Links & Tee’s is one of the few Year-Round Chicagoland Golf Facilities, right now the Golf Dome is open and winter activities are in full swing. To buy multi-use passes, sign up for lessons, attend ladies night or more see addisonparks.org or call (630)-233-7275. ______________________________________________________________________

The Gog Blog Chicago’s #1 Online Golf News Source by Rory Spears, Editor and Director of Content. Follow Rory on Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter @GogBlogGuy. On 18 at Pinehurst #8, in Pinehurst NC. Weather permitting, Pinehurst will be round #1 for me in 2016.

Happy 2016 Golfers, I hope you ended 2015 in fine form and 2016 is even better. More pars, more birdies, more eagles or better.

While it’s only Jan, 2nd I have looked into the crystal ball for 2016, and have some thoughts about the golf season ahead in the new year. Especially for around town here in the Chicago and Illinois area.

Starting tomorrow on a low 30’s degree day, the Eskimo Open at Cog Hill gets the year going with tee times at 7 AM through 11 AM on Courses 1 & 3.

Just $46 dollars will be your first green fee of the year, this includes a warm drink and some chili when your done playing. Visit Coghillgolf.com or call (866)-COG-HILL. The rest of January is all about the domes up here. The Gog Blog will hit the PGA Show in Orlando and start sending out stories on all the new items I see down there. By the time I return in February it will be time for our local indoor golf shows.

Tinley Park is up first from February 12-14, with Rosemont up on the calendar two weeks later, watch for more details to follow on both shows.

By March, the courses will be looking to open around St. Patrick’s Day, hopefully they will all be open by April Fools Day. I’m wishing the best to courses like Mt. Prospect and Glenview who will be open for a full season for the first time in three years. Mistwood for the first time in five years won’t be renovating the course, building a performance center or a new clubhouse.

Last spring the weather was not great, and while Illinois might not be as nice as it should look on TV during masters week, hopefully it’s a better spring for area courses.

In the spring the golf side of the Oak Meadows renovation will get rolling behind architect Greg Martin and his team. The Salt Creek work is mostly in place, and now it’s time for the golf building to begin. Oak Meadows is expected to reopen for golf in May of 2017.

At the end of May, the Sr. PGA will return to the Harbor Shores Golf Club in Benton Harbor, just a short little drive around the south end of Lake Michigan on Memorial Day weekend.

June brings the Web.com Tour to the Ivanhoe Club in the name of the Rust-Oleum Championship, it’s a new event the week before the U.S. Open. Some local players should be in the field in the first of four big tournaments in Lake County, the hot spot for  tournament golf in 2016 in the Chicago area.

The Arlington Lakes Golf Club that closed last July will reopen from a Mike Benkusky renovation in June, it will be interesting to see how golfers react to 3-hole, 6-hole 9-hole and 18-hole loops the club will offer. Speed golf will be an option at Arlington Lakes, every day of the week. the club will doing almost $500,000 worth of improvements to the clubhouse.

July has the Illinois Open again at Royal Melbourne, with Hawthorn Woods serving as the second course. On the heels of that is the LPGA UL International Crown, that is now being played at the Merit Club. The Merit Club is a great venue, but the club and the LPGA have their work cut out for them after making a last minute change from Rich Harvest Farms in Sugar Grove, and pulling the event together. It will be interesting to see how it all works out.

August will start with the Western Amateur at the historic Knollwood Club in Lake Forest, the Colt and Alison design renovated a few years ago by architect Keith Foster has put the club back on the map. It successfully served at the second course during the 2012 U.S. Mid-Amateur held at Conway Farms.

The Olympics return with golf and it will interesting to see how that all works out, and how well the new course by Gil Hanse will have taken shape by then.

During the Olympic break, the John Deere Classic will tee it up in August for the first time in it’s history. But the John Deere Classic will not have defending champion Jordan Spieth but should be a great event anyway, with maybe a few new players that normally don’t get in the field.

If you want to follow the BMW Championship this year, you will have to drive down to the Crook Stick Golf Club North of Indianapolis this year, in 2012 the Pete Dye designed course was a great host and Rory McIlroy won the tournament.

At the end of September the Ryder Cup returns to America at the Hazeltine Golf Club near the Twin Cities in Minnesota, many Chicago golf fans that enjoyed Medinah’s Ryder Cup in 2012, will be looking to make the trip to this event again.

Hopefully the fall and early part of winter will be as nice as this year, and that nice time of the year to go play golf will come around again.

The 2016 golf season starts tomorrow with the Eskimo Open are you ready? I hope to see you on the links in the months ahead. RS.