WATCH ONLINE Every Hole at Medinah’s No 3 Course
ship where, in soft conditions, the top three scores were all at least 20 under par, led by Justin Thomas at -25. Medinah was out of step architec- turally, and it was
and shrubs. These grew and matured to the point that an official count prior to the 1999 PGA Championship placed the number of trees lining the fairways and greens at 4 161. To bring No 3 closer to the early Tom Bendelow days, the design team initi- ated an extensive tree-removal pro- gramme, especially around holes six, seven, eight and nine on the south side to reestablish the meadow character. The clearing allowed OCM to widen and relocate fairways and greens. One of the most intriguing alterations was to the par-4 sixth, a rather ordinary, straight hole that’s been turned strategically tense by shifting the entire fairway directly left against a straight out-of- bounds line defined by a split-rail fence seen in old photographs. The instinct is to give the OB wide berth, but large bunkers will snare overly conservative drives, and approach shots must be played nervously towards a deep green that’s also set hard against the fence. The par-5 seventh, formerly the 10th, also runs down a long boundary line. Though the tee shot plays away from the fence towards space that was for- merly blocked by a row of trees, the fair- way swings back left past two staggered bunkers short of the green where it once again connects with the out-of-bounds, giving players much to think about in attacking it with their long seconds. The openness, alternate lines of play and clawed bunker edges have revived the
OUT OF THE WOODS The newly positioned par-3 17th at Medinah’s revamped No. 3 course.
now incapable of administering the beatings that once made it fearsome. In 2023, its ranking fell to 93rd. The club realised dramatic changes were needed and were open to the dra- matic suggestion by the Australian ar- chitects to fundamentally reimagine what the No 3 course could be (Ogilvy, the 2006 US Open champion at Winged Foot, is the captain for this year’s Presi- dents Cup International team). Their plan was to physically recreate the No 3 property as it would have looked in 1928 when the Tom Bendelow design opened. This meant exposing the land- scape with enlarged and recontoured greens with diverse hole locations, the addition of dozens of bunkers empha- sising strategic placement rather than punishment of missed shots, and most importantly, new holes on the second nine. When OCM’s work was completed in 2024, Medinah No 3 was no longer the straight-ahead monster of the Midway of yore but a breathable, complex de- sign that brings into play a novel de- gree of creativity, thoughtfulness, risk assessment and short-game flexibil- ity. At over 7 500 yards (6 858 metres), tournament players still must be strong drivers, but if they’re errant, they now have options to recover. TURNING BACK TIME It’s not by accident that Medinah’s in- tense tree cover defined how the course played. Specimen oaks and hickories naturally populated the middle section of the No 3 course in the 1920s, many of which remain. But the south end of the site was largely bare, adjacent to open farmland. Medinah began to en- hance the landscape in the mid-1930s through a systematic planting plan that aggressively added elm, birch, ash and maple trees by the thousands, along with a similar number of evergreens
classical-era feel of No 3. TROUBLED WATER
Every architect who has worked at Me- dinah from Bendelow onwards, most re- cently Rees Jones, has had to figure out how to handle Lake Kadijah, separating the beginning and ending holes from the rest of the course. In every itera- tion, they’ve done it primarily by build- ing straight-shot, shore-to-shore par 3s that fly directly over the water. Prior to OCM’s remodel, Medinah possessed three of these par 3s, vaguely similar all- carry shots into greens pushed against bulkheads on the water’s edge. OCM be- lieved there were more interesting ways to utilise the shoreline. They kept the second hole, a strong
ca’s 100 Greatest Courses ranking since the first list was published in 1966, fre- quently residing inside the top 15 or 20. Medinah’s stature began to falter as architectural tastes changed to favour courses that exhibited playability, stra- tegic complexity and openness. Those densely packed holes that forced play- ers to hit prescribed, straight shots be- gan to be viewed as a liability. The coup de grace was the 2019 BMW Champion-
GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA 61
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026
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