Medinah Country ClubOUT OF THE WOODS The newly positioned par-3 17th at Medinah’s revamped No. 3 course. Photos courtesy of
A major renovation will have the Chicago-area course looking unrecognizable to most
Medinah Country Club’s No. 3 course is one of American golf’s most storied tournament venues. It has hosted three U.S. Opens, a U.S. Senior Open, PGA Championships in 1999 and 2006 (both won by Tiger Woods) and was the stage for one of the most unlikely come-from-behind victories in the history of the Ryder Cup in 2012. Yet when it hosts the upcoming 2026 Presidents Cup, Medinah will seem unrecognizable to viewers. The No. 3 course underwent a transformative remodel in 2023 and 2024 by the Australian design firm of OCM (Geoff Ogilvy, Mike Cocking and Ashley Mead) that cleared trees, expanded and shifted fairways and greens, reshuffled the routing and introduced a series of new holes. Almost nothing is like it was before.
For most of its history, Medinah No. 3, located 25 miles west of downtown Chicago, was the prototypically difficult U.S. Open-style championship course. It foiled players with small, sloping greens ringed in rough, holes that played across Lake Kadijah and narrow doglegs cloaked in trees. No. 3 epitomized the kind of demanding mid-century formula that cemented its place in every edition of our America’s 100 Greatest Courses ranking since the first list was published in 1966, frequently residing inside the top 15 or 20.
Medinah’s stature, however, began to falter as architectural tastes changed to favor courses that exhibited playability, strategic complexity and openness. Those densely packed holes that forced players to hit prescribed, straight shots began to be viewed as a liability. The coup de grace was the 2019 BMW Championship, where, in soft conditions, the top three scores were all at least 20 under par, led by Justin Thomas at 25 under. Medinah was out of step architecturally, and it was now incapable of administering the beatings that once made it fearsome. In 2023, its ranking fell to 93rd.
The club realized dramatic changes were needed and was open to the dramatic suggestion by the Australian architects to fundamentally reimagine what the No. 3 course could be (Ogilvy, the 2006 U.S. Open champion at Winged Foot, is the captain for this year’s Presidents 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 landscape with enlarged and recontoured greens that could provide diverse hole locations, the addition of dozens of bunkers emphasizing 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 design that brings into play a novel degree of creativity, thoughtfulness, risk assessment and short-game flexibility. At more than 7,500 yards, tournament players still must be strong drivers, but if they’re errant, they now have options to recover.
TURNING BACK TIME
TAKING THE HARD LINE: Out of bounds is uncomfortably close at the par-4 sixth.
It’s not by accident that Medinah’s intense 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 enhance 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 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.
After OCM’s work, Medinah No. 3 is no longer a straight-ahead monster of the Midway but a breathable, complex design.
To bring No. 3 closer to the early Bendelow days, the design team initiated an extensive tree-removal program, 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 toward 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 toward space that was formerly blocked by a row of trees, the fairway 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 classical-era feel of No. 3.
TROUBLED WATER
DOUBLE DARE: The diagonal, cross-water par-4 16th hole lures players into danger.
Every architect who has worked at Medinah from Bendelow onward, most recently 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 iteration, they’ve done it primarily by building 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 believed there were more interesting ways to utilize the shoreline. They kept the second hole, a strong par 3 playing southward over the lake, but they eliminated the cross-water par-3 13th, a hole that had been part of the original Bendelow routing as the 17th hole. In its place is a new par-3 13th that runs parallel to the lake shore, not over it, with the water on the right. The new 13th is a sporty 153 yards (versus the previous 245-yard hole) that can be played forward at 140 or even 120 yards if desired. It gives the course a short-iron or wedge par 3, and a par 3 that runs with the lake rather than across it.
Next, the architects removed another par 3, the 17th, that crossed the lake in the same direction as the old 13th, a hole that was added prior to the 1990 U.S. Open and subsequently remodeled several times. In its place, they built a new par 4, the 16th, that sets up with a diagonal drive over the water to a fairway and green running along the opposite shoreline. The angled tee shot allows shorter players to choose a line that best suits their skill but tempts longer players into biting off more of the lake, especially if the tees are set forward to bring the green within driver range as they’re likely to be in the Presidents Cup. This type of diagonal hole puts the emphasis on decision-making and nerves rather than mere mathematical execution, and the pressure of the matches should induce as many explosions as birdies.
Tight junctions in Tom Bendelow’s original routing made it possible for holes to be sequenced in different combinations.
A new par-3 17th crosses back over Lake Kadijah in the opposite direction and can be stretched to more than 200 yards. It also plays at an angle, this time with the water on the left, to a green sitting well above the lake and bracketed by four bunkers. Those who get too aggressive with front hole locations might see their ball bound down the grassy slope toward the hazard. Situating the new 17th green in this spot places the 18th tees on the far side of the water, allowing OCM to create a 487-yard par-4 closing hole that’s nearly 50 yards longer than the previous version. The fairway is in the same corridor as Bendelow’s original 18th, an area that had been abandoned when the finishing hole was reoriented in the 1980s in conjunction with the new 17th.
Previously, Medinah had three par 3s that all confronted Lake Kadijah head-on, and one long hole that crossed it off the tee. After the OCM remodel, the course has two very different par 3s moving in opposing directions; a short, flexible par 3 that plays along the side of the lake; a risk/reward diagonal par 4 that’s potentially drivable for long hitters; and a revamped 18th hole that’s now 50 yards longer than before.
ROUTING ROULETTE
Bendelow’s original routing was intriguing in the way greens and tees were grouped closely in certain key places. These tight junctions made it possible for the holes to be sequenced in different combinations, an option OCM took advantage of. Holes one through six remain numbered as they were, but from there the order changes with the old par-5 10th now being used as the seventh, making the old 11th the new eighth and so on.
The former holes 14, 15 and 16—the last being famous for Sergio Garcia’s wild swing from behind the tree and dash up the fairway during his duel with Tiger Woods in the 1999 PGA Championship—are no more. They’ve been replaced by two strong par 4s at 14 and 15 that precede the diagonal par-4 16th over the lake.
One final change is in store for the Presidents Cup. As has been done in previous team events at courses like Hazeltine National and Liberty National, players will begin their matches not at hole one but at Medinah’s long, downhill fifth hole. This ensures that exciting swing holes like 16, 17 and 18 will be played as 12, 13 and 14 and will factor into each match. It also shuffles perhaps the hardest par 3, the second, snuggled tight against the water, to the 16th hole, presenting the chance for late-game heroics, or for players to choke away their matches with one swing.