Glenview: Home of the Illinois Golf Hall of Fame and 2025 Inductees

It may or may not be a golfing coincidence that the Village of Glenview is the home of the Illinois Golf Hall of Fame and ‘hometown’ of two of its 2025 inductees.

The Illinois Golf Hall of Fame Selection Committee has announced the six members of its distinguished 21st class, representing a diverse and influential cross-section of golf achievement in Illinois. The inductees will be honored at an official ceremony on Friday, October 17 at The Glen Club in Glenview, home of the Illinois Golf Hall of Fame.

“This 21st class of the Illinois Golf Hall of Fame is especially distinguished and unique,” said Selection Committee Chair Tim Cronin. Among the six inductees into the Illinois Golf Hall of Fame from the class of 2025 there are two former PGA Tour players, a pioneer for racial intergration, and a diverse trio with ties to Glenview whose impact on golf and the golf industry has been nothing short of remarkable.

The Glen Club in Glenview is the current home of the Illinois Golf Hall of Fame. The Glen Club is owned and managed by KemperSports, a premier golf course and hospitality management company, headquartered in nearby Northbrook.

Steve Skinner

Steve Skinner, as CEO of KemperSports, has played a pivotal role in shaping modern golf facility management in Illinois and across the nation including more top 100 U.S. public and resort courses as rated by GOLF Magazine, Golf Digest and Golfweek than any other management company.

A founder of The First Tee of Greater Chicago, Skinner’s leadership has extended into philanthropy, youth development, and national event operations. Steve is a director of the Western Golf Association/Evans Scholars Foundation, and a national trustee of the Midwest Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

Steve Skinner has been named to the top 10 most influential leaders in the U.S. golf business by Golf Inc., in that publication’s annual listing of the Most Powerful People in Golf. 

A well deserved place in the Illinois Golf Hall of Fame will awarded to Steve on October 17, 2025.

Joe Roseman

Joseph Roseman was born in 1888 and grew up in Philadelphia, where he caddied and played golf. Becoming quite proficient as a golfer, he became a professional at age 15. Among Roseman’s first professional positions were jobs in Lake Placid, NY; then a move westward brought him to Des Moines Golf & Country Club where he served as both professional and superintendent from 1907-1916. It was here at DMGCC that Roseman’s ingenuity and inventiveness sparked his ideas about mowing and would earn him a reputation as the ‘father of the modern mower’. Joe created a hitch for horses that allowed them to pull three gang mowers as a unit. He later adapted a Model T Ford to serve as a tractor to pull these same mowers.

Roseman then moved to Racine, WI, and took up golf course design, and by the end of 1917 had moved again, just 70 miles to the south, settling in Glenview, IL where he designed courses and served as the first professional and course superintendent at the Westmoreland Country Club in Wilmette.

Throughout his career as a course architect, Roseman worked on 50 designs which included his hometown efforts of the Glenview Park Golf Club (originally Elmgate CC in 1920), and the two Glenview NAS courses (originally Pickwick GC in 1927).

As an inventive force in early American golf, Roseman’s further innovations included introducing modern fairway irrigation, and constructing the first lighted par-3 course in the 1930’s.

Joseph A. Roseman, Sr. died on February 29, 1944, at his home in Glenview, IL, but the evolution and advancements of his mowing ideas have lived on to this day; his legacy, as a 2025 Hall of Fame inductee, will continue to live on a mere mile or two away at The Glen Club.

Dan Dinelli

Born in 1960, Dan Dinelli, grew up on a house along the 15th fairway at North Shore Country Club in Glenview, and went on to become a third-generation superintendent, succeeding his father as the NSCC superintendent in 1995 (grandfather, Frank, was superintendent at Northmoor Country Club in Highland Park). The span of his work efforts has now reached 36 years at the same club, from which he has become a national voice in Phytobiome research, soil health, and sustainable agronomy.

Emphasizing a 180-degree-turnaround from the 1970’s and 80’s, Dinelli’s is now a ‘non-toxic’ approach of stewardship in golf course management. Working with horticulture professors and university researchers across the Midwest, Dinelli’s innovation has even included the use of bees, bats, and birds of prey as natural components for a successful ecological environment.

A spot in the Illinois Golf Hall of Fame adds to the numerous awards that Dan Dinelli has earned as one of the nation’s leading turfgrass experts. Dinelli currently resides in Northbrook.