-hole course in the United States. Protege Seth Raynor redesigned it in 1922, and it remains a darling of aficionados, ranking 14th on Golf Digest's America's 100 Greatest Courses list. Members are reluctant to change anything beyond adjusting a few tee boxes for national tournaments.
"Change for the sake of change is not always good; some people like to live in an old house, and others like to wear frayed khakis," said Josh Lesnik, who works in the golf business for KemperSports and pays dues at Shoreacres and Skokie Country Club. "Chicago Golf Club is old-fashioned but it's viable and completely works. It's also like a museum of classic architecture, and you want that feeling when you're there."
As a member at Chicago Golf Club put it: "Everybody wants to feel like C.B. Macdonald or Seth Raynor is going to walk in and have a drink with you. Like it's 1925 and Bobby Jones just hit into the Redan hole."
