Golf in Beach Park

Beach Park is an unincorporated Lake County community along the Illinois lakefront north of Waukegan, where the distance from Chicago's suburban core allows more open land to survive. Two golf courses — Greenshire and Thunderhawk — occupy the community's available open space, the latter being among the most notable daily-fee designs in Lake County. Thunderhawk's 1989 Raymond Hearn design brought regional attention to what was otherwise a quiet residential and agricultural corridor, establishing Beach Park's golf identity on a par with communities twice its size. Illinois' position as a crossroads state — linking the Great Lakes to the Mississippi, the industrial north to the agricultural south — creates diverse communities where golf serves as common ground across the state's varied economic landscapes.