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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Shedloski has been a professional sports journalist for more than forty years and has written seven books. He holds the distinction as the only writer in golf history to have co-written books with both Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer.

A Cleveland native and graduate of Miami (Ohio) University, Shedloski has won twenty-five national writing awards, including twenty-three for golf writing.

He is a former daily newspaper sportswriter and editor who now serves as a contributing writer to Golf Digest and golfdigest.com and as editorial director of The Memorial the official magazine of the Memorial Tournament.

He has covered more than five hundred golf tournaments worldwide, including nearly one hundred major championships.

Shedloski’s author credits begin with Golden Twilight, published in 2001, a critically acclaimed chronicle of Nicklaus’s final championship season in 2000. He also co-wrote Memories and Mementos with Nicklaus in 2005, and in 2015 he helped Arnold Palmer write his final memoir, A Life Well Played, which debuted in October 2016 on The New York Times bestseller list.

The Wall Street Journal selected the book as its Best Sports Biography of the year. In 2016, Shedloski wrote the centennial history book for Scioto Country Club in Columbus, Ohio.

Shedloski lives in New Albany, Ohio, and is the father of two children, Alexander and Elizabeth.

MEDINAH COUNTRY CLUB, located in Medinah, Illinois, is one of the most storied and prestigious private golf clubs in the United States.

MEDINAH

Established in 1924 by a group of Shriners from Chicago’s Medinah Temple, the club was conceived as a luxurious retreat where members could enjoy sport and leisure in a grand setting. The original vision included three world-class golf courses, expansive clubhouse facilities, and a strong sense of community.

The architectural design of the clubhouse, completed in 1926, is distinctive and memorable. Designed by Richard Gustav Schmid, the building showcases Moorish Revival architecture, with Byzantine domes and ornate detailing that reflects the Shriners’ Middle Eastern-inspired aesthetics. The clubhouse remains one of the most iconic in the country and is a recognized symbol of Medinah’s unique identity.

Medinah Country Club is best known for its three golf courses—No. 1, No. 2, and the worldfamous No. 3. Course No. 3 is the crown jewel and was originally designed by Tom Bendelow, later renovated by Rees Jones, and reimagined in 2024 by OCM golf course architects, Mike Cocking, Ashley Mead, and Geoff Ogilvy. It has hosted numerous prestigious tournaments, including major championships—the U.S. Open (1949, 1975, and 1990), the PGA Championship (1999 and 2006)—and the 2012 Ryder Cup, when Team Europe staged a historic comeback to defeat the Team USA.

Throughout its history, Medinah has remained committed to excellence in golf and hospitality. Its continual investment in course upgrades and clubhouse amenities ensures that it stays at the forefront of elite golf destinations. Beyond golf, the club offers a wide range of recreational and social activities, including racquet sports, swimming, skeet and trap shooting, dining, and family programming.

Medinah Country Club stands as a testament to nearly a century of tradition, elegance, and competitive excellence. With its blend of history, architectural splendor, and challenging golf, Medinah remains a treasured landmark in American golf and a dream venue for professionals and amateurs alike. Its legacy continues to shape the landscape of the sport for future generations.

MEDINAH

The Jewel of Chicagoland

—— ESTABLISHED 1924 ——

There is a mystique about Medinah Country Club that transcends its reputation. It has a pulse, a palpable energy that emits outward beyond its boundaries and reverberates throughout the American golf community.

The club’s founders had a vision that they turned into something that inspired, that invited a communal pride, that translated to national respect.

MEDINAH

The Jewel of Chicagoland

—— ESTABLISHED 1924 ——

DAVID SHEDLOSKI

Foreword by HALE

IRWIN

Principal photography by NICK

NOVELLI

PUBLISHING & MEDIA GROUP

Prologue

AS YOU APPROACH the century-old gate of Medinah and drive beneath the arched Byzantine entryway of brick and terra cotta, something inside you shifts. A quiet anticipation builds. For a first-time visitor, a single thought emerges: What have I come upon?

The winding entrance road ignites your imagination. History seems to settle in with the breeze, and a sense of legacy hangs in the air. Members who have made this drive countless times before still find it stirring. For a guest, the experience is unexpected and unforgettable.

“The one thing that always struck me” says longtime member Mark Valdick, “is when you drive through the gate, the rest of the world disappears. The calm that comes over you ... all of the day-to-day things that you have to deal with just dissipate and go away.”

And what lies beyond the gate is unlike any country club on earth.

The road curves left, revealing glimpses of one of the most iconic golf landscapes in the world. As your anticipation builds, the towering flagpole comes into view, standing sentinel before the magnificent Moorish-style clubhouse— its arches, its minarets, and, yes, the dome. The architecture commands your attention, both through its opulence and its presence.

“We have something so special here; it’s a gift that you keep receiving over and over,” said Vaughn Moore, club president during Medinah’s centennial. “Coming through the gate feels like entering an oasis.”

Beyond the clubhouse, that oasis unfolds across more than six hundred acres. Before you reach the circular drive—where the expansive putting green guards the iconic archways—you sense something special.

For those who’ve made the drive many times, the sense of grandeur doesn’t fade; it deepens. Each visit carries the weight of memory and the freshness of your very first arrival. What the club calls its “tradition of togetherness” isn’t just heritage—it’s something lived, again and again, in the quiet awe that greets you every time you cross its threshold. xi

This is a place shaped by time, tradition, and intention.

PROLOGUE viii A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT by W. Vaughn Moore — xiv — FOREWO RD by Hale Irwin — xviii —

INTRO DUCT ION — xxiv —

BEGINNINGS

Chapter One THE BIRTH OF MEDINAH COUNTRY CLUB — 3 — THE FOUNDERS — 6 —

THE TRAGIC SACRIFICE OF MAYOR ANTON CERMAK — 38 —

Chapter Two A CLUBHOUSE LIKE NO OTHER — 40 —

THE CLUBHOUSE ARCHITECT — 62 — THE MURALIST — 75 — A SIGNIFICANT CHANGE OF COURSE — 78 —

COURSES & PROS

Chapter Three

COURSE No . 1 LEADS THE WAY — 83 —

THE DEAN OF AMERICAN GOLF COURSE ARCHITECTS — 98 —

Chapter F our COURSE No . 2 –REES REVIVES BENDELOW — 102 —

Chapter F ive THE REIMAGINING OF COURSE No . 3 — 117 —

“THIS IS WHAT WE’VE BEEN WORKING TOWARDS” — 178 —

THE SAHARA / THE CAMEL TRAIL — 182 —

Chapter Six MEDINAH’S CLUB PROS — 185 —

TAUGHT BY TOMMY — 191 —

THE SHOP/ GOLF LEARNING CENTER — 202 —

MIRACLES AT MEDINAH BEYOND GOLF

Chapter Seven THE MEDINAH WAY — 209 —

DOUBTING TOMMY — 212 —

Chapter E ight THE DENTIST GRITS HIS TEETH — 227 —

“BLACK WIDOW” PUTTER STINGS MEDINAH — 232 —

SNEAD’S BITTER DEFEAT — 236 —

Chapter Nine A COMEBACK FOR THE AGES — 239 —

JACK VS. ARNIE “HERE WE GO AGAIN” — 245 —

GRAHAM’S SECRET WEAPON — 250 —

Chapter Ten PLAYER PREVAILS — 253 —

Chapter Eleven A DREAM COMES TRUE — 254 —

A SPORTING GESTURE — 270 —

Chapter Twelve TIGER RUNS THE TABLES — 272 —

SERGIO’S TREE — 278 —

SLUMAN’S SWING COACH — 285 —

Chapter Thirteen THE “MIRACLE AT MEDINAH” — 290 —

Chapter Fourteen THE DAY MEDINAH GAVE IN — 309 —

Chapter Fifteen MEMBER GOLF AT MEDINAH — 312 —

THE WUNCE WUZZERS — 317 —

MAKING A SPLASH — 319 —

Chapter Sixteen MORE MEMBERS DOING MORE THINGS — 329 —

AHOY, MATEY! — 340 —

FINDING STRENGTH IN UNCERTAINTY — 347 —

Chapter Seventeen THE BONDS OF MEDINAH — 355 —

A PHILOSOPHY OF PHILANTHROPY — 360 —

MEDINAH’S EVANS SCHOLARS — 362 —

THE FAMILY TRUST — TREASURING THE STAFF — 368 —

NOVELLI’S PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORIES — 370 —

ONE HU N DRED

Chapter Eighteen “THE CELEBRATION OF THE CENTURY” — 375 —

APPEN DICES — 389 —

A Message From the President

IT IS WITH profound pride and deep apprecia-

tion that I write to you in the pages of Medinah:

The Jewel of Chicagoland, a fitting title for this commemorative volume celebrating our club’s centennial. For one hundred years, Medinah Country Club has stood as a beacon of excellence, tradition, and camaraderie— an enduring symbol of what it means to belong to something truly exceptional.

From the vision of our founding members in 1924 to the world-class destination we are today, Medinah has evolved with purpose while honoring its storied past. Our legacy is steeped in championship golf, architectural grandeur, and cherished memories created by generations of members and their families. Each decade has brought its own milestones, shaping the identity of the club and reinforcing our commitment to excellence on and off the course.

As we reflect on this centennial moment, we find ourselves not only looking back with admiration but also looking forward with anticipation. We are, arguably, in the midst of the three most remarkable years in Medinah’s history. The reimagining of Course No. 3 by OCM has positioned Medinah at the forefront of modern championship golf design. Our Centennial Celebration has united our community in reflection, pride, and festivity. And ahead lies the honor of hosting

the 2026 Presidents Cup—an event that will once again place Medinah on the world stage and reaffirm our standing as one of the game’s most iconic venues. Once we’ve hosted the Presidents Cup, Medinah will be the only club in the world to have hosted a Ryder Cup, a Presidents Cup, a U.S. Open, and a PGA Championship—a singular achievement in the game of golf. It is our Mount Rushmore moment: a once-in-a-century convergence of history, legacy, and excellence.

These achievements are not by chance—they are the result of thoughtful stewardship, member engagement, and an unwavering pursuit of excellence. The vibrancy of our present and the promise of our future are built upon the legacy of those who came before us and the shared dedication of those who call Medinah home today.

Let this book serve as both a tribute and a testament—a tribute to the club’s rich history and traditions and a testament to the enduring spirit of Medinah. To be part of this moment, in this centennial year, is a privilege that connects us across time and generations.

Thank you for being a vital part of Medinah’s journey. Here’s to the next one hundred years of greatness.

W. Vaughn Moore President

(2024–2025)

Foreword

WHENEVER THE SUBJECT of the 1990 U.S. Open comes up, the first thing I am usually asked about is my sprint around the 18th green during Sunday’s final round. That’s what people remember most. Granted, in the years since that championship, television has made a habit of showing my spontaneous celebration hundreds of times. Not that I mind.

Of course, what I remember most is the putt that prompted that celebration. I knew what that long birdie putt meant, that potentially it could give me a chance to win a third U.S. Open title. Which is exactly what eventually happened. That putt was the steak. The jaunt around the 18th green was the sizzle—and people always remember the sizzle. The fact that I couldn’t contain myself, that I was showing some emotion, was a factor. People who know me well would not say it was abnormal, but I would agree that to most people on the outside of the ropes looking in, it was probably a shock.

Now, I will tell you something that isn’t likely to be a shock. A couple of hours after outlasting Mike Donald in the first sudden-death playoff in the history of the championship, I loaded up the car and started the five-hour drive home to Frontenac, Missouri, with my wife, Sally, and my daughter, Becky. We celebrated over cold pizza and canned soda. Some celebration, huh? Well, I enjoyed that drive home very much. It got us out of the limelight and sort of back into the real world, but what I loved most is that I had a chance to share some time with the people that meant the most to me.

Then the next day the world got crazy again. I didn’t care. It was a wonderful time in my career. Winning my third U.S. Open Championship was such a rewarding experience. Not many folks expected me to be the last man standing when it was over, but I had felt my game rounding into form for most of the year. I was getting back on my game as I saw it. And even if I hadn’t won since the 1985 Memorial Tournament, I still believed I was capable of winning again.

Still, I had to go out and do it. And the way it all unfolded, especially over those final nine holes of regulation, the way I was able to make a steady progression up the leaderboard,

Opposite: Hale Irwin reacts after sinking a forty-five-foot birdie putt to tie the lead and force a playoff at the 1990 U.S. Open at Medinah.

I still get goosebumps thinking about it. You can call it anything you want—unbelievable, surprising, storybook. You can say it was some kind of Rip Van Winkle tale. Any of the above. The fact is I never put more effort into a tournament than I did in that U.S. Open. As a result, I did a lot of things very well at a course I respected highly.

Something unexpected happened just before I teed off for Sunday’s final round that kind of brought it all together and set the tone. Billy Ray Brown came up to me as I was heading to the first tee. He was going to the putting green, but he stopped and asked me, “Hey, how should I play today?” He’s tied for the lead, doesn’t have much experience. I said to him, “Billy Ray, you’re playing well. These are the days where guys tend to beat themselves. I would say to you, play the shots that you’re comfortable playing.” So now I’m walking onto the tee, and I’m saying to myself, “Well, that’s pretty good advice. Why don’t you try that yourself?”

The rest is history.

People often want to know which of my three U.S. Open wins was the most special. The truth is that each had its own personality and significance.

The first one in 1974 at Winged Foot was the hardest. I guess you might say I survived at 7-over par, but that win made me feel like I belonged. The second one gets a little lost in the conversation, but it came during a period of years when I had been playing well. It confirmed things for me, because not a lot of players at the time had won two U.S. Opens. Winning a third one obviously was special for a number of reasons. I was forty-five years old and hadn’t won for some time. I was extremely pleased to give validation to the USGA for granting me a special exemption.

More than anything, winning at a venue like Course No. 3, which asks a lot of a player, is incredibly meaningful because I was able to give my best when the pressure was highest and the golf was the hardest. What’s more, to have put my name next to other winners at Medinah, great players like Gene Sarazen, Byron Nelson, Cary Middlecoff, Billy Casper, and Tiger Woods, is truly gratifying.

I have a tremendous respect and appreciation for the history of the game, and I hope this book gives everyone—members, guests, and the golf world at large—a better appreciation for the wonderful story of Medinah Country Club over its first one hundred years. It’s an honor to have contributed to that story, and I will always feel very proud of what I accomplished at Medinah. It was like I had been somebody, and then I kind of got lost a little bit for a period of time, and then I rediscovered who I was. The whole week was almost beyond belief. It’s in my heart forever.

—Hale Irwin, 1990 U.S. Open Champion at Medinah

Opposite: Hale Irwin hoists the U.S. Open trophy after winning a nineteen-hole playoff at Medinah in 1990 to secure his third U.S. Open title and become the oldest champion in the tournament’s history at age forty-five.

Introduction

MEDINAH COUNTRY CLUB was from its beginnings an enormous undertaking of material and financial might, grand in ambition and scale and purpose, physically imposing, spiritually renewing, intrinsically and implicitly American—a monument of sorts to the soaring ideals to which this nation as a whole is imbued.

The four men who founded the club in early 1924 had a vision of excellence fueled by ego and inspired by their allegiance to one of the most influential and proud fraternal organizations in the country—the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. Charles H. Canode, Theodore R. Heman, William S. Barbee, and Frederick N. Peck were bright men with big dreams, and even if their intentions were not altogether altruistic, there is no denying that the plans they executed started Medinah Country Club down a path to prominence unique among private country clubs. Medinah is one of a handful of America’s golf cathedrals; that is, unquestionably, its primary identity, and one easily identified by mononym.

its anchor and a championship golf course—one of three fine layouts at the facility—that has proven to be a worthy stage for significant national and international events. That stage is Course No. 3, a championship design by Tom Bendelow that has gone through significant changes in its lifetime but has never lost its identity as a proper and complete test of golf.

As former PGA champion and two-time Ryder Cup captain Davis Love III said in acknowledging the club’s reputation, “You don’t have to say ‘Medinah Country Club’ in golf. You just say Medinah. It’s like saying Augusta or Pebble.”

It’s a reputation forged by two iconic elements: an awe-inspiring, architecturally distinctive clubhouse as

The 1939 Western Open was the first truly noteworthy tournament to come to the club, and Byron Nelson gave it a proper christening of sorts with his one-stroke victory over Lloyd Mangrum. Eight years later, the leadership of Medinah successfully convinced the United States Golf Association to hold the 1949 U.S. Open on Course No. 3, and that set in motion a tradition that saw the club frequently welcoming the game’s elite players, not to mention the world at large, inside its splendid confines. Cary Middlecoff outdueled another legend, Sam Snead, to win the forty-ninth national open, and on the next two occasions that the USGA came to Medinah, the championship didn’t want to leave. A playoff was required in each, with Lou Graham beating John Mahaffey in 1975

and Hale Irwin outlasting Mike Donald in 1990 in nineteen holes to become the first champion to win the Open in sudden death. A partnership with the PGA of America followed beginning in 1999, and that year Tiger Woods was just emerging as the force he would become in holding off Sergio Garcia for his first PGA Championship victory and second major title. That triumph opened the floodgate to thirteen more majors for Woods, including the 2006 PGA title, which by then seemed more inevitable.

Then came the 2012 Ryder Cup, which turned out to be arguably the most memorable event Medinah Country Club ever hosted. That’s because it’s one of the most historic in the annals of the biennial event that has become one of the most popular in the game—if not sports at large. Known as “The Miracle at Medinah,” the 39th Ryder Cup is remembered for the European team staging an improbable rally from four points behind on the final day to beat the United States.

“Whatever you think of the result, there is no doubt

that the Ryder Cup here is something people continue to talk about. It adds to our identity as a place where memorable things tend to happen,” said Bruce D’Angelo, who served as chair of the 2019 BMW Championship at Medinah and was head of security for the club for the 2012 Ryder Cup.

With the playing of the upcoming 2026 Presidents Cup on what is now a reimagined and revamped Course No. 3, Medinah joins Muirfield Village Golf Club in suburban Columbus, Ohio, as the only courses to host a Ryder Cup and a Presidents Cup. More significantly, Medinah will become the only course in the U.S. to host both team events plus the U.S. Open and PGA Championship.

“I can tell you a story, and I didn’t realize this until I was president of the club, about how Medinah Country Club is viewed from the outside,” said Tony Graffia, club president from 2012–2013. “You know, I could be in a room full of people, and somebody could introduce me as the guys who invented the cure for cancer, or he

eliminated world hunger, and, oh, he’s also president of Medinah. And being a member at Medinah might resonate the most.

“I’m exaggerating, but I wear the Medinah shirt no matter where I go, and people stop me and ask, ‘Oh, you’re from Medinah?’ Wherever I travel in the world— Italy, France, Germany, The Bahamas, Virgin Islands, it happens all the time. All the time. So it means something to people. Medinah has a certain reputation. And that’s when it really hits you most, what Medinah represents to other people. It has a great reputation and great respect.”

Of course, the meaning of Medinah goes beyond its renown. Medinah represents a tri umph of devotion to basic human fulfillment. The nourishment of mind and body has been the unspoken but unmistakable mandate at the core of every endeavor. Golf dominates the landscape but not the soulscape. The pursuits are myriad: swimming and diving, tennis, paddle sports, shooting, and every kind of dining experience and social activity and special gathering. In and of themselves, each represents a manner of leisure diversion that brings pleasure and a certain kind of human connection that is, at its core, familial—be it of the actual or extended variety.

Edward James, a perpetual member since 1959, doesn’t visit the club as much as he once did, but one reason to make the drive from his home in Wisconsin is when he hears his grandchildren ask him, “When can we golf again at Medinah?”

The family atmosphere thrives at Medinah, too. The feeling resonates throughout the grounds and echoes through its palatial clubhouse. The sentiment is repeated over and over; being a member at Medinah is like being a part of a family, not only among the membership but extending to the people who work here, serving the food, shining the shoes, sweeping the floors. It’s not just talk. In 2020, as the pandemic wreaked havoc across the country and forced the shutdown of all but the most essential commercial enterprises, the membership came together to create the Employee Relief Fund that became an essential aid to many club helpers.

Oliver Schmidt Honor Medal

The family thrives at Medinah. From the mothers and fathers who have brought their children to the club, to those children who have brought their own. And so on.

“I grew up at this club, which is a pretty idyllic upbringing,” says Jason Kinander, the longest-serving chair of the club’s Heritage Committee and director of the Western Golf Association. “The experience that my siblings and I had, it was amazing, and it’s great to see that with a lot of families that are out here today.”

Grown men are brought to tears when they are asked what it means to be a member of Medinah Country Club. “Sometimes you pinch yourself, knowing how lucky you are to be a part of something this special,” said Michael Crance, a contributor to the 2019 BMW Championship and to the Course No. 3 renovation project.

“Just to drive in through the gate, the feeling you get … there’s nothing like it,” said past president John Potts, his eyes watery while trying to fight through strong emotions. “The people who have been here, the people who work here, they’re all wonderful. Some people say, ‘Oh, it’s the golf. It’s the shooting. It’s this, it’s that.’ And it’s all great. But it’s just about living. It’s about life. That’s very special. I’ve been a member at other clubs, and nothing’s like Medinah.”

BEGINNINGS

Chapter One

THE BIRTH OF MEDINAH COUNTRY CLUB — 3 — THE FOUNDERS — 6 —

THE TRAGIC SACRIFICE OF MAYOR ANTON CERMAK — 38 —

Chapter Two A CLUBHOUSE LIKE NO OTHER — 40 — THE CLUBHOUSE ARCHITECT

62 — THE MURALIST

75 — A SIGNIFICANT CHANGE OF COURSE

Chapter One

THE BIRTH OF MEDINAH COUNTRY CLUB

THE FOUNDING of Medinah Country Club in 1924 is glorious and complicated and monumental. Long before it became one of the foremost clubs in the rankings of Platinum Clubs of America and Platinum Clubs of the World, it was a shiny object—even if just in the fertile minds of its founders—and it became every bit as opulent and unsurpassed as intended.

Wander through its expansive, artfully designed clubhouse. Cherish its three distinctly great golf courses unfolding over most of its 640 acres. Recognize the abundance of Medinah’s many other amenities and the quality with which they are offered and maintained. To immerse oneself in the Medinah experience is to appreciate opportunities that cannot be matched in variety and quality. An early brochure referred to Medinah as “the Jewel of Chicagoland,” and that seems like an appropriate description, though one can legitimately assert that it’s a gem whose brilliance is recognized well beyond those bounds to the global community.

Opposite: Entrance to the club, 1925

March 1, 1924, is the official birth date of Medinah Country Club when Shriners Charles H. Canode, William S. Barbee, Theodore R. Heman, and Frederick N. Peck signed articles of incorporation chartering the club as a not-for-profit entity. The following day, Al Chase of the Chicago Tribune heralded the news with this lead paragraph:

Medinah Temple of Chicago, largest in the world, is to achieve fresh fame in the Masonic world by having a new addition to its amusement feature in the shape of the finest and most elaborate, and eventually the largest, country club in the world. This $1,000,000 project will occupy a site of more than 400 acres in DuPage County, on the main line of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railway, and will be called the Medinah Country Club.

The article went on to tout the construction of a “magnificent $600,000 fireproof club building designed by Noble Richard G. Schmid,” not to mention “a great stadium,” the latter which, of course, never came to be built. An artist’s rendition of the clubhouse accompanied the story, which went on to mention that the railroad already had agreed to change the name of the nearby station from Meacham to Medinah. A short time later, the narrow dirt path named Meacham Road became Medinah Road, and the

An artist’s rendering of the Clubhouse and grounds from a membership recruitment brochure.

THE FOUNDERS

THERE IS NO DENYING that the founders of Medinah Country Club had a brilliant and admirable idea—one that had a profound impact not only on the recreational and leisure pursuits of fellow nobles and others in Chicago, but also, ultimately, on the socioeconomic growth of DuPage County. There also is no denying that the four men who initiated the creation of the club had designs on expanding their personal fortunes.

Their names are well known in the annals of Medinah Country Club, yet their presence accounts for nothing more than apparitions now. Faint echoes. They built a place that has stood the test of time, a place of immense quality and reputation, yet they simultaneously demolished forever their own statures with a stunning degree of avarice.

Shriners Charles H. Canode, Theodore R. Heman, William S. Barbee, and Frederick N. Peck were, nevertheless, the masterminds of Medinah. It is a wonder that the club survived their massive undertaking of deceit and larceny, though it would take decades for the club to work itself free from the fiscal mess the founders foisted upon it.

The essence of a heist that would total more than $580,000— which translates to about $10 million today—included a tidy profit on land sales and undisclosed commissions and administrative fees on early membership sales.

Given their common interests in real estate and banking, it’s no mystery how the four founders of Medinah knew one another and eventually joined forces.

One of nine siblings, Charles H. Canode—not only the first club president but lead spokesman at the outset—was owner of the Bronson-Canode printing company with varied interests in property investment, banking, and politics. He also owned an electric refrigerator company in Indiana. He and his sister, Eliza, together bought a newspaper, The Mount Morris News, in 1896 and sold it four-and-a-half years later—not long after the newsroom was damaged in a fire.

He did have a generous side, which deserves some acknowledgment. During a period of labor unrest, Canode was

supportive of union workers at his print concern and declared publicly his promise to not cut wages for their forty-four-hour work week. In 1909, he donated land to the National Daughters of the Grand Army of the Republic on which a home for its invalid members was to be built.

Strangely coincidental was this episode in his career, also in 1909: Canode claimed to be a victim of embezzlement after an Evanston lawyer had disappeared with $6,400 in alleged investment money that Canode and his brother, Fred, had given the man. A few years later, he found himself in legal hot water while running for alderman in the 32nd Ward in 1915. Campaigning as a Republican, Canode was charged with flag desecration after he printed election posters with his picture on an American flag. Finally, there was his hand in banking, serving as president of the Farmers and Merchants State Bank of Roselle. The vice president of that same bank happened to be Frederick N. Peck.

A Connecticut native, Peck enjoyed a rather colorful early career as a newspaper reporter. He served for a time as Paris correspondent of The New York World, and in 1892, he was assigned to the special train of Democratic presidential candidate Grover Cleveland.

Turning to finance, Peck moved to Chicago around the turn of the century after having lived in Kansas and Montana as well as New York. He maintained business interests in Montana during the founding of Medinah and later started a financial business in Florida. Though not affiliated with a bank, he began advertising offers of personal loans out of his Dearborn Street office. “JUST AS ONE WOULD AT THE BANK, you can borrow money from me,” one of his ads read in the Chicago Tribune in 1905. “I will give you the fairest rate in Chicago.”

A native of Springfield, Illinois, William S. Barbee was an attorney involved in rail and traction supply and real estate, and he also was associated with the Page & Shaw candy stores. Public records show that he was quite profitable in property transactions early in the century before his fortunes

turned. In 1903, his wife Melvina filed for divorce, claiming desertion and nonsupport after fifteen years of marriage. He also was sued for $15,000 in 1912 by a local woman, allegedly over a bad investment, and in 1923 he filed for bankruptcy, owing $232,550 on a failed theater project while listing $100 in assets.

Theodore R. Heman, a real estate entrepreneur with significant holdings even before getting Medinah off the ground, had a reputation as a ruthless property owner; he earned the nickname “Two-Gun” among local newspapers of the day for his use of an egregious rent collecting tactic by which he demanded double rent from tenants. He also encountered his own domestic troubles. By 1936, he was twice married and divorced. His first wife, Louise, claimed that Heman had taken a pistol and shot up lights and other objects in the couples’ home.

Together, they hatched a plot using their affiliation with the Medinah Temple as cover. They would realize obscene profits secured in two ways. The first was from property transactions via the club’s purchase of land from the Irving Lake Land Association. The owners of Irving Lake Land, named for the two roads on the northern and southern borders of the club property, were Canode, Heman, Barbee, and Peck. Acting on behalf of the club were the same four men, the first officers of Medinah: Canode was president, Heman the vice president, Barbee was the secretary, and Peck served as treasurer. On top of that, the four paid themselves thirty cents on every dollar of membership sales for commissions and administrative fees.

The Chicago Tribune laid out the case against the four in an April 28 story. In what was an incredible sense of timing, Canode and Peck resigned their positions at Merchants State Bank and disposed of their bank holdings on April 14.

After much wrangling, a settlement was agreed upon October 1, 1928, thanks to the intercession of Medinah Temple Potentate Edward H. Thomas. The club allowed the founders to keep their gains in exchange for the title to the seventy-seven acres in dispute. The foursome turned in membership certificates 1, 2, 3, and 4, and their names were removed from the cornerstone they so proudly had laid nearly four years earlier.

They never faced criminal consequences.

It would take decades for the club to wriggle free from a debt burden of nearly $400,000 in January 1927 when Henry R. Lundblad succeeded Canode as president. It wasn’t until August 1958 that Medinah finally belonged to the members, and they commemorated the occasion on August 23 by burning the mortgage in a ceremony on the second-floor balcony overlooking the clubhouse rotunda.

Last of the four to surrender his membership, on January 7, 1929, Canode was the first to pass away. He died on February 24, 1939, at his home in Oak Park. He was sixty-six years old and was survived by his wife, Eva, and three children. He is interred at Oakridge-Glen Oak Cemetery in Hillside. Barbee was next. The longtime Chicago resident died on December 15, 1940, at the age of seventy-five. He is buried in Auburn Cemetery in Auburn, Illinois.

Though a fact-finding committee started looking at the books in late 1926, after the clubhouse formally opened on September 25, it wasn’t until new officers were elected in the wee hours of the morning of January 19, 1927, at a well-attended meeting at Chicago’s Palmer House, that the membership realized the full extent of their financial predicament. Instead of a healthy reserve of funds, the club was deeply in debt.

Three months later, the membership filed a $1 million lawsuit against the founders. The members had discovered that their initiation fees were used by the four men to purchase land under their Irving Lake flagship only to then sell it to the club at almost twice the cost. Irving Lake Land Association also had held back a seventy-seven-acre tract of land, bought with club funds, for the purpose of a housing development.

Peck, aged eighty-four and in ill health, died August 28, 1946, and was found in his Medinah home on Irving Park Road three days later by a milkman who was making his regularly scheduled rounds. He had been living alone. He is buried in Forest Cemetery in Oskaloosa, Iowa.

Finally, Heman died at a rest home in Maywood, Illinois, on February 4, 1961, at the age of seventy-six. Woodlawn Cemetery in Forest Park is his last resting place. He was survived by a daughter, Helene L. Thorhaug, who became a famous painter and interior decorator and counted renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright among her friends.

Included in the death notice of each of the four was mention of his role as a founder of Medinah Country Club. They remain the club’s eternal ghosts, though they have long since ceased to haunt it.

Above: Chicago, circa 1925

Opposite: The road leading to Medinah

U.S. Postal Service soon would follow suit, switching from Meacham to Medinah as the mailing address for the unincorporated location in Bloomingdale Township.

The founders received the endorsement of Medinah Temple Potentate to use the Medinah name and symbol in their creation of the club, though from the beginning Canode and his cohorts were clear about the club’s financial independence from the organization. Yet the tie-in was important; the Medinah Temple had more than 22,000 members in 1924, and it was estimated that another 10,000 nobles from other shrines resided in Chicago—a sufficiently large enough pool from which to draw 1,500 local members. Another 500 nonresident members could be recruited from the untold number of Shriners nationally. The club also planned to set aside a few days per year for the families of nonmember Shriners.

There was one caveat to entry, heavy on irony: Prospective members had to be in good standing as members of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, the philanthropic international organization of Masons that were an offshoot of Europe’s Freemasons.

“So, the Shriners had their temple downtown. And Medinah Country Club was built as their western outpost of sorts,” said Bill Kuehn, club president in 2022–2023. “You got on the train, the Union Station, and you came out and got off at the Medinah stop. And we had a bus that would pick people up and bring them here, and they could spend the weekend. We had rooms for people to stay in. And you could come out here all year-round for all kinds of activities. The club was a tremendous asset to the Shriners.”

In addition to golf and the 11,000-seat stadium, plus the most elaborately designed and spacious clubhouse in the world, the original concept was beyond the pale in ambition, calling for two eighteen-hole golf courses and a nine-hole women’s course, a baseball field, tennis courts, toboggan runs, bridal paths, roller skating, archery, and bowling, plus a polo field and theater. Boating, fishing, and ice skating would be added to the list two months later with the proposal of creating Lake Kadijah, named after the wife of the prophet Mohammed.

Many of those amenities never came to pass, owing to fiscal chicanery by the founders who so assiduously had accepted only fellow Shriners in good standing. However, the decision to build nine additional holes on the women’s course was included on the masterplan blueprint by American Park Builders dated January 1925 (see above).

THE “MASTER PLAN” OF MEDINAH COUNTRY CLUB

A blueprint by American Park Builders in January 1925 incorporated three Tom Bendelow-designed golf courses and several member amenities:

A. Course No.1 B. Course No. 2 C. Course No. 3

D. Swimming Pool located in front of the Clubhouse

E. Tennis Courts located in front of the Clubhouse

F. Baseball Field

G. Stadium for concerts, shows, and equestrian events

Other items of interest:

H. Lake Kadijah

I. Professional Shop

J. Water Tower

ON SEPTEMBER 21, 1924 , a bespectacled Charles H. Canode, wearing a dark suit and tie, thrust a shovel into the dirt in a formal groundbreaking for the clubhouse, “putting aside his golf bag and replacing it with a spade,” as it was described in news stories. The president of Medinah Country Club also gave a speech during the occasion attended by an estimated one thousand people outlining plans for the club. By then, golf course architect Tom Bendelow had begun work on Course No. 1, a temporary golf course had opened, and Lake Kadijah was being dredged out of a swampy area southeast of the clubhouse site.

Interestingly, area farmers were lamenting that farmland was being lost at an alarming rate to “bowling green” links, noting in particular the recent additions of Medinah and Glendale (also designed by Bendelow). In fact, as many as ten new courses were in various stages of planning or construction in the Chicago area in 1924–1925, including the Itasca and Knollwood clubs.

Families with farming interests owned the land that eventually became Medinah Country Club. For many years, the area had been known as Meacham’s Grove, so named after the Meacham family of four brothers—Lyman, Silas, Daniel, and Harvey— who arrived from Vermont in early 1833. It was mostly prairie land and woodlands that made for very good farmland. By the early 1920s, the Meacham’s land interests had

A reminder from the Lawrence Farm is a Baker Monitor Hand Pump located near the forward tee box on the tenth hole of Course No. 1.

Opposite: above:

Dredging to create Lake Kadijah

Below: A view of Mohammed Road leading to the Gun Club, circa mid-1920s

long since been divided and purchased by various stakeholders devoted to farming. The founders of Medinah acquired most of the property for the club from two families with large tracts: Edward and James Lawrence and the Rosenwinkel family. Together, their plots a mile east of Roselle and a few miles south of Arlington Heights amounted to approximately 520 acres and featured not only attractive elevation changes but also were bisected by three creeks.

Good farmland, but better suited for golf.

The two families sold the land between Irving Park Boulevard and Lake Street to a fledgling real estate concern called the Irving Lake Land Association, which was owned by an enterprising group of four men who already have been introduced—Canode, Peck, Barbee, and Heman. The clubhouse was completed and two golf courses were being enjoyed by the members before anyone knew that the founders of Medinah had not been acting altruistically or in their best interests.

On April 6, Medinah Country Club started its campaign for new members, who, of course, had to be proud wearers of the fez, and advertised that memberships started at $750 for the first one hundred members and that those rates would increase by $50 for each additional one hundred, thereby creating incentive for interested parties to pony up as soon as possible. It was a brilliant marketing ploy.

On July 26, members enjoyed an informal get-together, and on August 2, more than one thousand members and guests gathered for a bonfire and a dance held in a barn that had been part of the Lawrence’s farm complex. The occasion marked the informal opening of Medinah Country Club. By August 30, the temporary golf course had been established. Things were moving along rapidly.

THE GRANDEST DAY IN THE CLUB’S HISTORY, as far as celebrated and conspicuous occasions go, arrived on November 2 when a crowd estimated at nearly 20,000 made their way to Medinah Country Club for the laying of the clubhouse cornerstone. The festivities on that clear 43-degree afternoon began with an equestrian exhibition at two o’clock followed by a parade at three to the clubhouse site, and then the laying of the cornerstone. Music was provided by the Medinah Brass Band while Medinah’s Golden Chanters sang “America.” The four founders from Irving Lake Land Association used some Medinah money to feed the many visiting nobles, provided they brought their Shrine cards to show at the gate. The crowd consumed barbecued sandwiches at the expense of ten cattle, six sheep, and twelve hogs.

Above and opposite:

Clubhouse architect Richard Schmid (right) on site supervising construction, July 23, 1925

The official invitation to the big event began as follows: “A most cordial invitation is extended to the Illustrious Potente of Medinah Temple of Chicago and to his Divan of Officers to the Organizations, both uniformed and ununiformed, and to the entire Nobility of Medinah Temple and their families to attend the laying of the corner stone Ceremony of Medinah Country Club’s $600,000 Club House at Medinah, Illinois, Sunday, November 2, 1924, at 3:30 P.M.”

They wanted everyone to know what the clubhouse would cost—even though the final bill was nearly 50 percent higher.

In between the start of the equestrian exhibition and the parade, Medinah charter member Dr. R. Ralph Ferguson flew his airplane from Chicago to the club grounds, dropped leaflets on the assembled crowd that contained a greeting, and then landed on the northern portion of the property.

Officiating the ceremony was Sir Knight Henry R. Lundblad, grand commander of the Grand Commandery Knights Templar of the State of Illinois, with assistance from official representatives of the Imperial Council of North America and Medinah Temple. Edward F. Johnson, potentate of Medinah Temple, directed the actual laying of the cornerstone in the company of Will H. Wade, Thomas J. Houston, John P. Garner, and John P. Swatek— all past Medinah potentates—and Arthur H. Vincent, chief rabban of Medinah Temple.

Lundblad obviously was a man of importance among the Shriners of Illinois, and he would loom large in the fortunes of the club a few years later when he and his conservative ticket of officers and directors were overwhelmingly elected against a slate backed by the founders, whose shady dealings were in the midst of being exposed. It was Lundblad who faced hard choices early on—including an unpopular assessment—to keep Medinah functioning. Through his leadership, in which he extolled the many existing virtues and “the foundation given to us,” the membership coalesced in trudging onward.

THE ANCHOR OF THAT “FOUNDATION” was the behemothic clubhouse. An informal opening was held on July 5, 1926, when the club held its first function inside, even as the rotunda was being completed. But the key date came some two months later, on September 25, when Medinah Country Club held its formal opening to mark the completion of the one feature that represented its arrival as an unrivaled recreational oasis. The celebration, attended by Noble David W. Crosland of Montgomery, Alabama, the Shrine’s imperial potentate of North America, coincided with the dedication one day later of the Medinah Shrine’s new children’s hospital in Chicago. William E. Dever, the forty-second mayor of Chicago, accepted the new hospital on behalf of the city.

Another huge crowd of around 15,000 attended the day-long festivities celebrating the opening of the clubhouse that started with an automobile parade from the Medinah Temple and included an official dedication of the building followed by a formal dinner reception. Dancing continued well into the night to the music of the Medinah Temple

Dedication Day of the clubhouse on September 25, 1926, was attended by an estimated crowd of 15,000.

Band. In addition to Crosland, who presided over the affair, Medinah Potentate Edwin Mills and clubhouse architect Richard Schmid also were on hand.

There was a lot to celebrate, especially with one golf course completed and a second one started. With great anticipation, American Park Builders completed Course No. 1 in late July 1925, but the club took the advice of the developers and opened the course for play on September 5, 1925, Labor Day weekend. The members christened the first tee with a bottle of Medinah

well water, and an estimated 2,500 people attended the weekend activities. Course No. 2 was completed just before construction of the nine-hole women’s course began in 1927 though that third course didn’t ultimately end up a nine-hole layout, and it wasn’t restricted to women golfers. Bendelow did some of his best work on Course No. 3, which was finally dedicated on September 23, 1928, after a lengthy delay due to the ongoing fiscal challenges. The members immediately embraced No. 3 as their best and “most interesting” among the three layouts. Course No. 2 was then set aside for women players, making Medinah notable as the first club in America with a ladies-only course. By 1930, when the club hosted its first national tournament, the Medinah Open, the world was beginning to discover what Medinah was all about. In 1931, Medinah

The newly completed clubhouse, 1927

member Anton J. Cermak was elected major of Chicago. Not that the club needed any publicity by that point. The ornate entry gate wasn’t meant for security, but by 1927 that became its purpose and a gateman was assigned to prevent gawkers from intruding. In the succeeding years, the club would continue to grow with a swimming pool, red clay tennis courts, and a trap shooting range added to the bridal path and other amenities, not to mention the clubhouse offerings that included a formal dining room, ballroom, health club, locker rooms, and even a bowling alley. An adjoining outdoor dance platform also accommodated roller skating.

“Beautiful Medinah! Jewel of Chicagoland! Bright in its perfect natural setting,” read a description in the aforementioned early brochure. “Polished to dazzling

brilliance by the lapidary’s art! Beautiful by birthright, Medinah is made more beautiful still by contrast with busy, bustling Chicago, not many minutes away.

“At Medinah, you find a green oasis of life, a sylvan refuge where nerves are drawn taut as bow-strings, find release from tension in an atmosphere of serene beauty and peace. Medinah has a magic all its own. … Medinah makes an indescribable appeal to the emotions … which makes it the garden spot of the Middle West.”

“I sometimes wonder if Medinah members are as proud of their club as they have a right to be,” Ralph Guldahl said in 1945 when he was in his first year as head professional. “Each year, my own wonderment grows at the magnificence of Medinah and its surroundings.”

Think about that for a moment. Guldahl, one of the game’s great players who had visited many of America’s finest clubs, knew then how special Medinah had become. That was eighty years ago. So much has changed at Medinah through the years, but one thing that hasn’t is its inherent illustriousness and prestige.

Scenes and Events — 1925–1932

THE TRAGIC SACRIFICE OF MAYOR ANTON CERMAK

“I’m glad it was me instead of you”

AMONG THE THOUSANDS of photos stored in Medinah’s Archive Room exists an often displayed black-and-white snapshot of two Shriners beside a camel named “Miss Medinah.” Few members know that the man on the left is Medinah member and former Chicago Mayor Anton “A. J.” Cermak, who was assassinated while in office in 1933. Cermak was not the target of the shooter. Italian immigrant Guiseppe Zangara had sought to kill U.S. president-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt during an impromptu rally in Miami, Florida.

Best remembered for his efforts to unify Chicago’s diverse ethnic communities and for fighting organized crime during the Prohibition era, Cermak was elected to office in 1931, having risen through the ranks of Chicago politics after failed campaigns for the U.S. Senate and Illinois governor.

The incident occurred on February 15, 1933, while Roosevelt was returning from a vacation cruising The Bahamas aboard

the yacht Nourmahal before succeeding Herbert Hoover as president. He stopped in Miami for a rally and to meet with party leaders, including Cermak, at Bay Front Park. Cermak and Roosevelt had become close political allies after Cermak aided FDR in securing the nomination for president during the Democratic National Convention held in Chicago from June 27–July 2.

Roosevelt was responding to a welcome crowd of an estimated 10,000 people gathered when the crack of pistol shots cut short his speech.

Seated in a Buick convertible, Roosevelt gave a brief speech and had just finished shaking hands with Cermak when shots rang out from Zangara’s .32 caliber pistol around 9:40 p.m. A bricklayer by trade, Zangara would proclaim more than once in the aftermath his disdain for “presidents, kings and capitalists.” Cermak was one of five people shot by Zangara and was the first struck, while Roosevelt was unhurt. The bullet that found Cermak entered his right upper chest and traversed down before lodging near his spinal column. He was helped to his feet, and hoisted into Roosevelt’s car, which sped to nearby Jackson Memorial Hospital.

After visiting Cermak the following day, Chicago City Council member James B. Bowler told the Associated Press that physicians attending to Cermak “are very hopeful that everything will be all right.” Though Cermak exhibited improvement, by the sixth day his condition turned. His physicians were not aware that the bullet nicked his colon, and it was that injury that eventually proved fatal. He died at 12:05 a.m. on March 6, nineteen days after being shot and two days after FDR’s inauguration as the thirty-second president of the United States. Cermak was fifty-nine years old.

Frank J. Corr served out the remaining twenty-four days of Cermak’s term before giving way to Edward J. Kelly, another Democrat. In fact, starting with Cermak, a Democrat has occupied the mayor’s office ever since.

Retribution came swiftly for Zangara, who admitted in 1911 he was party to a plot against the life of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and the assailant was imprisoned until 1928 when, at the king’s order, he was given full freedom in a general amnesty. After pleading guilty to Cermak’s murder, he was sentenced to death on March 11 and executed by electrocution March 20 at Dade County Jail in Raiford, Florida.

Chapter Two

A CLUBHOUSE LIKE NO OTHER

“Beauty perishes in life, but is immortal in art.”

JUST ABOUT ANY GOLF or country club of prestige possesses a clubhouse that accentuates the club experience, complements its recreational accouterments, and, ultimately, brings pride to its members and a sense of awe or appreciation to visitors. Only a few, however, own a clubhouse that is recognizable to the population at large— one example being the refurbished plantation cottage dating to 1854 at Augusta National Golf Club. Other than perhaps the stone structure housing the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews in Scotland, there is no clubhouse in the world that stands alone in its identity and renown like the one that anchors the grounds of Medinah Country Club.

“If all we had was this incredible clubhouse, I think we would still be one of the most well-known clubs anywhere in the world,” said longtime member Michael Crance. “Even with all the great tournaments we’ve had here and the quality of the golf course, the No. 1 aspect of this club that

universally impresses everyone is our clubhouse. I remember during the 2012 Ryder Cup, there were countless numbers of people who told me that the club really showed nicely. And never were they just talking about the golf course.”

“When people talk about something that’s iconic, one of the first things you think about in golf after the obvious places like St Andrews or Augusta National, is the clubhouse at Medinah,” said former PGA Championship winner Davis Love III, the U.S. captain of the 2012 Ryder Cup.

“We’ve had one wedding there, and that was well attended because people want to be there,” said longtime member Holly Madden, who with her husband, John, has six children. “The weddings and such that people host here are kind of a big deal. When you have a wedding, there’s about an 80 percent rate on people who say they are coming, but everyone who has one at Medinah sees almost full response. People see Medinah in the invitation, and they say to themselves, ‘Well, I’m going to this wedding.’ They know it’s going to be special to be in that setting.”

“It’s the most beautiful clubhouse … it just takes your breath away. It is just spectacular,” said Lynn Hughes, who enjoyed her first date with her eventual husband, Howard, in 1959 at a dinner dance in the ballroom.

The expansive edifice, unfolding over four floors and measuring 144 feet long and up to 120 feet wide, was the brainchild of renowned architect Richard Gustav Schmid. Once described as a glimpse of “Baghdad on the Prairie,” Medinah’s clubhouse is truly unique though perfectly in harmony with the vision of the founders, members of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, as well as the man they hired to create it, a fellow Shriner with a portfolio of similar lavish and ostentatious Moorish-style designs. Schmid obviously had been recruited months before the creation of the club on March 1, 1924, because an artist rendition appeared in the Chicago Tribune on March 2.

Capped by a central domed rotunda sixty feet high, the clubhouse defies description—or maybe invites too much of it. Is it reminiscent of a Turkish mosque inspired by Schmid’s travels abroad? Is it of Byzantine design, a melding of northwestern Africa and Oriental influences? Are there, as some suggest, hints of Italian or French classicism (Louis XIV) architecture? No matter how it’s described, it is a work of art inside and out with its ornamental domed towers and pointed arches and wondrous inside decorations. It is the kind of place, one visitor said, where you would almost expect to see ghosts of the past wandering about, given its rare aura as cathedral and castle.

German native Gustav A. Brand, a famed artist of portraits and murals, is responsible for the lavish hand-painted interior design, including the remarkable mosaic covering the dome interior and the inspiring oval sky painting on the ballroom ceiling. Recruited at Schmid’s insistence, Brand not only brought intricate decorations from floor to ceiling, but his murals and paintings worked in harmony with Schmid’s design to capture the Shriner spirit.

Schmidt Bros. Construction, the low bidder among nine firms, was responsible for carrying out Schmid’s blueprints and building the clubhouse. The company was owned by Ernest, Otto, and August Schmidt, all who became charter members, along with Schmid himself. (Otto became the club’s fifth president in 1930.) They broke ground on September 16, 1924, and finally completed the work—after a period of financial uncertainty—on September 25, 1926. Final cost, which also included construction of the entrance gate, came to more than $900,000 when furniture, lockers, and other niceties were figured in.

It is not merely a clubhouse; it is a statement. And it is a museum, an ode to the past, functional in the present, and a home to millions of memories filled with laughter and love and echoes of sheer joy throughout its 60,000 square feet. Neither Schmid,

Brand, nor the Schmidt brothers could conjure that. The real artists are the members themselves, and to their credit, they knew what they had from the start.

MEDINAH’S REPUTATION as a revered establishment spread quickly after the clubhouse opened in 1926, its prominence fueled by the imposing structure rising abruptly above the farmlands, fields, and woodlands in still predominantly rural DuPage County. Folks who were not directly affiliated with the club were otherwise inclined to find a way to access its marvelous clubhouse.

Trade clubs, fraternal organizations, and women’s groups started migrating to Medinah. Not surprisingly, some utilized the golf courses; the Architects’ Club of Chicago held a twenty-seven-hole tournament and reception at Medinah in 1927. The local Rotary Club chapter held a charity event for crippled children in 1928. Chicago’s Bond Men and the Itasca’s Women’s Club utilized the clubhouse.

Medinah had a purpose, and for its members it was the golf and its other attractions. But for the community, the immense multipurpose clubhouse was a civic resource to be enjoyed, and the club understood that making its clubhouse available to the public

was both a tremendous sales vehicle and a way to financially leverage one of its strongest assets. It became a win-win scenario that only grew in importance as the nation became engulfed in the Depression.

Chicagoland knew that Medinah was special. It didn’t take long for the country to fall in line.

“As one of the youngest in the Chicago District,” began a local newspaper report, “the Medinah Country Club already has progressed to a point where it may be ranked among the first ten in the entire country on all counts—three 18-hole golf courses … and one of the most unique clubhouse arrangements in golf.”

Medinah’s championship golf course, No. 3, eventually would catch up in terms of reputation, but from the start the Medinah clubhouse was world class. By 1930, the club calendar was getting full. The greenkeepers were having their monthly meeting in the clubhouse. Various women clubs gathered in the dining room for breakfast or the French Room for a buffet. The Chicago Woman’s Ideal Club met for a luncheon and then either played golf or bridge. And because Medinah’s young golf courses were of such quality, there was a demand to play golf combined with meetings and meals, like the National Wholesale Druggists’ Association.

“I think there’s some of that idea of the public being allowed in, of Medinah being

THE CLUBHOUSE ARCHITECT

RICHARD GUSTAV SCHMID was born to be an architect, studied in the U.S. and abroad to become one, and enjoyed a fifty-year career as one of the most prominent men in his profession, particularly in the creation of Masonic temples. It certainly is no coincidence that the Chicago native and Shriner would be sought to design the elaborate clubhouse that separates Medinah Country Club from all other golf clubs in the world.

Born January 26, 1863, in Chicago, Richard Gustav Schmid was the son of an architect, Robert Schmid, a German immigrant. After graduating from high school in 1880, Richard began training as a draftsman in the office of architect Edward Baumann, a contemporary of his father, and then left for Boston to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Schmid completed his studies at MIT in 1886, and then went to work first for Henry Hobson Richardson and then for Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge. In 1889, Schmid spent a year abroad studying architecture in Europe, and upon his return to the States, he made his way back to Chicago to form a partnership with Harris Huehl, another Baumann protégé. Amid Chicago’s brisk growth, Huehl & Schmid found work quickly in residential properties.

Given their membership in the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine—Huehl served for a time as the national potentate, essentially its CEO—Huehl and Schmid had the inside track to design the Medinah Temple in 1911 on N. Wabash Avenue that served the more than 11,000 Shriners in Chicago. The sprawling four-story structure and the Syria Mosque he and Huehl had codesigned in Pittsburgh were the inspiration for the Medinah Country Club clubhouse, though legend has it he also took ideas from a mosque in Turkey he saw during his time abroad.

Huehl died of pneumonia in 1919, prompting Schmid to hang out his shingle with the creation of R. G. Schmid & Company, a solo concern until taking on a partner in 1927, longtime employee William J. Ryan, and the firm became known as Schmid & Ryan. In between, Schmid’s work included a Scottish Rite Cathedral in Newcastle, Pennsylvania, masonic temples for Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Allentown, Pennsylvania, and, of course, the clubhouse for Medinah Country Club. Schmid would become a charter member of the club and was given locker No. 1 in the men’s locker room.

Tragedy struck Schmid and his wife, Gertrude, during the construction of the Medinah clubhouse. On August 30, 1925,

the couple’s youngest son, Paul, died after accidentally shooting himself while showing a friend his father’s revolver. The friend told police that the youngster, sixteen, had dutifully checked to see if it was loaded but mistakenly believed it wasn’t. As he waved it around his head, the gun discharged. He had been scheduled to attend Stanford in the coming weeks.

Schmid died on June 6, 1937, at St. Luke’s Hospital in Chicago. His obituary, carried in newspapers from New York to San Francisco, reported only that he died after an illness of one week. He was seventy-four years old and was survived by Gertrude, sons Richard Jr. and Karl, and two sisters. On June 8, he was buried at Graceland Cemetery in the Bellevue section, Lot 438, Grave 5, next to his son, Paul.

a little bit more open than clubs that are really private,” Bill Kuehn said. “I think that’s part of Medinah’s fabric. I really do. Yes, we have gates, but we’re also a little more willing to open up those gates to everyone and say, ‘Look, come on in.’ ” Inside and out, Medinah was a draw.

IT TAKES A LOT to make an old clubhouse new again. Change is difficult. It’s also expensive. But the cost of simply maintaining the status quo has the potential to be exponentially more costly.

Throughout the life of Medinah’s clubhouse, certain necessary improvements had to be made. There was a minor upgrade completed in 1965 that included the first makeover of the Oasis and the men’s locker room and the addition of air conditioning throughout. The wooden pro shop also was replaced with a brick structure during this period under Medinah President Clifford Domin. The electrical plant was updated in 1977. But the first extensive makeover occurred with the $10 million

renovation in 1996–1997 to create greater functionality. Incredibly, there was talk at that time about actually demolishing the Gustav Schmid masterpiece before more practical heads prevailed.

Infrastructure was the main focus, with an overhaul of the electrical system a priority. But significant changes occurred, from modernizing the kitchen to restoring the rotunda and the formal dining room and converting second-floor sleeping rooms to meeting rooms. The golf lobby that displays memorabilia from Medinah’s many major events was created and the porte cochère designed to match the clubhouse architecture was added to the clubhouse area to bring a more prestigious feel for arriving golfers. Medinah put its best foot forward for its members—and just in time to again welcome the golf world with the 1999 PGA Championship.

Then came the fruits of the Master Plan known as the Medinah 2020 project— a great leap forward with both feet.

Part of a long-range strategic plan born of necessity on several fronts, from the interwoven challenges of an aging infrastructure to declining membership, the Medinah 2020 initiative revitalized the club. The clubhouse was just one aspect of that—the new racquet center, swimming, shooting, and a new golf learning and indoor practice facility

Opposite, above:

The trophy case displays replicas representing the major golf tournaments contested at Medinah.

Below:

A display of artifacts of major championships held at Medinah is located near the Oasis.

also were addressed—but the clubhouse was the central piece, just as it was from inception when the artist’s rendering was unveiled on March 2, 1924. “Generally speaking,” said Don Larson, president in 2002–2003, “the clubhouse is the one facility that nearly everyone who comes through our gates utilizes in some capacity.”

“When I reflect back on the fifteen-plus years that we’ve been at this in earnest through a couple of strategic plans, we have changed what the nature of the issues are,” said Mike Scimo, the 2018–2019 club president who in 2019 was named the golf club industry’s Club President of the Year by The BoardRoom magazine. “When we first started down this path, it was all about acquiring and keeping members. We were on a ten-year slide, and we had the courage to make some profound changes and, quite frankly, some risky investments that have paid off. But it was all about enhancing the club experience for the members.”

John Fennell, president in 2006–2007, said it was “no small thing” to modernize the clubhouse. “We did in ’96, we spent $10 million of which $8 million was in the walls, and you never saw it. The 2020 initiative really added to the club and the desirability of the club. You can’t stay without change because people always change, situations change. What was the norm when I came in isn’t the norm now, and so people expect more and want more and you have to give them more.”

Before the yearlong renovation, completed in 2019, the interior of the Medinah clubhouse had become “shabby chic,” as Scimo said some members referred to it—fine if you didn’t want to look too closely. It also wasn’t as functional as it needed to be. For instance, when the Oasis and patio area were renovated during the Phase One stage on the lower level, a kitchen area was added to provide better and faster service. The configuration also makes more sense with an upper level more attuned to the family dining experience and women members and the lower level representing a bar atmosphere that draws more male members. Other work during Phase One included renovations in the men’s and women’s locker rooms and the new Cabana Bar.

“First off, as a lot of country clubs failed to do over time is they failed to reinvest in their infrastructure. And we put a project together before we did anything else, like an asset study at Medinah to find out what our assets were, when they had to be renovated, how much it was going to be to renovate it,” said Bruce D’Angelo, who served as club president in 2016–2017 and also was chair of the renovations on all three golf courses. “We took the whole gamut into effect of what we were going to do. Everything. And the number was like $40 million. It was an eye-opening number. All the years of not spending the money to repair it on a yearly basis, it all comes home

to roost. But, yeah, our members understood the importance of all we wanted to do and accepted it.”

“Stewardship has always been a part of Medinah, but not to the level that it is today,” said Larson. “The people in the ’60s and ’70s, they kind of ignored many things that needed attention, and the present generation of people have stepped up and changed things, changed how we do things. To redo the entire clubhouse … it was closed for a year, but look what we have now. It’s as great as it ever was, probably better.”

Phase Two of the clubhouse project was more extensive and concentrated mostly on the main floor, starting with the Fireside Room, the Casbah Bar, and the new Viewing Deck that overlooks the rear with its tables and chairs and fire pits. A new Heritage

The Pavilion in the late 1920s;

building is located in the back right

Below and opposite: The Viewing Deck, 2025

Hall was created past the entry foyer area. The Men’s Card Room was remodeled, and that space has proven valuable acting as a temporary pro shop through the end of 2024 after a fire damaged the interior of the building. Fortunately, the outside of the structure went unscathed, as did the porte cochère, and Director of Golf Casey Brozek got the place up and running again in early 2025.

All of these efforts don’t include another important line item in the deal known as the “care and feeding” of the infrastructure, a commitment to ensure that ongoing costs for upkeep and maintenance of the facilities will be covered.

“We’ve had these milestones lately, like the redo of the golf courses, and the clubhouse being redone is just as important,” Joe Ebner, president in 2010–2011, said. “What I’m particularly happy about is the fact that we’ve been motivated to get this place in the right condition and keep it there, and I think it represents an amazing segue into our second century. It is just a perfect segue.”

Vaughn Moore, the current president, agrees.

“Because we’ve renovated the clubhouse and upgraded, really, all of our facilities, there’s great excitement here,” Moore said. “The magic is still here, the core of what we want for this place is still here, just as it was when the club opened, and the excitement for the next hundred years has really been established.”

THE MURALIST

THE CLUBHOUSE at Medinah Country Club extended beyond Richard Schmid’s vision for its architectural design. He insisted that the finishing touches—the interior artwork and decorative flourishes—should be left in the capable hands of renowned mural artist Gustav A. Brand.

Born in Parchim, Germany, in 1862, Brand proved a gifted painter at such a young age that the Duke of Mecklenburg, Frederick William, arranged his studies at the Academies of Berlin, Munich, and Duesseldorf. Among his teachers was French artist Paul Philippoteaux, an association that eventually led to Brand’s emigration to America. Brand was among Philippoteaux’s five assistants in the 1883 creation of the panoramic cyclorama of the Battle of Gettysburg financed by Chicago investors including merchant C. L. Willoughby. The painting is now on permanent display at Gettysburg National Military Park.

After ten years at Marshall Fields, Brand struck out on his own. He resided on the South Side, in the Calumet region of Windsor Park.

Brand would go on to create murals for churches, theaters, government buildings, schools (including easel portraits and murals at Carl Schurz High School), and Masonic Temples. In 1920, for the opening of the Medinah Temple, he created the eleven-byeighty-four-foot oil mural, Pilgrimage to Mecca, that remained in the building until its sale by auction in 2000. Of course, among those who appreciated his work was Schmid, and his commission to Medinah Country Club was only natural.

Meticulous restoration of the dome during the 1997 renovation took one year to complete.

When the German government agreed to sponsor a pavilion at Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, organizers recruited Brand to create murals of German industry, art, and culture in its buildings. An offer to manage the interior decoration department at Marshall Fields department store afforded Brand the opportunity to remain in the United States. “I erected my tent in Jackson Park, in a new city, in a new country which soon became my city and my country, beloved and revered,” he said years later.

Interestingly, Brand got involved in politics and served as Chicago Treasurer from 1935–1939. Starting in 1934, he also was chair of the city’s art commission. In 1938, during congressional hearings in Washington, D.C., investigating “unAmerican activities,” Brand was accused of being a Nazi sympathizer, which he called “a lie from start to finish.” He demonstrated that through his many volunteer civic gestures in South Chicago and said in his later years, “I am eternally grateful to Chicago, my adopted city.”

Brand occasionally signed his paintings with his first name followed by three dots in a triangular pattern to indicate he was a Master Mason, a man who completed the three degrees of Freemasonry, the organization’s highest honor.

Opposite: Detail of Gustav Brand’s painting in the Rotunda Following pages: Brand painted the murals in the adjacent room to the Rotunda.

A SIGNIFICANT CHANGE OF COURSE

IT’S NOT DIFFICULT TO SEE and appreciate the capital improvements to Medinah Country Club, from the Medinah 2020 Project that initiated upgrades to the clubhouse and other facilities, to its successor, Medinah 2025, that resulted in a complete makeover of the venerable Course No. 3. Much less obvious—if, in fact, it is noticed at all—is the change of course, a change in philosophy and planning, that made it all possible and set the club on a pathway of success into the future.

Key changes to the club’s governance and to long-range strategic and capital asset planning and a recognition of the shifting priorities to both current and prospective members have been the forces driving Medinah’s across-the-board commitment to excellence commensurate with its profile and reputation.

John Fennell, club president in 2006–2007, got the ball rolling, so to speak. “I was vice president and John was president and he came to me and said, ‘You’re chair of the Planning Committee.’ At that time, it was called the Long-Term Planning Committee, and the long-term was six months,” John Potts said with a laugh. “So, I form a committee with Anne Gunst, Carl Cameron, and Mike Scimo, and we started this process of putting a strategic plan together. And it was the best thing we’ve ever done, because since then, it’s driven everything at Medinah.”

Strategic planning now stretches out ten years. Or more. The initial strategic plan included the Medinah Mission Statement in 2007 and the first seeds of change with the renovation and addition to the Grounds Maintenance Facility and a new short-game practice area in 2010. But that was only an appetizer to larger aspirations.

“It wasn’t until our second iteration of strategic planning that we got really serious about what this place needed to be,” said Scimo, who worked closely with, among others, Joe Gattone, club treasurer at the time, in the plan that became Medinah 2020. “It wasn’t just full altruistic, ‘Hey, let’s think out of the box.’ There were very legitimate issues. We had ten years of declining membership. That’s despite the fact that we had a Ryder Cup, and we had PGA Championships, and we were mighty Medinah. It wasn’t working. We got very serious about strategic planning, setting the direction for the future of the club.”

That direction meant a total overhaul of facilities and amenities that made Medinah Country Club a year-round destination for members—in essence, returning it to its roots.

“Since 1924 and leading all the way up to really the big changes that we made,” Scimo pointed out, “there was never a new amenity built at Medinah Country Club. Never. We were very good at taking things away. We used to have a ski jump,

toboggan run, equestrian, and other things. Over time, all of that got frittered away with a laser focus on golf, just one great golf course. Now, we’re a year-round, family-friendly club that is thriving in terms of its membership. We did some things to make the club more attractive and relevant.”

“Medinah 2020 really transformed this place. Significantly,” Gattone said.

Membership has grown by more than five hundred since 2015, and club revenues have more than doubled.

Overlapping with the strategic planning were other important changes. Matt Lydon, president in 2014–2015, streamlined board meetings and initiated a move towards long-range capital planning to ensure that the club could anticipate and address the obsolescence or the deterioration of various capital assets. And perhaps more important than anything else, he initiated changes and simplifications to the bylaws to place a larger responsibility for club management in the hands of the general manager. Prior to that, various committees oversaw many of the responsibilities, and the piecemeal governance was not efficient or particularly nimble in addressing problems.

“It was no way to run an operation,” Lydon said.

“I would argue this is the most profound thing that we’ve done in the last twenty years, changing our governance,” Scimo said. “It was a pretty radical shift from how the club used to be run. It’s a profoundly different place in that regard. Membership actually feels much more invested because things get done.”

“We changed the paradigm of how Medinah thought about itself, which it had to do,” Bruce D’Angelo, president in 2016–2017, said. “I mean, that’s just the way life goes, I think. You have to adjust to improve, and we did that.”

Medinah 2020 and 2025 improvements included major projects (i.e., the Golf Learning Center and Racquet Center), as well as upgrades to the clubhouse interior including the Fireside, Casbah, golf lobby, wine lockers, and trohpy cases.

COURSES & PROS

Chapter Three

COURSE N o . 1 LEADS THE WAY

83 —

THE DEAN OF AMERICAN GOLF ARCHITECTS

98 —

Chapter Four

COURSE N o .2— REES REVIVES BENDELOW — 102 —

Chapter Five

THE REIMAGINING OF COURSE N o . 3 — 117 —

“THIS IS WHAT WE’VE BEEN WORKING TOWARDS” — 178 —

THE SAHARA / THE CAMEL TRAIL — 182 —

Chapter Six

MEDINAH’S CLUB PROS

185 —

TAUGHT BY TOMMY

191 —

THE SHOP/GOLF LEARNING CENTER

202 —

Chapter Three

COURSE

No. 1

LEADS THE WAY

WITH A MEMBERSHIP already clamoring to play golf just months after incorporation of Medinah Country Club on March 1, 1924, club president Charles Canode announced that on Saturday, August 30, the first golf course would be open for play.

A notice on page 13 in the Chicago Tribune on that date heralded the news. Under the heading of “Local Golf” appeared the following lead item:

“President C.H. Canode of the Medinah Country club [sic] announces that owing to the rapid progress made in laying out the course and grounds under the direction of Tom Bendelow, it has been possible to install a temporary course which will be opened today. Suitable temporary housing facilities for men and women have been provided. Plans are being made for three courses and a variety of other sports. The Chicago office of the club is at 77 West Washington Street.”

There is no record of how this temporary golf course was built or where on the property it was located— though the previous club history, The Spirit of Medinah, theorized that the nine-hole course might have been plotted on the south side of the proposed clubhouse site.

Course designer Tom Bendelow had instructed the club in July to buy five hundred pounds of “Fancy Red Top Seed” for the remedial layout. Regardless of what this course looked like, the early members of Medinah were playing golf.

Meanwhile, Bendelow and his employer, American Park Builders, were busy with the conceptualization and construction of the real golf course, Medinah’s No. 1, using a portion of Meacham Creek running through the property from north to south in his creation along gently rolling prairie and farmland. It has been previously recorded that ground was broken in late June (according to an American Park Builders report).

Elsewhere on the property, work on transforming a swamp into the fifty-acre Lake Kadijah also had begun, the creation of which was first proposed during a club meeting

Below: The ninth green on Course No. 1, 1940s

on May 2 by the trio of Bendelow and Myron H. West, president of American Park Builders, and clubhouse architect Richard Gustav Schmid.

By November 18, all but one hole was in some phase of construction on Course No. 1. The pond that forms the hazard between the tee and green on the par-3 ninth hole (now No. 18) had not yet been excavated.

Amber Andrews, Medinah’s first head professional, offered a preview of Course No. 1 to get the new membership excited, writing in the club’s Red Fez newsletter, “I want to tell you right here and now, in straight from the shoulder, honest-to-goodness talk, that I have played on some of the best known courses in the world, St. Andrews, etc., and ours can favorably be compared with any of them.”

The official opening day of No. 1 was September 5, 1925, Labor Day weekend, which happened to be the date Bobby Jones successfully defended his U.S. Amateur title at Oakmont. The opening of the par-72 layout, replete with a camel bunker on what was then the 10th hole and now graces the fairway on the par-5 first hole, was a “big success” according to the Chicago Evening Post. An estimated 2,500 people attended the weekend festivities that included a match on Labor Day featuring famed amateur Charles “Chick” Evans, Al Espinosa, Bill Mehlhorn and Jock Hutchison, winner of the 1920 PGA Championship, the 1921 British Open, and the 1923 Western Open. Hutchison, pro at Glen View Club, reportedly was the winner with 71, even though they played on temporary greens.

Somewhere along the way after the first Medinah Open in 1930, revisions were made and Course No. 1 was converted to par 70 with both par-5 holes, the second and sixth, converted to par 4s. The No. 1 and No. 3 layouts were used in a U.S. Open sectional qualifier in May 1941, with Johnny Bulla taking medalist honors with

matching scores of 75 on each course. In relation to par, Bulla’s score was better on Course No. 3, which was playing to par 71.

On the day after the completion of the 2012 Ryder Cup, Tom Doak and his Renaissance Golf Design team began turning over dirt on a newly conceived Course No. 1. When the course reopened on June 13, 2014, Doak had given the membership a stronger and sharper reimagined par-71 course stretching to 6,895 yards.

As with the renovations that followed on Nos. 2 and 3, tree removal was a priority on the Course No. 1 project even if a redesign was not. He knew he needed to address drainage issues along the creek and install an irrigation system. Some work on the bunkers and greens was likely inevitable. Doak soon realized, however, that he really had no choice but to undertake a significant redesign if he intended to do the job properly.

“As we got into it a little bit, it was clear that there were some things along the creek that had some major engineering issues that had to be incorporated into the golf course,” Doak said. “And then what tipped the scale was the thing I liked the least about the original course, and that was 13, 14, 15, and 16 were all jammed right up against the road. I mean really close—too close.”

The par-4 15th in particular was the source of all the trouble, with the fairway fitted between a pond and Medinah Road. “I was just not comfortable with that whole space,” Doak said.

Doak’s solution was to veer the fairway to the right (north side) of the pond, and from there, “the dominoes just started to fall, and it just cascaded into the middle of the golf course,” he said.

The result were changes to Holes Nos. 4, 5, 6, 15, 16, and 17 that traverse diagonally between some of the old corridors. Building new holes meant changes to other parts of the course, including new green complexes throughout so that their philosophy was consistent; those greens are considerably more challenging. All eighteen holes were changed in some respect, including new bunkering.

Inset: Tom Doak addresses the membership on his vision for

“The one thing I wound up liking about it the most is it does have more variety, more change of direction,” he said. “Nearly the whole thing was east and west originally, and it still kind of is, but that knocking over the dominoes in the middle, it kind of forced us to open up that area. You had to take down nearly all the trees in between the holes because some of the fairways were right in those spaces and it gets away from the kind of claustrophobia that the place used to have.”

The finished product was critically acclaimed, with former Golf Digest Architecture Editor Ron Whitten writing, “I think what Tom Doak did in rearranging Course No. 1 was exceptional. The result is a great companion to Course No. 2 and the championship Course No. 3.”

Members found that the new Course No. 1 deserved as much respect as No. 3 in terms of the quality of golf they needed to bring to the first tee.

“I worked a lot with Tom, and he was … very strong-headed, and no one was going to tell him what he should do with the golf course,” said Tony Graffia, who was club president at the time Doak worked on No. 1. “He’s an interesting guy. Incredibly smart and good at what he does. You just had to trust him, and I thought he did a great job for us. I really do. I think it’s a great golf course.”

“The two golf courses that we had redone prior to No. 3 are fabulous,” said Joe Gattone, club president in 2020–2021. “And they enabled us to help prove to the membership the concept that we know how to put golf courses in and make them nice and deal with drainage and all that. Of course, it all started with redoing No. 1, which we thought was a huge success, and then we kept going from there.”

Just as it had at the very beginning, Course No. 1 led the way.

THE DEAN OF AMERICAN GOLF ARCHITECTS

OVERHIS FOUR DECADES IN GOLF, Tom Bendelow quite possibly contributed as much or more to the game in America than anyone else in history. From his arrival in the United States in 1892 until his death in 1936 at the age of sixty-seven, Bendelow was arguably the country’s most prolific course architect of all time, even if he never really achieved critical acclaim.

Because he was responsible for perhaps as many as eight hundred golf courses in the U.S. and Canada, Bendelow is today referred to as the “Johnny Appleseed of American golf.” But Bendelow didn’t just sprinkle around a few seeds of ideas and up sprouted golf courses. In his day, he was considered the preeminent figure in his field, referred to variously as “famed course designer,” “noted golf engineer,” and “golf expert,” as well as “the Dean of American Golf Architects” by 1920.

In reality, “golf expert” best describes the Scottish-born Bendelow, a pioneer in the establishment of the game in the new world and the golf mastermind at Medinah Country Club, his most famous creation.

Bendelow first and foremost was a course designer and land planner, but he also contributed to the game as an instructor, course manager, superintendent, tournament organizer, equipment inventor, competition and rules official, caddie, university lecturer, writer, and mentor to a number of notable tournament players including Charles “Chick” Evans. Furthermore, he was a passionate promoter of public golf access, which conformed with his extensive résumé as a designer of municipal courses. Understanding the game and the level of proficiency among the vast majority of newcomers, Bendelow adhered to a minimalist philosophy, using existing topography to build courses that were interesting but eminently playable—not to mention economical in both their creation and maintenance. He could not have known this would compromise his reputation in the intervening decades, but given his love of the game, it’s doubtful he would care if around today.

“Tom Bendelow deserves tremendous respect simply because he worked with what he had, made nice, flowing golf courses, and didn’t fall into the trap of someone like C. B. Macdonald and try to copy great golf holes of the world,” said Columbus, Ohio, course designer and historian Dr. Michael J. Hurdzan. “He actually showed a lot of creativity, but he was so pragmatic. He had a genius people don’t see.

“What he did was so essential to the growth of the game in America,” added Hurdzan, who pointed out not only the importance of Bendelow’s volume of design work but also the dozens of articles he wrote on the game that helped the average novice understand it better. “He was really a genius who got people playing golf on what we would consider

rudimentary courses, but people could play these courses, and they weren’t hard to maintain. That was very important at that time.”

Born September 2, 1868, in Aberdeen, Thomas Bendelow was the eldest of nine children of John and Mary Ann (Edward) Bendelow. The family was of modest means, a status that had a profound effect on the future of their oldest offspring who nearly succumbed from a childhood illness. The family ran a bakery shop specializing in pies, and they were reputed to be very good at it. They also had a deep and abiding religious faith. Aberdeen was a perfect place for a youngster interested in the game; the town offered affordable golf and promoted junior participation, which was a rarity. Tom was introduced to golf by his father at age nine, and they played at the Town Links. A fine athlete—he was particularly fleet-footed—the young Bendelow improved rapidly and was a good tournament player, but at fourteen he needed to work to help with the family finances and began an internship as a typesetter with the Aberdeen Free Press

In 1890, he began to court Mary Ann Nicol, four years his senior, who was the daughter of a wealthy farmer. The couple wed two years later, and Bendelow decided soon after to emigrate to New York to escape the influence of his new father-in-law, who didn’t approve of Bendelow’s working-class background. He secured a job as a linotype operator at The New York Herald , which soon led to his big break. Charles Pratt, a wealthy businessman who merged his kerosene refinery interests with John D. Rockefeller in the creation of Standard Oil Co., had written a letter to the Herald (essentially an ad) seeking a person who could teach the family to play golf. Legend has it Bendelow never set the letter for print but answered it.

The Scotsman proved to be a good instructor, and in a short time he was asked to design a golf course on the family

estate on Glen Cove, Long Island. He gave them a six-hole layout—which eventually would form the nucleus of what is now Nassau Country Club. Duly impressed, Pratt introduced Bendelow to sporting goods tycoon A. G. Spalding, who had been a star pitcher for the White Stockings, the professional baseball team that eventually became the Chicago Cubs. Spalding, who had launched his sporting goods business with his brother Walter, hired Bendelow to start designing courses in the New York area. Bendelow soon opened the first indoor golf school for both men and women at the Berkeley Gymnasium of the Carnegie Hall Building in New York City. By 1899, Bendelow was in high demand. And carrying a higher profile. A small item in Indiana’s Fort Wayne News dated January 24 claims that Bendelow had set a “world’s record” by laying out 150 golf courses in the previous eighteen months. “We all know that the growth of golf has been remarkable,” he is quoted as saying, “and I believe it has reached such a point that the links in and about New York next year will not accommodate all the folks who want to play.”

He knew what he was talking about. The previous year, the New York City Parks Department hired Bendelow to

manage Van Cortlandt Park golf course and expand it from nine to eighteen holes, making it the first eighteen-hole public course in the U.S. He oversaw the operation of the facility, the personnel, and the maintenance of the course. Demand for play at Van Cortlandt was extraordinary. In response, Bendelow introduced a set of measures that made access more organized and improved pace of play. Among them: Instituting reserve playing times (tee times) with eight-minute intervals; using marshals on the golf course to regulate play; requiring instruction for caddies and regulations for their employment; offering public instruction to promote enjoyment and etiquette; and creating open player associations to improve play and provide opportunities for competitions.

A lover of cigars, but a man of sobriety, Bendelow moved to Spalding’s Chicago headquarters in 1901 and continued to work at a feverish pace as manager of the company’s golf department. The year before, however, he spent considerable time playing exhibitions around the U.S. with legendary Harry Vardon, usually as his partner. Spalding manufactured “signature” clubs and balls with Vardon’s endorsement.

When the sixth U.S. Open came to Chicago Golf Club that October, Bendelow agreed to caddie for the British great, who went on to beat J. H. Taylor by two strokes.

“It was the greatest tournament ever held in America,” gushed Bendelow, who insisted that Vardon could have won by many more shots if he had only listened to the brash architect. “I told him repeatedly to try for the hole on his putt, but he would not. ‘What’s the use. I have them beaten,’ was all that he would say.”

When Vardon embarked for his return to England on the passenger ship, Majestic , on December 20, Bendelow was part of his travel attaché.

By 1909, Bendelow estimated that he had designed close to five hundred courses. He also had begun to serve as a tournament official at Chicago-area tournaments, including the Western Open and Western Amateur. When A. G. Spalding died in 1915, Bendelow set out on his own, but after a year, Ashland Sporting Goods in Chicago hired him. Bendelow then found himself in the employ of Wilson Sporting Goods when it purchased Ashland. In addition to design work, Bendelow acquired a patent for a new golf ball, and in 1917 Wilson began promoting a line of Tom Bendelow signature clubs.

When he went to work for American Park Builders in 1920, replacing William Langford as chief golf architect, there was not a bigger name in the business, “even if he didn’t have many hallmark projects, like a Macdonald or Donald Ross,” Hurdzan said.

Having a first-class mentality across the board, the founders of Medinah Country Club rightly went to Bendelow and American Park Builders for the design of their golf courses. This period of his career until his retirement in 1933 with the demise of the company was arguably Bendelow’s most fruitful and rewarding. Medinah was not the only ambitious project on his slate, and he would be pulled into Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Wisconsin, and Canada. He never abandoned his “naturalist” approach, however, using the topography wisely while incorporating novel features on the property. As he wrote for Chicago Golfer in 1932, “the natural lay of the land was all that was required.”

Without a doubt, his work at Medinah, particularly on Course No. 3 that he revamped into a highly respected championship layout in 1932, was among his finest efforts. As Stuart Bendelow wrote in his 2006 book on his grandfather:

He always strove to give his client, public or private, the best facility their resources would permit. There is no record of his ever arguing for more financial support than the client was willing to expend ... When given good sites and adequate resources with which to work, he could produce a very challenging layout, equal to the best work of the day. His personal goal, however, was to build good, solid, enjoyable golf courses—”sporty” was his favorite term—for use by the vast majority of American golfers. While Medinah’s Course No. 3 may continue to be listed as Bendelow’s best work, others may argue otherwise. There are dozens of Tom Bendelow-designed golf courses that continue to provide a challenging and pleasurable experience to the present-day golfer.

After suffering from heart trouble for more than a year, Bendelow died March 24, 1936, at the home of his son-in-law and daughter, Fred and May Mizen, in River Forest, Illinois. He is interred at Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park. In his honor, Medinah named one of its member tournaments the Bendelow Cup. Bendelow outlived all but two of his younger siblings. His reputation as one of the most significant figures in American golf lives on.

Chapter Four

COURSE No. 2 –REES REVIVES BENDELOW

THE GENIUS of Tom Bendelow is alive and well at Medinah. While Tom Doak stamped his signature on the renovation of Course No. 1, and the masterminds at OCM have completed their total reimagining of Course No. 3, Course No. 2 still has Bendelow’s fingerprints on it, courtesy of Rees Jones, whose reverence for Medinah Country Club runs deep.

Jones is perhaps the most important figure in the presentation of golf at Medinah—besides Bendelow, of course—having worked extensively on Course No. 3, most notably prior to the 2012 Ryder Cup, before its latest overhaul was completed in 2024. “Medinah has become pretty special to me over the years,” Jones said. “I

Above: Course No. 2 scorecard with stymie measurement, circa 1930 Opposite: Course No. 2 shown in late fall, late 1920s

“It’s such an amazing place. It’s one of the great institutions in American golf.”

When Jones was called on to give Course No. 2 a facelift, he readily accepted. But while his work on No. 3 was intended to upgrade a championship course and strengthen its profile for the game’s best players, his mandate for No. 2 was to make an old course new without losing its character and charm. The project, completed in 2017, was what Jones proudly calls, “a true restoration.”

“I think the term restoration is overused, but this project in my opinion is a true restoration of Tom Bendelow’s design,” said Jones, who earned the sobriquet, the “Open Doctor” after renovating a series of courses that

hosted the U.S. Open. “We have modernized it by adding or relocating a few bunkers and adding tee locations, but the green surfaces and the surrounding slopes are Bendelow’s original design. No. 2 was sort of the forgotten child at Medinah, but in a way that turned out to be a very good thing for bringing it back because it hadn’t been touched. So a lot of his original design ideas were pretty evident.”

Course No. 2 was opened in 1927, and it soon became predominantly the ladies’ course after No. 3—which at the beginning was intended to be the primary domain for women players—quickly was recognized as a championship layout and was developed to be just that in the years ahead.

After a significant tree removal project (more than six hundred trees were taken out), Jones, with the help of associate Steve Weisser and Curtis Tyrrell, then Medinah’s director of golf course operations, concentrated on a comprehensive restoration of green complexes and bunkers. The team relied heavily on aerial photographs from 1938 for the size, shape, and location of greens and for determining the location of some bunkers that were lost or the positioning of new bunkers. (They were kept shallow to minimize problems with ingress or egress.) There are now closely mown areas that run into and around bunkers and some areas around greens. Another important component of the estimated $2.5 million project was improvements to storm drainage.

New touches include the series of seven teeing grounds on every hole, an allowance made for Medinah’s “Golf for Life” program, and greens built to modern USGA standards. A new-old feature is the expansion of fairways and approaches by more than

Opposite and below:

Course architect Rees Jones celebrates after hitting a ceremonial drive on the newly renovated Course No. 2 during the Opening Ceremony, June 19, 2017.

50 percent, from twenty-one to thirty-four acres. Some fairways connect on adjacent holes, a common touch from days gone by. For instance, the approach to the par-3 12th merges with that of the par-3 sixth to its right and extends into the fairway of the par-4 15th. The fairways of the 11th and 16th holes also are connected.

The par-72 course now tops out in length at 6,412 yards. The routing—clockwise around the perimeter on the opening nine, counterclockwise through the interior on the second nine—remains the same, with tee boxes still close to the previous greens.

“To be able to see the remnants of Bendelow, this made the project very special,” Jones said. “It really hadn’t been messed with much. Nobody had really gone in there. It became overgrown and had too many trees. We took a lot of trees out, but we could actually then go and expand the greens, because they had shrunk over time.”

“The contours and little corners had been lost, but you could still see where they had been,” added Jones, who thinks Bendelow’s original greens were the best among the three courses. “And we put the bunkers where they used to be. We did add some length, and when we could, we repositioned bunkers somewhat in the same style, keeping

the open entrances into the putting surfaces. So we brought the style back. Bendelow, having lived in Chicago, gave it subtle nuances.”

In essence, Jones and crew resuscitated Medinah’s ties to the Golden Age of Architecture. “I like the attention to detail that was done on No. 2,” said Bruce D’Angelo, club president during the Course No. 2 renovation and chair of the Course No. 3 renovation. “Rees Jones had a great grasp of the nuances of the golf course, and Steve was out there every day with Curtis going over every detail.”

“To have a course that looks almost like it once did, it’s nice,” said past president John Fennell. “It’s a fun, sporty course that’s still great for the women and a good little test for the men. I really like what they did.”

Ruth Lake, women’s club champion in 2004 who celebrated with her husband Ed their fiftieth anniversary as Medinah members in 2025, joked that Jones’s work was a little too good. “It’s wonderful, but now the men love it, too,” she said with a huge grin. “But that’s okay. We don’t mind sharing.”

Jones said, “On my very first visit to Medinah, the general manager at the time took me out to No. 2, and I remember walking off thinking, ‘Wow, that’s a really good golf course.’ Then when we were asked to work on it, we knew what we had to do. It’s a finesse course with great character. There was nice golf course in there, and we had to go find it. And for the most part, I think we did that. If Tom Bendelow were here today, I think he would be generally very happy.”

Chapter Five

THE REIMAGINING OF COURSE No . 3

OTHER THAN A BRIE PERIOD at the very outset of its construction, when it was intended to be a golf course for women, Course No. 3 of Medinah Country Club has had but one identity while taking on many forms. From the moment the club reopened the renovated layout in 1932, the eighteen holes originally designed by Tom Bendelow came to be known as a championship golf course.

The world-famous layout has fulfilled its purpose as a course meant to be enjoyed by the membership but also offers a proper examination for the game’s top amateurs and professionals. When the Presidents Cup comes to Medinah in 2026, Course No. 3 will stand alone as the only venue in the world to host that biennial competition along with the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship, and the Ryder Cup. That is its history; that is the basis of its reputation.

Its history also is marked by change. Not unlike Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters Tournament, Course No. 3 has a greatness that endures because of what has happened here and the stature of the players who have left with trophies. The place oozes nostalgia, but not necessarily for what it represents as an architectural creation but simply for what it is.

Like Augusta National, Course No. 3 has been an almost continual work in progress. It’s been altered so often that it is difficult to argue that it was anything like the original Bendelow layout when it last hosted a top-tier tournament—the 2019 BMW Championship (the successor to the Western Open).

Much of its original footprint and configuration had remained intact, however, giving the impression that members have been playing virtually the same course for nearly one hundred years. They haven’t.

“The golf course has been changed at least eight times,” said Bruce D’Angelo, the man most immersed in Medinah golf for the last dozen years. “It’s fascinating when people harp on the tradition of the golf course, their objection to messing with its history. But what historical golf course are they talking about? From the

time Bendelow laid out the golf course, there have been six or seven others who have tinkered with it, not including our own golf committee one year. We’ve seen 17 [green] taken off the water, moved up the hill, down the hill. So the question we have to ask is, what historical golf course are you in love with, the one on which Hale Irwin won or the one where Tiger won twice?”

Yarn tee,

their tees after

The yarn would be staked into the ground or attached to a peg, keeping the tee tethered and easy to retrieve.

As chair of the committee overseeing the renovation projects of all fifty-four holes at Medinah, the most recent being the most important, D’Angelo and his team had to ask these and other hard questions. But it’s the process of posing questions that has given Medinah Country Club a reimagined championship golf course that upholds the only tradition that really matters, and that is its reputation for excellence.

“I HAVE ALWAYS FELT LIKE the greatest golf courses ask the most interesting questions,” Geoff Ogilvy said, by way of explaining part of the agenda and approach of OCM to the task of redesigning Course No. 3. “I think fundamentally, when you ask interesting questions, you get interesting answers as you play a golf course. If you ask boring questions, you get boring answers. You get boring golf.

“The real goal is, how do we highlight this piece of land and ask the most interesting questions we can over eighteen holes? Interesting doesn’t mean difficult, but it has an element of difficulty. There’s a fine line. Simple tends to get boring, but a course that’s

too hard can be boring, too, because you can’t ever have success. I’d like to think that the work we did has provided a course with more nuance and asks more interesting questions than the old No. 3.”

Ogilvy in no way was being critical of the layout that had been considered one of America’s best courses as early as 1933 when Bendelow completed the first renovation. Course No. 3, he said, “sits on a “beautiful piece of property” with “great drama” from its elevation changes and trees plus iconic Lake Kadijah. But there was a definite feeling among he and his design partners, Mike Cocking and Ashley Mead, that they could make better use of the land—and the majority of the membership agreed, voting in December 2020 to approve OCM for the project estimated to cost upwards of $26 million after an Ad Hoc Committee was formed the year prior.

“There was a moment for me that the light bulb went off, and I said, ‘If we are going to continue to host the best players in the world, we need to reimagine this whole thing,’ ” said member Ryan Potts, who served on the Course No. 3 Committee. “We always said that No. 3 was great, but we needed it to be a different kind of great. We couldn’t be tied down too much by what it had been; we needed to create the best eighteen holes we possibly could, whatever that took.”

That meant going to Australia. Well, not literally. After an initial round of due diligence, the committee considered about a half-dozen design firms. The longshot—and this time we mean literally—was the group at OCM, based in Melbourne. In the midst of COVID, the OCM gang was trapped Down Under as Australia was locked down as hard as any country in the world. No matter. The Aussies made a compelling pitch and

offered detailed plans working off their own research, old aerial material, hand-drawn plans, photos from the 1920s, statistical data, and drone video. What clinched their bid was a site visit the Medinah contingent made to Shady Oaks in Fort Worth, Texas, an OCM redesign that garnered accolades from Golf Digest

“Ryan told me that we had won the job by time they had reached the fourth tee,” Cocking recalled with a smile.

Because of the pandemic, Cocking said that OCM provided Medinah with such detailed plans that they rarely had to deviate from them, not their usual approach to a project he described as part restoration, part renovation, and part redesign. “I’d say that we were 85 percent done by the time we finally got on the grounds, and by that I mean that what we provided in the master plan.”

The course closed in October 2022 for tree removal and the demolition of old paths and irrigation, and construction began in April 2023. The actual work broke down into three distinct segments. While the first twelve holes play along the same basic corridors, the middle six

were rerouted starting with making the 10th hole into the new par-5 seventh that more than anything made sense in the natural flow of the course. Hole Nos. 7–11 were formerly 10, 11, 9, 7, and 8. Those alterations changed Medinah’s par breakdown to 37 going out and 35 coming in with just one par 3 on the front (the second hole) and three on the back nine.

“It was just very clunky, and we thought, well, this is much more seamless,” Cocking said. “And they said on one of the calls, ‘Yeah, it’s funny, every time we have guests here, they always walk from the sixth green to the 10th hole.’ It just naturally wants to flow that way. I would imagine the reason they didn’t change it was because it just made a funny par sequence. It got rid of the 36-36 par, but we thought it made complete sense.”

The final six holes feature the most dramatic changes, starting with the par-3 13th hole that too much resembled the second and 17th holes. Instead of playing over the water, the short 13th, just 153 yards from the back tee, runs alongside the lake—a nod to the bygone design of the hole. That change enabled OCM to shorten the 14th hole, creating a new 15th, and significantly changing the once-mighty dogleg left 16th into a short “cape-style” hole that can be set up as a drivable par 4 for the Presidents Cup and future professional events. The 17th hole still plays over Lake Kadijah, but it’s set more at a diagonal, and the reshaped green is protected in front by a deep bunker. The par-5 finishing hole, meanwhile, has been returned to its original corridor, playing parallel to the first hole.

A bonus to rerouting the final six holes was providing the necessary space for the Camel Trail, the new nine-hole short course.

“It was an easy sell that maybe a third of the holes are kind of restorations in some way, a third are staying

as they are, and then a third are quite major changes,” Cocking said. “And I think that ticked a few boxes because it appealed to the people that didn’t want to lose the Medinah that they knew and loved. But at the same time, for the people that were aware that the course probably wasn’t as good as the reputation of the club, that ticked that box because we were making some major changes.”

The full length of the new Course No. 3 measures 7,564 yards, which in this day and age isn’t exceedingly long—and it also happens to be nearly one hundred yards shorter than the 7,657-yard layout that hosted the 2019 BMW Championship. But the OCM design team was never intent on creating a course that made length its central challenge. It sought to ask interesting questions.

IN NOVEMBER 2019, then president Joe Gattone initiated a study of Course No. 3 with the formation of an Ad Hoc Committee. Justin Thomas had decimated the scoring record in winning the 2019 BMW Championship, but his performance alone hadn’t been the tipping point to assessing the long-term viability of the layout. Watching Rory McIlroy and several other long hitters eschew fundamental strategy by blasting drives over the trees was a troubling development and exposed the oxymoronic nature of the examination. The one-dimensional aspect to the course for the membership—playing between the corridors of trees—was no longer a consideration for touring professionals. It remained a strong test for the former group but too easy for the latter. “It was the complete opposite of what you want a course to be,” Cocking said.

To emphasize the point, D’Angelo asked the club’s Tee-K Kelly (a Medinah member who has played on both the Korn Ferry and PGA Tours) and two of his fellow players on the Korn Ferry Tour to show what could be done with the use of pure power. The results were eye-opening.

“They played No. 3 from as far back as you could get, played every shot out, and cumulatively, they were 12-under par as a threesome,” D’Angelo said. “Then they played No. 1, which is the Tom Doak course, from as far back as they could. It’s a lot shorter, about 6,800 yards, and they were 3-under par cumulatively because of where you put the ball, how many decisions you have to make, what the greens were like. Then Tee-K wrote a nice little note, an article about the thought process of a good golfer, and what they do. He says, ‘I’ll tell you every club I’ll hit on No. 3 before I’m playing it, with rare exceptions. I know almost every club I’m going to hit on every hole all the time.’ ”

“There were things about Course No. 3 that over time I realized weren’t as relevant as they once were,” Kelly said. “We just showed from a different golfer’s perspective how some of these holes played out. Like holes nine and 16 that were so hard for the members—they were actually some of the easiest to a professional golfer.”

OCM was brought in to ensure that wasn’t going to happen anymore.

It’s easy to gaze out on the altered landscape and realize that thousands of trees have been cleared, but that oversimplifies the description of what is different because trees had dictated so much of the inherent strategy. Opening up a property that was an old hardwood forest but had properties resembling prairie land once cleared certainly changed the appearance, as did the selective planting of native fescue grasses that define playing areas. But, more importantly, the extra room

actually added strategy. OCM more than doubled fairways space, from twenty-four to fifty-eight acres. “On a property of 350 acres, twenty-four acres of fairway was grossly out of scale,” Cocking pointed out.

The average player has more room to maneuver off the tee, but a more accomplished player doesn’t necessarily gain an advantage if he doesn’t take the optimum route to the green. That’s because the undulating greens, the runoffs around the greens, and the bunkering make it more challenging to hit an approach close to a given hole location. It’s only when a player challenges a fairway bunker, water hazard, or the new split-rail fence that guards the left side of holes five, six, and seven that he will find a path to the green much less complicated.

“The strategy is really based off the greens,” Ogilvy explained. “The golf course is less intimidating off the tee, but to really play it well, you have to take on some challenges. You have to really think about where you want to play. You can always play the safe route, but a lot of holes, they get incrementally easier the closer you get to a hazard.”

“They’re not new ideas,” Cocking added. “They’re sort of golden age philosophies on strategy, but the old course, it was lacking in that regard.”

The old greens had their own issues. Most were predominantly flat and also oddly identical in all but a few instances, heart-shaped and sloping back to front and flanked by bunkers, making them appear from overhead as “alien-head” greens. In their place, OCM created gently rolling putting surfaces that offer more pinnable areas and sit more naturally in the ground instead of artificially pushed up. In addition, the bunkers were positioned closer to putting surfaces and are incorporated into the greens complexes in a way that makes recovery more challenging. As Cocking noted: “The old greens led into

the bunkers, so you were hitting up a slope if you were in one. Whereas something that we are influenced by coming from Melbourne on the sand belt, we would usually flare a green up into the surrounding bunkers so if you’re coming from the wrong angle, or if you’re in the greenside bunker, the green’s actually sloping away from you. So you can really tuck pins tight and make position more important than perhaps what it was before.”

The restoration aspect of the project also meant bringing back some of the more interesting bunker styles in the fairways and working them into the terrain where the ground rises naturally as opposed to simply positioning them in areas based on anticipated landing areas. The number of bunkers increased from seventy to one hundred. “Early aerials showed a very interesting bunker style, somewhat reminiscent of other Golden Age courses,” Cocking said. “They were rugged, naturallooking hazards with fairly irregular shapes.”

To complete the naturalistic philosophy, teeing grounds were razed, which further accentuates the indigenous prairie environ and eliminates their previous artificial appearance.

Because proper drainage also was installed—about forty miles of it, in fact, and the costliest line item—the new layout offers yet another feature to accentuate the various design characteristics. It can be made firm, conditions that demand another degree of precision. And taking out thousands of trees (though savannahs of healthy trees remain as an homage to the course’s former identity) enables wind to have a greater influence on shot selection.

“I don’t think we were prepared for the beauty of actually seeing the exposed terrain and the more natural feel of the golf course itself,” said Mike Scimo, who served on the Ad Hoc Committee. “The bunkering has

a much more natural rough feel to it, and none of us understood what the fescue was going to do to kind of create the texture look and feel. It just feels much more in sync with the landscape. It all fits together.”

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think they’d create what they ended up creating. It’s pretty sweet,” said Kelly, who played with Ogilvy during a special rater’s day in the fall of 2024 and had a chance to pick his brain on why certain decisions were made.

“We have a spectacular new asset that’s exceeded expectations,” said board member John Cashman. “Course No. 3 is going to be considered one of the great golf courses in America, I promise you. Medinah is a great name in golf, and we have a course that matches that.”

“It’s just astounding. No one has said anything negative, and I’ve only talked to one person who said that he missed the old course,” said club Secretary Steven Ruffalo. “I think it’s simply a romanticism with it more than the quality of the golf that was there. The new course is so much more interesting. It’s a big puzzle, and it’s so much fun to try to solve it.”

Long-time member Pat Murphy said that no one should hesitate to accept the new layout, and he applauds OCM and D’Angelo’s team for the result.

“People talk to me about the new Course No. 3, and I joke with them that this is the fourth time that I’ve played Course No. 3 for the first time,” said Murphy, whose family joined Medinah in 1971. “Everybody gets a kick out of that, but the new iteration is so far surpassing certainly my expectations, and I think most members’ expectations, because things didn’t go this well with previous iterations of Course No. 3. I think my fondest memory here is watching Course No. 3 evolve to the world-class course it is right now.”

Along with Ryan Potts, Ed Gritzenbach watched the evolution unfold on a day-to-day basis. It didn’t take long to understand that Cocking and Mead, who oversaw most of the dirt work (while Ogilvy provided the finishing touches with his eye as a touring pro), were going to deliver on what they promised.

“Everything that Ryan and I saw, we had this feeling

from the beginning that we were in very good hands,” Gritzenbach said. “OCM didn’t necessarily show all their cards at all times, but it allowed us to see it develop as it was being built. I’ll give you an example; the fifth hole was a great hole, but they made it incredible. And just how they structured that green complex and all the bunkering in front of it. Once they shaped it, they unveiled it to us, and

we were just kind of blown away, like, ‘Oh, this is the kind of stuff that we’re going to get? Yeah, this is awesome.’ ”

“We did not cut any corners. I think that’s the key. That’s important,” said Vaughn Moore, club president in 2024–2025. “I think the fact that when we stood up in front of the membership and said we wouldn’t cut corners, we honored that all the way through, and the

membership backed us. So that’s again, one thing to say it, one thing that committed several years in advance, but it’s another thing to execute on it, and we did execute on it, and that’s what also I’m very proud of. I firmly would state its exceeded expectations and will only continue to do so as it continues to grow in and become even more iconic leading up to the Presidents Cup. The chance

that we took in order to do it with OCM, which wasn’t super well known, and then the amount of money that we designated at a time when a lot of clubs were not leaning into their properties, that’s what makes this so special.”

If the members were apprehensive about what they would find when OCM completed its work, the Australians were equally nervous about delivering a quality championship course. But according to Ogilvy, the pressure made it all worthwhile.

“We’ve had a lot of fun projects, but this one was great, because this was a bit like golf in the last group of a golf tournament with a chance to win. The stakes are high,” he said. “You redo a course that nobody’s heard of, and it’s great fun, and it might be a great project, and the

course might end up amazing, but no one is really watching. This is Course No. 3, quite historic, quite famous. We knew it was going to be holding big tournaments, so it felt really special and important. We felt that responsibility to really nail it. Golf under pressure is more fun, right? So is design.”

A lot of the credit, he added, goes to the members of Medinah for having faith in him and his cohorts.

“It was very brave of them to let us do what we did,” Ogilvy said. “To throw us the keys, if you like, and say, ‘No, no, you guys know what you’re doing; you guys make it the best course you can,’ that was fantastic. They were probably one of the best clubs we’ve ever dealt with in that sense. It’s scary to let

SUPERINTENDENTS

Ralph Johnson 1924–1933

Matthew Bezek 1934–1937

Norman Johnson 1938–1943

Andrew Heim 1944–1945

Raymond Davis 1946–1955

Gerald M. Dearie 1956–1963

Gerald F. Dearie 1963–1968

John Jackman 1968–1978

Don Pakala 1979–1982

Peter Wilson 1982–1988

Dan Quast 1989–2001

Tom Lively 2001–2007

Curtis Tyrrell 2007–2017

Steven Cook 2018–2023

Ben McGargill 2023–

somebody mess around with your golf course regardless of what they’ve done before. It’s a leap of faith, and because of how well they accepted us and what we were doing, I think the result speaks for itself. I think they’re set up for the next fifty years.”

That’s exactly how the club feels, too. “This is a great segue into the next century of this club,” former president Joe Ebner said. “It’s a great representation of the ambition of the club and the continuing tradition of making it better.”

And it couldn’t have come at a better time. “It’s just such a unique timing for our centennial to hit when we’re opening the biggest renovation of Course No. 3 that we’ve ever done along with all the other things that we’ve been doing these last few years,” Moore said. “It’s kind of a culmination of things coming together at once, which is really exciting. I like the terminology: transformational. It’s a transformational moment for the club, and it happens to fall at the hundred-year anniversary. Some of it is planning. Some of it is fortuitous. But it all just seems perfect.”

“THIS IS WHAT WE’VE BEEN WORKING TOWARDS”

Reopening of Course No. 3 — July 13, 2024

THE MEMBERS OF MEDINAH COUNTRY CLUB have marked many important dates through the decades, and now they had another to celebrate after the reopening of Course No. 3 on July 13, 2024. A small group of eager club leaders unwrapped the ultimate present on that bright Saturday morning—a new golf course, a new legacy on a parcel of land that has been host to so many special moments.

It was a glorious occasion that began with a few well-chosen remarks by club president Vaughn Moore and Mike Cocking, one of the design associates from OCM, and then a champagne toast before tees were stuck into the ground. Cocking was given the honor of hitting the opening tee shot, just as Tom Doak and Rees Jones had done with the reopening of the Nos. 1 and 2 courses, respectively. Cocking unleashed a hard draw that got the job done.

It was a selective group that was chosen to officially open No. 3, and that was by design. “We obviously have the current board and the Ad Hoc Committee that we use for Course No. 3. We also wanted to honor our past presidents who gave us the platform to be able to have these type of assets with vision and strategy for the future,” Moore said. ”And that’s what matters, because we stand on their shoulders with having that view. We get better and pass the baton to each other

because none of us own it. I am just so proud to be able to share this amazing asset with all of you.”

Cocking also spoke briefly, saying, “I really just want to thank Medinah for putting your faith in a small and perhaps relatively unknown architectural firm based in Australia,” he began. “Funny accent, by the way. Funny accent. It’s not like [we] weren’t far away during COVID, either. No, it was a particularly challenging time, but we really appreciate just how supportive everyone was during that period. Golf course construction and design, it really is an art form, but one of the nice things about it is you actually get to play that piece of art. And so I’m particularly excited about playing, but more so about seeing your reactions and your faces, and hopefully lots of smiles.”

The weather could not have been better for the unveiling. Twenty-four members plus about a dozen of the Medinah staff ventured out on a day that was a real

celebration mixed in with a slight hint of trepidation.

“A small group of us had walked it a number of times, but you never really know how it’s going to play until you have a club in your hand, and then you don’t know how everyone else is going to assess what was done,” said Bruce D’Angelo, the chair of the No. 3 project. “So, yes, there was some nervousness attached to it. But I think we all walked off the course that first day very happy and excited.”

“It was a really cool day; you finally start to get to show everybody, ‘Hey this is what we’ve been working towards,’ ” said Ryan Potts, vice chair of the Ad Hoc Committee. “That was an emotional day to be honest with you. Just seeing that course after watching it kind of get destroyed and then to come back over the two years was pretty rewarding. We had a perfect day; it was beautiful. And seeing the reaction and pride of all the members both before teeing off and then afterwards was really special for me, and it was a special day for the club.”

Potts was part of the first group off at 10:00 a.m. with D’Angelo, Moore, and Ed Gritzenbach, another key committee member who along with Potts had his boots on the dusty ground most days during construction. Vice President David Latham made the first official birdie on the new course on the par-4 third when he holed a chip shot.

When the round was completed and everyone had a chance to savor the experience, there were more smiles, more nodding of heads indicating that the new layout deserved their seal of approval. “Yeah, we hung out afterward, and it was just such an adrenaline and an exciting day,” Gritzenbach said. “We watched groups come in, got feedback from everybody, saw the excitement that was there. That was a really great part of it.”

Course No. 3 was open for play, and with it, Medinah Country Club added another new chapter—a reimagined golf course ready to test the world’s best professionals and challenge members alike— for years to come.

The Sahara

is Medinah’s 18-hole putting course, which offers golfers the opportunity to test and work on their putting game.

Both the Camel Trail and Sahara opened in July 2024, coinciding with the opening of the new Course No. 3.

The Camel Trail is Medinah’s short course, which offers members and families five holes, ranging from sixty-one hundred yards, as a fun alternative to playing the championship courses.

Chapter Six

MEDINAH’S CLUB PROS

Proud and Accomplished

WHEN IT COMES to the distinguished lineage of professionals who have led Medinah’s historic golf program, few clubs can rival its pedigree. The succession of head professionals at Medinah dating to its inception is impressive, and that would be true even if you removed the names of its two major champions, Tommy Armour and Ralph Guldahl, who together manned the post from 1933 to 1948. (What other club boasts two U.S. Open champions at its helm?) Throw in the diminutive Abe Espinosa (1930–1932), who was also very accomplished as a professional, and it’s not a stretch to say that Medinah possesses its own “great triumvirate.”

Bryant Ambrose (Amber) Andrews

1925–1926

MEDINAH’S FIRST HEAD PRO, Amber Andrews (opposite), was a course designer, instructor and radio personality who stayed for only two years in 1925–1926. Born in Scotland, Andrews came from a golfing family; his father and three brothers all were professionals. After serving in World War I, Andrews worked for the British government laying out golf courses in India and South Africa. He came to the U.S. in 1920, taking a job at Waveland Golf Course in Des Moines, Iowa, before becoming the first head pro at Crestview Country Club in Wichita, Kansas. He left Crestview in September 1923 and arrived at Medinah in late 1924.

Andrews, a Shriner (he was referred to as a Noble in a 1924 news story) is considered the originator of broadcasting golf

instruction via radio. His hour-long “Lessons In Golf” program was broadcast at 9:00 p.m. each Thursday in the winter from the Edgewater Beach Hotel indoor golf school in Chicago and carried on WEBH. By 1925 he was already considered something of a celebrity. It’s no wonder that Andrews was behind the idea of having a 500-watt radio broadcast studio in the massive new Medinah clubhouse that never came to pass. Andrews

Cyrus (Cy) Anderberg

ALSO A SHRINER, Cyrus (Cy) Anderberg was an accomplished player who succeeded Amber Andrews in 1927 after serving at Fresh Meadow in Hillside, Illinois. Previously, Anderberg led Peru (Indiana) Country Club and Pontiac (Illinois) Golf & Country Club. He wrote articles for the Red Fez on how to play golf and remained at Medinah for many years—though as a member and not head pro. His stint as a professional ended in 1928, just after the opening of Course No. 3. Residing in Oak Park, Anderberg became an investment broker and was reinstated as an amateur in 1931. Among his victories was the Acacia Country Club Invitational that same year.

George V. Gelhar

MEDINAH HAD HOPED its next pro would stay more than two years, but instead George V. Gelhar moved on after just one season, in 1929 when he competed in the Western Open at Ozaukee in Mequon, Wisconsin, which was won by Armour. Gelhar, who had come from South Haven (Michigan) Country Club, was listed as “unattached” in 1930 when he competed in the $3,000 Medinah Open in which he finished 18 strokes behind winner Harry Cooper. He competed in various events with little success, though he did capture the Cook County Open in 1931 at Garfield Park. He was with Devon Links in 1935 when he competed in the Medinah Open, finishing well down the board after an 86-79 start that left him twenty-three strokes behind Johnny Revolta through thirty-six holes.

Abelard (Abe) Espinosa

1930–1932

GELHAR’S DEPARTURE made way for the exceptional trio of accomplished professionals who together enhanced the reputation of Medinah Country Club from 1930–1948. Abe Espinosa might not have compiled the record of his immediate successors, Armour and Guldahl, but in addition to his three-year occupancy of the Medinah pro shop starting in 1930, Espinosa contributed to the game throughout his life.

Born in Monterey, California, on a former Spanish land grant site that later became the second hole at Pebble Beach Golf Links, Espinosa was one of five golfing brothers, and he already was a known entity in the Chicago area when Medinah tapped him. Espinosa had won the 1928 Western Open at North Shore and the Chicago Open at Idlewild four days apart in late July and early August. His Western Open triumph made him the first Hispanic American to win what at the time was considered a major. At Idlewild, Espinosa sank a twenty-foot birdie putt on the final hole to edge Frank Walsh. Abe’s brother Al, who won twenty professional titles, had claimed the championship three years earlier.

He won only twice more, but both came in 1931 while representing Medinah when he captured the Texas Open and the Illinois PGA Championship. He also had success in state and area tournaments. But a diminishing membership prompted Espinosa in 1933 to move to Cog Hill Golf & Country Club, a public facility in Lemont where the prospect of a larger pool of students for golf lessons existed. He was hired on as “technical expert” to give group lessons and to represent Cog Hill at tournaments.

In 1936, Espinosa called Shreveport Country Club home, but he soon was back in Illinois at Decatur

Country Club before moving to Billings, Montana. He involved himself in golf course design, primarily in the Western U.S. He moved to Morro Bay, California, in 1970 and passed away on February 13, 1980, just four days after his ninety-first birthday, in San Luis Obispo. Only one newspaper, The Billings Gazette in Montana, published his obituary.

TWO FOR THE HALL

Medinah Golf Professionals Tommy Armour and Ralph Guldahl are both members of the World Golf Hall of Fame

ONE MAN WENT BY THE NICKNAME, “THE SILVER SCOT.” The other was known as “Goldie.” Together they constituted the precious mettle that fortified the reputation of the prestigious golf club that they not only represented but also to which they gave their service.

Many private clubs boast their own star head professional from a bygone era when the men who won the game’s biggest tournaments supplemented their income with club jobs. That is how Ben Hogan ended up at Hershey Country Club in Pennsylvania and Byron Nelson manned the pro shop at Inverness Club in Toledo. Not many clubs can claim to have had two future World Golf Hall of Fame members fill the role of head professional, but Medinah enjoys that distinction with Tommy Armour and Ralph Guldahl, who served consecutively from 1933–1948. Armour was inducted to the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1976, preceding Guldahl by five years.

The unspoken compact between these two men and the institution to which they contributed was that each elevated the profile of the other. They gave their talents. Medinah gave them purpose. It was an epic era to be treasured.

Tommy Armour

1933–1944

CALLED THE “BLACK SCOT” before his dark hair turned silver, Armour already was one of the game’s most celebrated figures when he succeeded Abe Espinosa in 1933. He arrived at Medinah April 14 as winner of the U.S. Open, PGA Championship, and Open Championship. He also had twice won the Canadian Open, in 1927 and 1930, and the 1929 Western Open for other “big” titles.

The late Jim Murray, the famed columnist for the Los Angeles Times, once wrote of Armour, “The name Tommy Armour belongs to a different era. When an Armour is playing golf, Babe Ruth should be at bat at Yankee Stadium, Red Grange in a backfield some place, Lindbergh on his way to Paris and Dempsey training for Tunney. It’s the Golden Age of Sport. Tilden is winning Wimbledon, and the Four Horsemen are barnstorming through the Midwest. Tommy Armour was one of the great names of that gaudy time.”

In short, the acquisition of Armour—who would give Medinah an even greater bump than Espinosa with his presence on tournament leaderboards—was a very big deal. Armour’s path to greatness and to the club was quite extraordinary. Born September 24, 1896, in Morningside, Scotland, a village south of Edinburgh, Thomas

Dickson Armour began to play golf as a youngster at nearby Braid Hills with his older brother Sandy (who for a time was an assistant for his brother at Medinah).

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Armour enlisted with the Black Watch Highland Regiment as a machine-gunner. Soon he was promoted to staff major in the Tank Corps, which became a hazardous assignment. Twice he suffered serious injuries on the front lines in Ypres in Belgium—first when his tank was struck by a shell, which injured his left arm and head, and later when he was blinded by mustard gas. Hospitalized for six months, Armour underwent surgery to have a metal plate inserted in his head and gradually he regained sight—but only in his right eye.

He resumed his pursuit of golf in 1919, and in 1920, despite his handicap—which caused him to have a lack of depth perception—he won the French Amateur and then moved to the U.S., a fortuitous move. He soon met Walter Hagen, who arranged a job for Armour as outdoor secretary of the Westchester-Biltmore Club in Rye, New York. In 1924, he turned pro and then moved to Sarasota, Florida, to become head professional at Whitfield Estates Golf Club in 1925. His next post was

Left: Tommy Armour after winning the 1927 U.S. Open that was played at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland.

Congressional Country Club in Washington, D.C., and then he relocated to Tom O’Shanter Country Club in Detroit before accepting the position at Medinah, signing a three-year contract.

By then, of course, he was one of golf’s biggest names, along with Hagen and Bobby Jones. He won the 1927 national title at Oakmont by beating Harry Cooper in a playoff, the 1930 PGA at Fresh Meadow, where he defeated Gene Sarazen 1 up in the final, and the 1931 Open at Carnoustie in his home country.

His brilliance as a ball striker, particularly with irons, was unquestioned, as was his ability to teach. Babe Didrikson Zaharias and Lawson Little were wellknown pupils. It was not unusual for members to see Zaharias on the practice tee with Armour while her husband, George, he of pro wrestling fame, observed nearby. Often Hollywood celebrities and other high-profile individuals came calling, and even Jones tapped Armour for advice. All the while, he continued to compete, and his twenty-five career PGA Tour titles

include five wins during his Medinah years, including a third Canadian Open title in 1934.

The membership also enjoyed his tutelage, even if it didn’t always warm to his personally. Armour, who spent winters at the Boca Raton Club in Florida, was described as kind-hearted but temperamental. He was known to enjoy more than an occasional drink, and some members felt like he took liberties at the club as if he were a member, too. “He has both faults and virtues,” Medinah President Henry Schierholz said.

Armour had signed a five-year contract after his initial deal, but then worked on one-year contracts starting in 1941. He was paid $2,500 a year, which he really didn’t need; he had married a wealthy Cuban-born widow named Consuelo Carreras not long after arriving in the U.S. By early 1944, club officials wondered if it wasn’t prudent to dismiss Armour and save badly needed funds, but they eventually renewed his contract. It would be his last after an item in the March 1944 edition of The Camel

Trail informed the membership of the nearly fifty-fifty split in the voting to retain the mercurial Scotsman. Later that year, Armour was let go at a board meeting. It was a messy ending.

Armour moved on to Rockledge Golf Club in West Hartford, Connecticut, but continued to teach at Boca Raton. His last club job, which he held until a year before he died, was at New Boca Rio, also in Boca Raton, though he returned to New York in the summer, having joined Winged Foot Golf Club as a member. He also went on to write a couple of books, How To Play Your Best Golf All the Time, published in 1953, and A Round of Golf with Tommy Armour in 1959.

Armour died September 11, 1968, at his home in Larchmont, New York, at the age of seventy-one after a lengthy illness.

Armour’s grandson, Tommy Armour III, became a successful pro, winning two PGA Tour titles and the 1983 Mexican Open, which is now a Tour event.

TAUGHT BY TOMMY

ED JAMES VERY LIKELY OWNS THE DISTINCTION as the last living member of Medinah Country Club to have taken a lesson from golf great Tommy Armour, the head professional from 1933–1944. “I can’t imagine there being really anyone left, because you have to be a certain age—you know—old,” laughed James, who turned ninety and celebrated sixty-five years as a Medinah member in 2024.

James doesn’t remember the exact year when his father, Jerry, first took him out to the club to meet with the three-time major champion, but he hasn’t forgotten a few of the tips he picked up from the Silver Scot. It was part of his upbringing; his father was a perpetual member, and the family spent a lot of time at the club. Naturally, he wanted to keep that tradition alive for his children—and now also his grandchildren.

“He was a friend of my dad’s, and I still have a picture of Tommy Armour and my dad during the war,” James said. “I never knew Tommy Armour enough to tell you what he was like, but my dad was friendly with him. You drive in, and we used to have lessons where the 18th hole is now.”

James became a member in 1959, the year after his father died. His prized possession is an authentic Tommy Armour signature putter that Armour gave to James’s dad. He actually inherited several of them. While James was playing in the pro-am in the 1966 Western Open, one of the contestants spied the putter and offered to buy it from him.

“He said, ‘What do you want for the putter?’ And I said that I can’t sell it; it’s a family relic and so on,” said James, a longtime supporter of the Evans Scholars Program who is a former WGA chair and still serves as a trustee. “So he said, ‘Well, I’ll give you anything you want.’ That was Tom Weiskopf. And I said, ‘I’m sorry, Tom, I can’t do it.’ The next year I went to play over at Cog Hill with some friends, and when I got to the first tee, I saw that my Tommy Armour putter was missing. Someone obviously knew what it was. Fortunately, that wasn’t the only one.”

James keeps the original in his office along with some vintage persimmon woods. He’ll pass it on to his son, Jerry, who was born just after his grandfather died.

Ralph Guldahl

1945–1948

SON OF NORWEGIAN IMMIGRANTS, Ralph Guldahl succeeded Armour in 1945 as the sixth head pro at Medinah. Guldahl was born in Dallas on November 22, 1911, within a year of three of the greatest in the game— Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, and Sam Snead. The lanky Guldahl, known as one of golf’s “gentle souls,” emerged for a brief period as a dominant force in tournament play before he inexplicably lost his game.

A product of the caddie yards in Texas, Guldahl turned pro in 1929 at the age of seventeen and began to compete in tour events in 1931. That same year he won the Santa Monica Open at the age of twenty. He added a second win the following year, and then rose to prominence at the 1933 U.S. Open at North Shore where he made up six strokes on amateur Johnny Goodman in the final round only to lose by a stroke by missing a four-footer and making bogey on the final hole.

In 1935 he worked as a car salesman, but he returned to golf with a vengeance. After borrowing money from a friend to get his clubs out of hock, he won three times in 1936, including the first of his three straight Western Open titles. He defeated two-time Masters winner Horton Smith in a playoff. Then came the major glory—wins in the U.S. Open in 1937 at Oakland Hills and 1938 at Cherry Hills, both thanks to final-round scores of 69. His 7-under 281 total in the former broke Tony Manero’s year-old record by a stroke. Guldahl added the 1939 Masters title after finishing runner-up the previous two years. He set the tournament record then, too, posting 9-under 279 at Augusta National Golf Club to edge Snead by one shot. Guldahl won twice more in 1940, giving him sixteen tour titles, and then he all but retired from competitive golf in 1942, though he played sporadically thereafter, including the 1949 U.S. Open at Medinah, his final appearance in the championship. His swing somehow left

Opposite: Ralph Guldahl won back-to-back U.S. Opens— capturing his first title in 1937 at Oakland Hills Country Club in Michigan, and successfully defending it in 1938 at Cherry Hills Country Club in Colorado.

him, which coincided loosely with an instruction book he wrote in 1939, Groove Your Golf. The theory was that he overanalyzed his swing while in the process of writing the book and made changes that ruined him. Guldahl dismissed that, explaining years later that his dedication to the game waned because he wanted to spend more time at home with his wife, Laverne, and son, Ralph Jr. Whatever the case, Guldahl was exactly what the club needed after Armour’s departure in 1944. He left San Diego Country Club to sign a one-year contract with Medinah and arrived on April 15, 1945. He was a name, a champion, and he was also more attuned to the membership. While Armour was often bombastic, Guldahl was reserved and so well liked that in November the club granted him a three-year deal. When that contract expired, he departed, though he remained in Chicago that summer to compete in the 1949 U.S. Open before moving his family back to San Diego. Ralph Jr. explained in The Spirit of Medinah that his father left because his mother suffered from severe hay fever in the summer. He also said that his father, who finished twenty-second in his final U.S. Open appearance, might have won the 1949 Open had he stayed on, because he played Course No. 3 so often as head pro. “What did Cary Middlecoff shoot, 286? My dad would have done that any day.”

Guldahl returned to California, and his fame endured. When Hogan returned to golf in 1950 and won the U.S. Open, sports writers compared Bantam Ben to other great professionals of recent vintage, a list that included Hagen, Sarazen, Nelson … and Guldahl.

Guldahl died on June 11, 1987, at seventy-five years old in Sherman Oaks, California of a heart attack. He and Laverne had just celebrated their fifty-sixth wedding anniversary. He passed nearly fifty years to the day he won his first U.S. Open.

Guy D. Paulsen

1949–1960

AFTER GULDAHL DEPARTED IN 1948, Guy D. Paulsen had a tough act to follow. He was appointed head pro on January 29, 1949, among more than fifty applicants, moving to Medinah from San Gabriel (California) Country Club. The Chicago area wasn’t completely foreign to the Indiana native after once serving as an assistant at Olympia Fields.

“Paulsen is an ideal choice for Medinah because of his teaching and executive ability,” E. Jack Barns, the club’s Golf Committee chair, said in a news story on January 30. With the club hosting its first U.S. Open in June, Paulsen’s executive talents undoubtedly were needed. In 1950, he hired two veteran instructors as assistants—David

Mose from Skokie Golf Club and Charles Brady from Monticello Country Club in New Hampshire. Those additions gave Medinah one of the largest golf staffs in the United States.

Paulsen’s experience was varied and spanned the country. He was a caddie master and clubmaker during his first job at Fort Wayne (Indiana) Country Club. He was an inventor who patented several teaching devices. Before arriving at Medinah, Paulsen held posts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Longmeadow, Massachusetts; Nashua, New Hampshire; and Los Angeles. Most notable, though, was his three-year stint at Augusta National Golf Club when the bespectacled Paulsen served as an

associate professional and instructor from 1937–1939 under longtime head pro Ed Dudley.

Winner of the first Illinois PGA Senior Championship in 1957, Paulsen was also veteran of many national competitions and competed in sixteen major championships—four U.S. Opens and twelve PGA Championships. His best finish was thirteenth in the 1931 U.S. Open at

Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio, and two years later he was fourth in the Western Open at Olympia Fields, finishing behind winner MacDonald Smith, Tommy Armour and Abe Espinosa and one stroke ahead of Ralph Guldahl. He won the Indiana Open twice, in 1928 and 1933, and is credited with a PGA Tour title for the first victory. Paulsen left Medinah in 1960.

John “Jack” Bell

1961–1967

OHIO NATIVE JACK BELL was another Medinah professional who served the game admirably in multiple facets. Growing up in East Palestine, Ohio, Bell was a standout basketball player who decided to pursue football at Kent State University before switching to golf in his junior year. Before arriving at Medinah in 1961, Bell served as

an assistant pro at North Shore Country Club and as head pro at River Forest Country Club, during which time he won the 1959 Illinois Open by one stroke at Oak Park Country Club. He won it again in 1963 at Knollwood Country Club, dedicating the victory to his late friend Jim Ingels, a Medinah member. He twice won the Illinois State PGA Pro-President tournament. During his Medinah tenure which lasted through 1967, he was host professional for the 1962 and 1966 Western Open championships.

A three-time competitor in the U.S. Open, Bell later became head pro and then general manager at La Jolla (California) Country Club, and then joined the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. He put his extensive golf experience to use in helping develop Confederate Hills Golf Course (now Highland Springs Golf Course) in Highland Springs, Virginia, and then he was recruited to coach the men’s golf team at Virginia Commonwealth University. He led the Rams to five conference championships before his retirement in 1998. Five years later, Bell was inducted into the VCU Athletic Hall of Fame.

John Marschall

1968–1978

IN 1968, John Marschall was elevated to head professional after having been an assistant under Bell for two years, in 1961 and 1962, during which time he also was an instructor and offered lessons to members in the pro shop during the winter. He played in the 1962 Western Open at Medinah but did not make the cut.

Marschall was a standout Iowa amateur and high school state champion who went on to captain the University of Iowa golf team. He turned pro in 1957, and in 1963, Marschall left Medinah to begin a five-year run as head pro at Quincy Country Club before returning to the Medinah pro shop. Marschall was the host for the 1975 U.S. Open at Medinah. He once said of Medinah’s 17th hole, “Architects dream of creating such a hole; players dream of boiling such architects in oil.” Marschall left Medinah in late 1978 to become the head professional at Shoreacres.

Bob Hickman

1979–1988

BOB HICKMAN didn’t possess the playing pedigree of many of his predecessors, but the Colorado native was a decorated PGA Professional who served Medinah with such distinction that in 1980 he won the PGA of America’s national award for Merchandiser of the Year, and in 1981 Hickman was the recipient of the Horton Smith Award for education from the Illinois PGA Section.

A graduate of Denver University, Hickman arrived at Medinah in 1979 from Shawnee Country Club in Topeka, Kansas. He already had earned the designation as a PGA Certified Instructor—only the fourteenth PGA member to earn the rank of Master Professional. In 1970, while serving as head pro at Hiwan Country Club in Evergreen, Colorado, Hickman was named Golf Professional of the Year in the Colorado Section for his work teaching golf to the disabled at the Craig Rehabilitation Center in Denver and for his support of the state high school golf tournaments and the Colorado Open, which he helped start in 1964. In his final year at Medinah in 1988 he was the host professional for the ninth edition of the U.S. Senior Open. He moved to New Mexico as part of a new ownership group of Tierra del Sol Country Club in Albuquerque, where he also served as director of golf course operations.

Michael Harrigan

1989–2002

THE LONGEST-TENURED head professional at Medinah, Michael Harrigan was the host professional for two of Medinah’s most compelling championships, the 1990 U.S. Open and the 1999 PGA Championship.

A Chicago native, Harrigan was named successor to Hickman on March 30, 1989, leaving Thorngate Country Club in Deerfield. Like Marschall, He had previously worked as an assistant at Medinah—and it happened to be under Marschall, from 1975-77, so he already had experience with major championships at the club. “We’re glad to have him back,” Medinah President Dick Donaldson said at the time.

Harrigan not only was a golfer but also a star basketball player and was one of nine brothers to play

Mike Scully

basketball at Brother Rice High School. Harrigan also played on the golf team, which won the Catholic League title in 1966; one of his teammates was Rick Ten Broeck, whose brother Lance went on to play on the PGA Tour. After high school, he competed in a number of area tournaments playing out of Westgate Valley. He turned professional in 1971, beginning his career as an assistant at Rolling Green Country Club in Arlington Heights. He went on to qualify for the Western Open seven times and competed in the Senior PGA Championship three times, in 2001, 2002, and 2004. The Illinois PGA Section named him Teacher of the Year in 1995 and Player of the Year and Professional of the Year in ’97. Harrigan, a PGA Life Member, remained at Medinah until 2002.

WHEN MIKE SCULLY went to work for The Forest Country Club in Fort Myers, Florida, he insisted a clause be inserted into his contract that he could leave at any time if the job came open at Medinah Country Club. After five years at The Forest, the Chicago native exercised that clause in January 2003. “It’s the job I’ve always wanted,” Scully said then. “I’m a Chicago boy. To me, Medinah is the mecca of golf.”

Scully took the most circuitous route to golf by way of the NFL. He was a top football prospect at Prospect High School who played on the 1983 Big Ten champion University of Illinois team. He had a brief stay in the NFL with Washington and Kansas City, and then coached high school football before he got the calling to golf. In 2008, he was named Illinois PGA Professional of the Year, and in 2012 Scully served as host professional for the 2012 Ryder Cup and served on the Executive Committee. He left Medinah in October of 2012 to take a job as director of golf at Desert Mountain in Scottsdale, Arizona, and more recently Scully moved back to Florida.

Marty DeAngelo

THE CHICAGO CONNECTION, via Florida, continued with Marty DeAngelo succeeding Scully on January 21, 2013. A native of Peru, Illinois, DeAngelo had been the director of golf at Isleworth Golf & Country Club, the famed housing development in Windermere, Florida, that is home to a number of tour players and where Tiger Woods once resided and practiced. He started at Isleworth in 1995, became head pro in 1998 and was elevated to director of golf in 2004.

After graduating from the College of Boca Raton, where he played on the golf team and earned a degree in Hospitality Management, DeAngelo began his career as an apprentice professional at Deer Park Country Club, and he obtained his Class A status with the PGA of America during his time there. He also pursued a career as a touring pro, competing on a number of tours including the Canadian Tour, Jordan Tour, Hooters Tour, Ben Hogan Tour, and the Gary Player Tour. He made one PGA Tour start in his career, in 1993. In 2007, DeAngelo received the PGA of America’s Chapter Private Merchandiser of the Year Award.

Perhaps DeAngelo’s biggest contribution to Medinah was the “Golf for Life” system that he initiated in concert with the renovation of Course No. 2. The idea first struck

him while serving at Isleworth, and he worked with architect Rees Jones and Curtis Tyrrell, then the director of golf course operations, to install seven sets of tees on each hole. The system is designed to help players of different levels of ability play the proper set of tees after assessment from the club pro staff, and then work on specific areas of improvement as prescribed by the pros.

DeAngelo moved to Naples, Florida, in July 2023 to become senior director of golf operations at Grey Oaks Country Club.

Tim Drzewinski 2023

TIM DRZEWINSKI bridged the gap ably between DeAngelo and Casey Brozek as head golf professional, a post to which he was elevated in 2023. He likes to think he holds down a second title as head golf nerd. Just being a part of Medinah golf lore is special in any capacity.

“I geek out about all the history here,” said Drzewinski, a product of Long Valley, New Jersey, and Clemson University, who came to Medinah in 2018 after building an impressive résumé that included experience at Augusta National Golf Club, Pebble Beach, Baltusrol, and Ridgewood Country Club in New Jersey. “There are times when I’ll go around the club and look at the artifacts in the Heritage Room or, really, anywhere around the clubhouse and grounds, and I just know I’m in one of the coolest places in the game.

“To know the people that have come through here and the history of the club, it’s something you don’t take lightly,” he said. “All of us who work here, that’s something that we take great pride in. We do our best to live up to a high standard. So, yeah, knowing who has been head pro here, it’s really cool to be a part of that lineage.”

Casey Brozek

WHILE SERVING as head professional at Crystal Lake Country Club, Casey Brozek was selected as Illinois PGA Golf Professional of the Year and received the organization’s highest honor during the Illinois Section Awards Ceremony at Medinah Country Club in October 2016.

During his acceptance speech, an emotional and humble Brozek said that the award, “doesn’t mean I’m at the end of my career rainbow. I still have many more accomplishments to achieve.”

Perhaps that evening was merely a portent for the destination that rainbow would take him—as the man who now serves as the director of golf at Medinah.

A PGA of America member for more than twenty-five years, Brozek joined Medinah in February 2024, coming from Quail West Country Club in Naples, Florida. The Green Bay, Wisconsin, native returned to his professional roots as he knew Medinah quite well as president of the Illinois PGA Section in 2012 when Medinah hosted the Ryder Cup.

Brozek, who has been a Class A PGA Professional since 1999, thought he would never leave Southwest Florida, but the “allure” of Medinah Country Club was too powerful. “It was a once-in-a-career opportunity. So I grabbed it,” he said. “I always knew Medinah was a spectacular and special place.”

HEAD GOLF

PROFESSIONALS/ DIRECTORS OF GOLF

Amber Andrews 1925–1926

Cy Anderberg 1927–1928

George Gelhar 1929 Abe Espinosa 1930–1932

Tommy Armour 1933–1944

Ralph Guldahl 1945–1948

Guy Paulsen 1949–1960

Jack Bell 1961–1967

John Marschall 1968–1978

Bob Hickman 1979–1988

Mike Harrigan 1989–2002

Mike Scully 2003–2012

Marty DeAngelo 2013–2023

Tim Drzewinski 2023

Casey Brozek 2024–

The Shop

The Shop, which reopened its doors in March 2025, has been completely reimagined to create a premier shopping experience. The home to Medinah’s golf professionals for generations is a blend of rich wood tones, brass accents, and a warm sateen finish. The redesigned layout features decompression zones, clean sightlines, and flexible fixturing that allows the team to seamlessly adapt presentations for both in-season and off-season needs.

The Shop’s thoughtfully curated product assortment follows a “good, better, best” approach, ensuring members and their guests find the most recognized and inspiring brands for both on- and off-course activities.

Golf Learning Center

Medinah elevated its member training and recreation experience to a new level in 2018 with the opening of its 5,000-square-foot indoor Golf Learning Center (GLC). The GLC offers members a state-of-the-art, year-round practice and training facility, highlighted by three simulator bays devoted to TrackMan technology, personal lessons, and club fitting. Additionally, there is a golf fitness area and a gathering space for social activities. The GLC’s popular outdoor Practice Facility and practice range has transitioned from bentgrass to HGT Kentucky bluegrass, which provides golfers a more durable surface with faster recovery times. Members and guests can further hone their game on a short game area and a practice putting green.

MIRACLES AT MEDINAH

Chapter Seven

THE MEDINAH WAY — 209 —

DOUBTING TOMMY — 212 —

Chapter Eight

THE DENTIST GRITS HIS TEETH — 227 —

“BLACK WIDOW” PUTTER STINGS MEDINAH — 232

SNEAD’S BITTER DEFEAT — 236 —

Chapter Nine

A COMEBACK FOR THE AGES — 239 —

JACK VS. ARNIE: “HERE WE GO AGAIN” — 245 —

GRAHAM’S SECRET WEAPON — 250 —

Chapter Ten

PLAYER PREVAILS — 253 —

Chapter Eleven

A DREAM COMES TRUE — 254 —

A SPORTING GESTURE — 270 —

Chapter Twelve

TIGER RUNS THE TABLES — 272 —

SERGIO’S TREE — 278 —

SLUMAN’S SWING COACH — 285 —

Chapter Thirteen

THE “MIRACLE AT MEDINAH” — 290 —

Chapter Fourteen

THE DAY MEDINAH GAVE IN — 309 —

Chapter Fifteen

MEMBER GOLF AT MEDINAH — 312 —

THE WUNCE WUZZERS — 317 —

MAKING A SPLASH — 319 —

Chapter Seven

THE MEDINAH WAY

Tournament golf has played important role in the club’s legacy

JUST NINE DAYS AFTER what was the most consequential and, as it turned out, historic major championship in golf’s modern era—the 62nd U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club near Pittsburgh—a mentally fatigued Arnold Palmer piloted his private aircraft to O’Hare Airport and then hopped into a helicopter that would take him to Medinah Country Club for the 1962 Western Open. Still smarting from his eighteen-hole playoff loss to tour rookie Jack Nicklaus, Palmer wasn’t particularly inspired to play in another golf tournament so soon, having seen his hopes for the grand slam dashed so close to his Latrobe, Pennsylvania, hometown. But he was the defending champion of the Western Open, which offered a $55,000 purse, the largest on tour after the majors.

As Medinah member George Snyder piloted the helicopter over Course No. 3, Palmer looked out and was pleasantly surprised by what he saw. He later would tell reporters that his mood lifted as the chopper neared the property.

“This looks like quite a golf course,” he remarked to head pro Jack Bell, who also was on board the helicopter.

“That’s the way you should lay out a golf course—and keep it.”

Nicklaus was no less effusive about the examination that awaited a field that featured the top thirty players on the tour’s money list. “This is the toughest test from tee to green I’ve ever played,” he remarked, which was saying something coming off his win at

mighty Oakmont. “You just don’t drive past the trouble here. Every shot is a test of golf.”

Four days later, after shooting 4-over 288 and finishing seventh, seven strokes behind winner Jacky Cupit, Palmer paid Medinah the ultimate compliment. Before boarding the chopper that would take him back to O’Hare, Palmer told Western Golf Association officials that they should seek to hold the Western Open permanently at Medinah.

“Everything points to Chicago,” Palmer was quoted as saying. “Great city. Great golf fans. One of the best golf courses in the world.” Such has been the reputation of Medinah since its inception.

Opposite:

AS EARLY AS 1930 Medinah began hosting tournaments that would welcome many of the best players in the game. “Lighthorse” Harry Cooper enjoyed that development more than anyone. On Monday, September 22, 1930, the twenty-six-year-old Glen Oak professional won an event simply referred to as “Medinah Country Club’s $3,000 open tournament,” a thirty-six-hole, one-day competition intended to garner publicity for a club looking to grow. It wasn’t exactly the best timing; most of the nation’s top sports writers, including those from Chicago, were focused on the U.S. Amateur at Merion Cricket Club in Philadelphia where Bobby Jones was embarking on his quest to complete the grand slam.

In front of an estimated four thousand spectators, the stylish Cooper earned a sizable check for $1,500 by shooting 73 on Course No. 1 in the morning and then an unthinkable 7-under 63 on No. 3 in the afternoon. Playing the last fourteen holes in 8-under par with six birdies and an eagle, Cooper compiled a 136 aggregate total to win by four shots, besting a field of sixty players that included Leo Diegel, who finished second, Gene Sarazen, Johnny Farrell, Horton Smith, and amateur Charles “Chick” Evans. Medinah’s Abe Espinosa, who had posted a 65 on the two-year-old layout in July, was far adrift at 148. Meanwhile, reigning PGA champion Tommy Armour picked up with just two holes to play, apparently thinking he was out of contention. He was fresh off a victory in the St. Louis Open the previous day.

The Illinois State Professional Championship — 1933

THE THIRD EDITION of the Illinois State Professional Championship in 1933 was next on Medinah’s calendar. It would end up requiring three rounds instead of the scheduled two, and it was spread over six days due to the scheduling of the state amateur, which took precedence over the playoff. Cooper stunned Armour—the three-time major winner who was now the new head pro at Medinah—when he won by six strokes, 69-75, in a playoff.

The Medinah Open — 1935

IN 1935, Medinah hosted its first “official” PGA tour event, the $3,500 Medinah Open. The tournament benefited the Shriners’ Crippled Children’s Hospital, of which the Chicago Tribune wrote “is an unusual organization of its kind, since it bars no race, creed or color in its work.” (Two Hearst-owned newspapers, the Chicago Herald and Examiner and the

DOUBTING TOMMY

THE BET APPEARED to be what might be called a sure one. Or one with very good odds for members of Medinah Country Club.

The Shriners, naturally enamored with their new head professional, believed so deeply that Tommy Armour could beat Harry Cooper in a playoff for the 1933 Illinois State Professional Championship that they were willing to wager a handsome sum of $1,000 with members of Glen Oak Country Club, where Cooper was the head pro. A report of the bet first appeared in the Friday, June 23, edition of the Chicago Tribune.

The two clubs had time to make the wager because Armour and Cooper, after finishing regulation in a tie at 2-over 146 three days earlier, had to wait until Sunday, June 25, to contest their eighteen-hole playoff. Medinah also had agreed to host the Illinois Amateur that week, and it ran from June 21–24. Don Armstrong of Aurora ended up claiming the title.

Chicago American, referred to the event as the Shriners Open because of the designated benefaction.)

The one hundred player field contested over seventy-two holes from June 21–23, and Cooper again was the winner, shooting 5-over 289 to defeat Johnny Revolta by a stroke and take home the $750 first prize. The reigning Western Open champion, Revolta missed a tying twelve-foot downhill birdie putt at the last hole by two inches. Armour tied for eighth at 298. Among the fourteen players who earned money was the relatively unknown Byron Nelson, who shot 301 but broke through for his first tour title six weeks later at the New Jersey State Open. Only two players broke par on a layout upgraded to 6,768 yards, par 71: Revolta opened with a 69 and Willie Goggin posted a third-round 70. Cooper was a model of consistency with 73-72-72-72.

Harry Cooper receives a check for $750 from Medinah President Perry Brelin for winning the first annual Medinah Open Golf Championship, June 23, 1935.

Hired by Medinah in April, Armour was, of course, far more accomplished than Cooper, owning three major championships—the 1927 U.S. Open, the 1930 PGA Championship, and the 1931 British Open. The first of these tournaments, at Oakmont Country Club in Pennsylvania, came at the expense of Cooper. Armour sank a ten-foot birdie putt on the seventysecond hole to force a playoff, and he then beat Cooper, 76-79, for the national title.

Armour was on form when the pro championship began. He held the first-round lead and finished fourth at the recent U.S. Open at nearby North Shore Country Club as amateur Johnny Goodman held off Ralph Guldahl.

A pro-am tournament was held on that Tuesday afternoon at Medinah, and Armour won the best-ball event single-handedly. A Medinah member named Oliver Schmidt was Armour’s playing partner and didn’t help on one stroke,

according to the newspaper reports. Schmidt’s only potential contribution came at the last hole, but he missed on a long birdie attempt.

Cooper might have won the 1930 open event, but that was on a much less daunting Course No. 3 that underwent a significant upgrade in 1932. Meanwhile, Armour was just a few days removed from shooting a course-record 5-under 67 at Medinah. That had occurred later on the same day that Cooper shot 70 and Armour 75 in the second round of the Illinois pro tournament to require an extra round.

The playoff began at 1:00 p.m. Sunday, and Armour undoubtedly wished he had saved that 67. He again struggled to a 75 and offered only a mild challenge to Cooper, who started fast with birdies on two of the first three holes and went around in 69. He won $250. No word on if his Glen Oak members shared some of the winnings from their larger take.

The Chicago Open — 1937, 1946

TWICE THE CHICAGO OPEN came to Medinah, and both were novel.

The first, in late July 1937, was something of a circus. It was serious enough, offering a $10,000 purse as the Depression dragged on, which explained in large part why there were 407 players competing on the Courses Nos. 1 and 3. That included 184 amateurs, the largest contingent recorded at an open tournament as was reported at the time. But there was a lot to interest spectators beyond the main competition. There were trick-shot exhibitions, a hole-in-one contest, and driving and putting contests. Seats were erected at ten locations, believed to be the first grandstands used at a golf event. A public address system was implemented to keep fans abreast of the competition—and the whereabouts of the “Masked Marvel,” a contestant who was paid $500 to play incognito. It turned out to be future Masters winner Claude Harmon, who was an assistant to Ky Lafoon at Northmoor Country Club in Highland Park.

Before she more famously played in a PGA event at the 1938 Los Angeles Open, Mildred “Babe” Didrikson joined the fray at Medinah. Not that surprising, considering Tommy Armour was her instructor. What was a bit surprising was the appearance of the eventual winner, Gene Sarazen, whose 290 total beat Cooper, Lafoon, and Horton Smith by a stroke. Cooper’s luck finally ran out at Medinah after missing a tying thirty-foot birdie pitch shot from the right collar on the seventy-second hole.

“I wasn’t supposed to win,” Sarazen said in 1998 for Medinah’s seventy-fifth anniversary book published in 2001. “I had just come in from Australia, but the Wilson Company, which I represented, said ‘Why don’t you stop off and play in it?’ So I did.”

The newspapers crowed that Sarazen had his “first big win” since “his double-eagle Masters triumph” in 1935. The $3,000 winner’s check he received certainly was considered “big” at the time, and is the equivalent of $71,000 in 2025.

WHEN THE TOURNAMENT returned in 1946, the Chicago District Golf Association had renamed the event the Chicago Victory National Championship. And Byron Nelson, preparing to become a Texas rancher, was now known as Lord Byron. Having won the 1939 Western Open at Medinah, Nelson was the natural favorite for the event offering a $10,500 purse and featuring not only a seventy-two-hole tournament proper, but also a $3,000 thirty-six-hole team exhibition split into three divisions: pro-amateur, pro-lady, and pro-senior. Further buttressing Nelson’s role as favorite was the fact that he was the defending champion, a victory that was part of his famed record eleven-tournament win streak in 1945.

Ben Hogan, in the midst of his own remarkable season that would include thirteen victories and his first major title, the PGA Championship, finished seventh at 287. But he didn’t go away empty handed, teaming with Louise Suggs, one of the future founders of the LPGA, to capture the pro-lady title. Australian-born Jim Ferrier, based in Chicago after taking a job at Elmhurst Country Club, won the pro-am with Jim Stefancik of Gary, Indiana. Harold “Jug” McSpaden joined Chicago’s Arnold Hinkley for pro-senior honors. Johnny Bulla tied the course record of 67 the first day and added a 70 for 137 to pocket $1,000 in Victory bonds as low pro. Betty Hicks and Betty Jameson were tops among the women at 159.

Nelson, meanwhile, finished twelve strokes behind Bulla on the 6,829-yard layout, shooting 74-75, a performance so dyspeptic that he considered withdrawing. Over night, some of his peers exhorted him to remain for the official competition. Bad idea. After an opening 73, Nelson went 69-69-68 for a 5-under 279 total and a two-stroke victory over his pal McSpaden. Rallying from six down after thirty-six holes, Nelson collected $2,000 in Victory bonds for the fifty-first and penultimate win of his career. He’d come a long way in the nine years since he first appeared at Medinah. At the end of the 1946 season, Nelson, just thirty-four years old, announced his retirement. He played only sparingly thereafter, winning one more time, at the 1951 Bing Crosby National Pro-Am at Pebble Beach.

Opposite: Byron Nelson’s penultimate victory of his career came in the 1946 Chicago Victory National Golf Championship.

The Western Open — 1939, 1962, 1966

THE 1949 U.S. OPEN was not the first “major” championship at Medinah. That distinction belongs to the 1939 Western Open. Before the Masters Tournament garnered its place as one of the four men’s major championships, the Western Open was considered among the game’s most prestigious events. Its cache was unquestioned.

Coming on the heels of the successful Chicago Open, the 1939 Western Open was the first of four editions that the WGA brought to Medinah. The event returned in 1962 and 1966, and it was also contested in 2019 when it was a playoff event on the PGA Tour known as the BMW Championship. The respective winners were Nelson, Jacky Cupit, Billy Casper, and Justin Thomas, the latter man decimating the course record with a third-round 61 that basically precipitated the renovation of Course No. 3 by former U.S. Open Champion Geoff Ogilvy and his colleagues at OCM Golf Course Design, a project completed in 2024.

Yet, this was not the first time that happened. Cooper’s 63 in that first Medinah Open—overshadowing the more acceptable 65 by Sarazen—convinced the membership that changes were required on their 6,261-yard “championship” course. Plans already had been approved to upgrade Tom Bendelow’s initial effort, and Cooper’s performance sealed the deal.

What stands out first of all in assessing the three Western Open editions is that the winners were a combined 6-under par. Two of those winners, Nelson in 1939 and Casper in 1966, were reigning U.S. Open champions. The WGA’s premier championship was every bit of a test as a major when it brought the event to Medinah.

Two years after his middling effort in the Chicago Open, Nelson won $750 out of the $3,000 purse with a 2-under 281 total over the No. 1 and 3 layouts for his fifth win of the year, increasing his season earnings to a then-whopping $7,423. In front of an estimated five thousand spectators, he defeated Lloyd Mangrum by a stroke with a finalround 71 and ended Ralph Guldahl’s reign in the event after three straight victories.

The key for Nelson, who was playing “monotonous golf,” according to Tommy Armour (meant as a compliment), came at the par-4 15th hole when a precise approach shot over a bunker to within four feet of the hole set up what would be the winning birdie. “It was one of those shots that you know is exactly right the instant you hit it,” Nelson said in an interview in 2000.

“For my shillings,” Armour, playing in Nelson’s group, told Horton Trautman of the Daily News, “it was the shot that won the tournament.”

from WGA President

Cook after winning the 1939 Western Open Championship with a score of 281.

Opposite: Arnold Palmer congratulates Jackie Cupit on his 1962 Western Open victory. Cupit was the first man since Chick Evans (below, who played in the event) to hold the Western Open and Western Amateur titles simultaneously.

TWENTY-THREE YEARS LATER, with the Western finally returning to Chicago (and Medinah), Jacky Cupit channeled Lord Byron to hold off Billy Casper.

Considerably more money was on the line in the 59th Western Open in 1962 than in the 1939 till, with $11,000 going to the winner. The ten thousand fans in attendance were winners thanks to a great show throughout, starting with the Palmer-Nicklaus pairing in the first two rounds reprising their U.S. Open playoff tussle. Michigan club pro John Barnum somehow was drawn in to fill out the threesome. And just like they did when playing together years later in the final round of the 1975 U.S. Open, the two couldn’t summon their best golf in each other’s company.

Jack opened 70-73, putting a small dent in his bid for a rare double—the first man since Chick Evans in 1910 to hold the Western Open and Western Amateur titles simultaneously. (Side note: Evans, seventy-one years old, was among eleven past winners in the 135-man field.) Arnie, whose private com plaints about slow play to WGA officials were made public and seen as a critique of the methodical Nicklaus, had 73-74 after double-bogeying the dogleg 18th hole both days.

Amid these scrutinized proceedings, Cupit, coming off Rookie of the Year honors, seized a share of the thirty-six hole lead with Paul Harney at 139, and the Texan remained in front after fifty-four holes, sharing pacesetter status with 1961 Masters champion Gary Player at 210, five ahead of the field. Billy Casper began the final round six back, but by the 10th hole, Cupit, Casper, and Player were tied at 1-under par.

When Cupit bogeyed 13 and 14, Casper had the lead alone.

The 15th would again loom large as it did in 1939. Cupit rolled home a forty-footer for birdie, while Casper couldn’t answer from thirty feet. “The real turning point was 15,” Casper remarked afterward. Cupit, who thought he’d “thrown it all away with those two bogeys,” found the winning stroke on 17 with a fifteen-foot birdie putt. Like Nelson, his even-par 71 was enough, and Cupit beat Casper by two with a 3-under 281 total.

ARNOLD PALMER UNDOUBTEDLY ARRIVED at Medinah for the 1966 Western Open with a sense of déjà vu. He was coming off another playoff loss in the U.S. Open, and the pain was even fresher this time, with the eighteen extra holes played on June 20, the Monday of tournament week at Medinah. Having blown a seven-shot lead with nine to play in regulation at Olympic Club, Palmer ended up losing to Casper, 69-73 in the playoff. He did well to summon decent enough golf to tie for ninth at Medinah.

Naturally, Casper was riding high, in top form, and ready to defend the title he won in 1965 in what was the last Western Open at Tam O’Shanter. Though he never led until the final day and registered only eight birdies for the week, Casper— fifty pounds lighter than during his runner-up finish in 1962—was the last man standing on Sunday, submitting a 223

Opposite: Billy Casper, Ken Venturi, and Homero Blancas get ready to tee off at the 1966 Western Open

Clockwise from above: scoreboard; Arnold Palmer; Chick Evans and Billy Casper; a standard bearer; three-time Masters Tournament winner and TV commentator Jimmy Demaret interviews Western Open champion Billy Casper.

final-round, 1-under 70 and the same 283 aggregate score he posted four years earlier. This time, however, he was the winner by three strokes over Gay Brewer and earned $20,000 from the $100,000 purse, becoming the first man since Snead in 1949–1950 to win the tournament in consecutive years.

“One of the reasons I had a good feeling about this week was this course,” Casper said. “I get charged up when I play on great courses like Medinah or Olympic.”

Charged up, maybe. But still in control. “I just try to play well within myself every time I go on a golf course,” he said, explaining his playing philosophy. “I don’t get riled when shots don’t go as I hoped.”

That mindset is recommended for every course. It’s mandatory at Medinah.

Chapter Eight

THE DENTIST GRITS HIS TEETH

The 1949 U.S. Open Championship

CARY MIDDLECOFF was certain he was going to lose. “Snead will beat me. I know that he will,” Middlecoff told reporters after he signed for a final-round 75 and 2-over-286 total on a hot and humid June afternoon in the 49th U.S. Open. “You boys are wasting your time—yours, not mine. Why are you fellows asking all these questions? You’re not going to write about the runner-up.”

Sam Snead, the reigning Masters and PGA champion and the overwhelming favorite to conquer Medinah’s Course No. 3 in its debut as host of a major champion ship, still had three holes to play when Mid dlecoff visited the clubhouse ballroom that was serving as the press headquar ters. He granted reporters an audience even though thirty players were still on the golf course. It’s what they did in those days. He was almost inconsolable after seizing the fifty-four-hole lead in the morning only to go around Medinah in the final round without a birdie while suffering four bogeys. Snead had begun the final eighteen holes six shots back, but now he had pulled into a tie. Three pars meant a playoff. Two pars and a birdie and Slammin’ Sammy Snead would have the “American Slam.”

friend, Jake Fondren, also sat nearby, offering support. “I’ll bet you ten dollars you win,” said Fondren, the head professional at Middlecoff’s home course, Colonial Country Club, in Memphis, Tennessee. “That will cinch it for you. Here, shake on it.”

They shook hands. Middlecoff, a third-year pro who followed his father into dentistry but decided he wanted to be a golfer, was sure that it was an illadvised bet. “This thing is getting terrible,” he moaned. “And I mean terrible. When I look back and see the places where I could have saved a shot, I just get sick.”

Middlecoff’s wife, Edith, was there next to him, holding his hand, telling him it would all work out. A close

Snead made par at 16, but then missed the green at the par-3 17th and needed three putts from the fringe to get down. When he sailed his 6-iron approach from the fairway over the green at the par-4 home hole, Snead needed to chip in to tie. The news was of little comfort to the clubhouse leader.

Opposite: Cary Middlecoff and his wife, Edith, are framed by the iconic clubhouse after his victory in the 1949 U.S. Open.

“Something will happen anyway. It always does,” Middlecoff said morosely. Snead missed, took his four, and finished an agonizing one stroke back. Edith Middlecoff wept and Fondren patted his friend on the head. Reporters in the vicinity did likewise if they weren’t close enough to shake Middlecoff’s hand. The doctor couldn’t bring himself to smile.

After a long minute, he uttered one sentence. “Bobby Locke is still out on that fairway.”

HAVING AGREED IN 1947 to grant Medinah its first national open championship— after years of petitioning to host either the U.S. Open or U.S. Amateur—the United States Golf Association arrived in Chicago in no mood to spare the field from an examination that reaffirmed its philosophy for pernicious course setups.

Ben Hogan had fired a record 276 in 1948 at Riviera Country Club in Los Ange les, and although “Bantam Ben” could not attend to defend his title following his near-fatal auto accident in February, the USGA set up Medinah as if he were competing. Everyone in the 162-man field got punished. No one was going to shoot 276 again. And, indeed, Hogan’s record would stand until Jack Nicklaus’s 275 in the 1967 championship at Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, New Jersey.

The official yardage for the par-71 Course No. 3 was 6,981 yards, but it actually could be stretched to 7,040 yards. The USGA wasn’t messing around, letting the rough encroach inward to pinch the fairways and allow ing a bit more speed on the somewhat small, undulating greens. Add to that Medinah’s natural defenses—its voluminous number of trees—and players felt uncomfortable if not intimidated. But they also had immense respect for the place, with some calling Course No. 3, “one of the three finest golf courses in America” along with Pinehurst No. 2 and Augusta National Golf Club. The membership was rightfully proud.

South Africa’s Bobby Locke, just weeks away from winning the first of his four British Open titles, came off the golf course after shooting 68 in

a practice round and declared—accurately, it would turn out—that 286 would likely win. Herman Barron also pegged 286 as the likely winner. Vic Ghezzi guessed 287 would win, and predicted, “I bet the eventual winner will have a 75 included in one of his rounds.” Other predictions ranged up to 290. Former PGA winner Bob Hamilton scoffed at the par-71 figure on the scorecard, claiming Course No. 3 was more like par 72½ and noted that the Chicago District Golf Association gave it a rating of 75 from the forward tees.

“It’s a great golf course—a really great golf course,” said Detroit pro Chick Harbert, playing in his eighth U.S. Open. “They’ll really separate the grain from the chaff here.”

If all that weren’t enough for the field of 128 pros and thirty-four amateurs to think about, the USGA delivered a couple of edicts regarding their conduct on the course. The governing body reminded via a bulletin that players needed to adhere to “a frequently violated rule,” of asking advice from or providing advice to a fellow player. The USGA further warned against slow play, having just rewritten the Rules of Golf to allow for levying a two-stroke penalty for undue procrastination and disqualification for repeated offenses.

Interestingly, the USGA acceded to player demands for ongoing course maintenance. There was almost universal agreement that late starters had been handicapped in prior championships by the amount of foot traffic altering the condition of the greens. In response, the USGA asked members of the Midwest Association of Golf Course Superintendents to be stationed at every hole. Their job, according to newspaper reports, was to “velvetize” each green after a group completes it.

Like it mattered. The winner needed 126 putts.

IT SEEMED EERILY COINCIDENTAL that the leader after the opening round June 9 was a young Rhode Island pro named Les Kennedy, who was making his U.S. Open debut. Kennedy, thirty-one, opened with a 2-under 69, one better than Barron, Harbert, Al Brosch, and North Carolina club pro Charles Farlow. Three years earlier, on February 5, 1946, Kennedy had been driving home from a tournament in Arizona when a truck swerved and collided with his car near Abington, Virginia. He was banged

Contestants at the 1949 U.S. Open at Medinah:

Gene Sarazen, Lloyd Mangrum, unidentified, Cary Middlecoff, and Sam Snead. Missing from the group (bottom right) was Ben Hogan, who survived a bus-auto accident four months before the U.S. Open.

up but escaped serious injury. His wife, Judy, however, was thrown from their vehicle and died.

Almost three years later to the day, on February 2, 1949, Hogan nearly perished when his car collided with a bus near Van Horn, Texas. Like Kennedy, Hogan had been driving home from a tournament in Arizona with his wife, Valerie, but she survived the crash with minor cuts and bruises.

Hogan, of course, was on the minds of those at the USGA that June. Fielding Wallace, the USGA president, sent a telegram on the eve of the championship to Hogan, recuperating at home in Fort Worth, Texas. “The USGA sends warm greetings and regrets at your inability to defend the Open championship. You have been an outstanding champion as both player and sportsman. Every good wish for your full

“BLACK WIDOW” PUTTER STINGS MEDINAH

JACK NICKLAUS

FAMOUSLY HAD “WHITE FANG.” And Cary Middlecoff had “Black Widow.” White Fang was the center-shafted Bulls Eye putter that Nicklaus had received from a friend prior to the 1967 U.S. Open at Baltusrol and was instrumental to winning his second national title. The Golden Bear gave it that nickname because the brass clubhead had been painted white to diminish glare.

Middlecoff’s “Black Widow” also was a putter. It misbehaved distinctly during the opening round of the 49th U.S. Open—when it had not yet earned that nickname. During his opening 75, the former dentist found that trying to make a putt was like pulling teeth. Realizing that his usually reliable flatstick, described as “pocked, grotesque, and mangy looking,” was responsible for his troubles, Middlecoff went about busying himself that evening painting the club coal black. The idea struck him while playing the opening round with amateur Chuck Kocsis, whose putter heads had a dark blue appearance.

After showering, Middlecoff told his wife Edith, “There’s something wrong with my putting.” To which she responded rather smartly, “Well, it can be two

things—you or your putter. And there’s not much we can do about you.” As the couple drove towards Chicago, they happened upon a store that was selling black paint. Voilà. A brand-new vibe.

“Look at this black widow,” Middlecoff remarked to reporters standing nearby on the practice putting green prior to the second round on Friday. “Hope it can bite.”

It did. He converted six birdies, and aside from a three-footer on the short 369-yard, par-4 12th, his others were from distance—eight, fifteen, seventeen, eighteen, and twenty feet. He also lipped out a thirty-five-footer at the 11th and a twenty-three-foot birdie try at 14 but converted a clutch twelve-foot par save at 16 to preserve a piece of the course record of 67 and valuable momentum going into the final day.

and speedy recovery.” Several days earlier, Hogan had told a Fort Worth reporter he might try to fly to Chicago to watch some of the championship but eventually decided against it.

Kennedy just about played like Hogan. The keys to his round were hitting ten of fourteen fairways and taking just twenty-six putts. Barron and Brosch each were 4-under par through ten holes before giving shots back in their rounds of 70. Bobby Cruickshank, fifty-three years old, impressively led a group of six players at even-par 71. Cruickshank had lost to Bobby Jones in the 1923 championship and finished runner-up to Gene Sarazen in 1932. Also at even par was two-time champion Ralph Guldahl, who had ended his term as Medinah head golf professional the year prior.

Snead, wielding the gooseneck putter he had put in the bag before his Masters victory, was stymied on the greens but still managed a 73, one stroke ahead of Locke, 1946 champion Lloyd Mangrum, and Byron Nelson, who had come out of semiretirement to play in his first Open in three years, obviously feeling that the good vibes from previous exploits at Medinah could be recaptured. Sarazen, forty-seven years old, posted 75, same as someone named Middlecoff.

The collective field scoring soared well above the 75.8 per-round average of the previous ten championships, helped along by notable blowups from the likes of two-time Masters winner Jimmy Demaret, who shot 82 a year after finishing runner-up to Hogan at Riviera. He withdrew before the second round. Jim Foulis, four-time Illinois PGA Champion, had 81. In all, sixty players shot 80 or higher.

Brosch, a near-sighted Long Island native, seized the halfway lead at 1-under 141 thanks to chipping in twice for birdies, but the story of the second round was Middlecoff’s 67, which tied the course record. With nine-hole scores of 34-33, the Tennessean moved into a tie for second, one stroke back, with Buck White, who happened to be Middlecoff’s mentor. White had a 68 but missed a four-footer at the last that would have given him a share of the course record as well. Kennedy (74), Clayton Heafner (71), and Claude Harmon (72) were tied for fourth at 143.

Six former U.S. Open winners missed the cut of 8-over 150, most notably Nelson after a second-round 77. A day later, Nelson said he was “definitely through with national tournament competition,” though he made a curtain call in 1955 at Olympic and also played in his second and final British Open that year at St Andrews. Sarazen, who struggled to a 79, also missed the cut. Fifty-one players advanced to Saturday’s thirty-six-hole final day, including Cruickshank, who was only five back at 146, tied with, among others, Snead, who had his second “lackadaisical” 73.

Cary Middlecoff (center), and Clayton Heafner (right) were tied heading down the final nine holes. Emmett O’Neal “Buck” White, (left) was two strokes behind the leaders at the sixty-third hole.

BEING RELEGATED TO THE SIDELINES , Ben Hogan had time for other things, including his instructional column. On June 9, a U.S. Open prediction piece appeared under his byline in which he identified Locke, the South African putting wizard, as the favorite.

“Locke is the finest putter I have ever seen, and he is deadly with his chip shots,” Hogan wrote. “There are any number of money players capable of stopping Locke, but the man who seems best suited for the job is Cary Middlecoff. … Time and again he has proved to be at his best when the going was tough.”

With rounds of 74-71 for a 145 total, Locke was in the thick of it, trailing Brosch by four and Middlecoff and White by three. When the morning eighteen had been completed Saturday, he had lost three more strokes to the leader with a 73. Seizing that lead was Middlecoff, who enjoyed more success on the greens for a 69. At 2-under 211 he was one clear of White and three ahead of Brosch and Heafner.

Middlecoff embarked on his final round at 1:32 p.m., once again joined by White and Heafner. Snead, after a 71, was paired with Cruickshank and Mangrum going off at 2:20 p.m., and Locke, joined by Brosch and forty-one-year-old Horton Smith, the twotime Masters winner, was to begin his final round at 2:52 p.m. With the greens firming up and pressure wilting just about the entire field, only one player broke par. That was Snead with a 70. Just one other player equaled par-71—the indefatigable Locke.

The 14,000 fans in attendance that day (in all, more than 30,000 attended the tournament) witnessed a true battle of nerves, especially down the stretch. Heafner went out on the front nine in even par while Middlecoff lost three strokes to par, including a bogey at the par-5 seventh after hitting a spectator with his approach and finding a thick lie in the rough. He made matters worse by three-putting and later said the disappointing bogey made him feel like walking off the course. Heafner offered Middlecoff daylight when he double-bogeyed 12, but birdied the 13th, while Middlecoff, after another bogey at 11, couldn’t get a putt to drop and never did find a birdie in his closing 75, though he had his chances coming in. Looks for birdie inside ten

feet on four of his last six holes went asking, and he settled for a 286 total that he was certain wouldn’t hold up. Incredibly, when the dust settled, he still led the field with fourteen birdies for the week.

Heafner could have forced a playoff, but he inexplicably left a six-foot birdie try a few inches short. White, meanwhile, fell off the pace with a closing 78 that included a triple bogey at the par-4 sixth. Brosch lost the magic of the first two days and limped in with a 79. Jim Turnesa, third the year prior at Riviera, had begun the final round six back, tied with Snead. And like Snead, he found another gear and managed to rally to within a stroke of Middlecoff with seven holes remaining. However, a tying birdie eluded him, and after a couple of bogeys coming in, he posted 72 and a 289 total, a score Locke would equal as his bid fizzled as well.

After a promising start to the championship, Guldahl was never a factor. Nine years removed from his last tour win, he carded 75-73-77 the rest of the way to come in twentysecond with a 296 total. He never played in the U.S. Open again.

That left Snead, and he, of course, was making Middlecoff queasy. After going out in 36 with a birdie at the first and three-putt bogey at the ninth, Snead caught Middlecoff by holing a fifteen-footer for birdie at the 11th and tapping in from thirty inches for another birdie at 12. The American Slam was on for the Slammer, who

“

SSNEAD’S BITTER DEFEAT

AM SNEAD HAS SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT.” So began a United Press International story dated Tuesday, June 17, 1975. The subject upon which Snead was setting the record straight was his loss in the 1949 U.S. Open at Medinah. Snead three-putted the par-3 17th hole from the fringe in the final round and tied for second with Clayton Heafner, one stroke behind Cary Middlecoff.

The near miss at Medinah was the third of four runner-up finishes in the national championship for The Slammer, and newspaper headlines the next day pinpointed exactly where it all went wrong for the West Virginian. “Bogey on 17 Costs Sammy Snead Tie” and “Three-Putt Green on 17th Costly to Sam” cut to the heart of the outcome. Even Snead admitted in the aftermath, albeit as he ran into the shower before hastily getting out of dodge, “the 17th cost me the tournament.”

Twenty-six years later, with the benefit of hindsight that is always 20-20, Snead amended his thoughts on the matter in an interview following a practice round for the 75th U.S. Open.

“That one hole [the 17th] kept me from a tie,” the sixty-threeyear-old Snead was quoted as saying, “but if you go back, it was another hole or several holes that kept me from winning.

“On the 14th, the ball was going in the hole from about eight feet, and it hit a cinder that I couldn’t see about two inches from the cup... and hopped to the right. And it was going right into the middle of the hole.”

Snead proceeded to lament the missed birdie putt on 16 and the failed par save on 17, both of which hung on the lip. But what really hurt, he said, was the bogey he suffered on the par-5 seventh. “I had to wait thirty-five or forty minutes before I could hit my second shot. It seemed like that anyway,” he said. “I can reach the green from where I am. But I topped a 1-iron and made six instead of four, which would have won by one shot.

“I made three on 17, and if I’d made that in 1949, I would have had Middlecoff in a playoff, and I would have whomped him good.”

Maybe. Maybe not. Middlecoff was formidable in 1949. He and Snead finished the year with a tour-best six wins apiece, and the good doctor’s twenty-eight victories in the 1950s led all players.

Interestingly, for all his bluster, Snead wasn’t totally convinced the outcome would have been any different. The U.S. Open was the only major to elude him in a career in which he won more than one hundred tournaments worldwide, and he admitted feeling jinxed. “It just hasn’t been intended for me to win the Open,” he said. “Every time something has happened that you just can’t control.”

wanted to vanquish his national championship disappointments of 1939 and 1947. In the former, a par at the last at Philadelphia Country Club would have given him the title. But Snead, believing he needed a birdie, pressed unnecessarily and suffered a triple-bogey 8, opening the door for Nelson to beat Craig Wood and Denny Shute in a playoff. In the latter, at St. Louis Country Club, he led Lew Worsham by two with three holes to play in an 18-hole playoff but ultimately lost by one when he missed a thirtyinch putt on the home hole.

Essentially, the championship came down to a decision. Snead missed the green at the famed 192-yard, par-3 17th hole, his ball settling just off the fringe on the right. The pin was set far left. Trusting his gooseneck putter that had been so dependable in his Masters and PGA victories, Snead opted to use the blade not realizing until after he played the shot that his ball had settled in a depression. The ball hopped up rather than rolling from the start, and it motored eight feet past the hole. Then his par try hit the cup and stayed out. Another heartbreaking chapter was completed when he settled for par after missing the green long at the 18th.

The Middlecoffs couldn’t truly celebrate until they were sure Locke was not going to alter the outcome. Cary actually was cooling off at the swimming pool when the proceedings ended and put on a sport coat for the trophy presentation. He won $2,000 and the affirmation he craved when he decided to leave the dentistry profession.

“I got good and tired of pulling teeth. I would rather drill a tee shot, so I made the big switch,” Middlecoff said of his career change in 1947. “I wanted to try my hand at golf. The national open is what I dreamed of. Now that I’ve won it, I can hardly believe it.”

The day after yet another U.S. Open disappointment, Snead traveled a short distance to Decatur, Illinois, for a one-day tournament. All he did was fire rounds of 62-63 at South Side Country Club for a 17-under 125 total to win by eight shots. He added $500 to his $1,250 haul from the U.S. Open.

In late July, Snead shot 20-under 268, a tournament record, at Keller Golf Course in Maplewood, Minnesota, to win his first Western Open title. The victory was his sixth official tour win of the year and seventh overall. The runner-up, four strokes in arrears, was Cary Middlecoff. It was of little consolation. Snead’s comment in the aftermath said it all. “I’m tired of golf.” He didn’t win again the rest of the year. Sure, a victory in the Western Open was meaningful. It just wasn’t the national open championship.

A COMEBACK FOR THE AGES

The 1975 U.S. Open Championship

LOU GRAHAM couldn’t have felt more at home than he did when he arrived at Medinah Country Club on Monday, June 17, for the 75th U.S. Open and saw the majestic Course No. 3. The lush and sylvan layout immediately gave him flashbacks to his childhood. He was transported back in time to when he picked up the game at seven years old. He’d take a putter, maybe a few other clubs, put three balls in his pocket, and walk to Shelby Park Golf Course in Nashville, Tennessee.

“I did that for ten years, just practicing, and I’d be on the putting green and say, ‘This putt is to win the U.S. Open.’ That’s the one that I wanted win,” Graham recalled during an interview from his home in Nashville. “When I got to Medinah, I felt this sense of calm. So many trees, just like my course back home. That’s how I learned to play—keep the ball between the trees, make pars, and if I did miss a fair way, I knew how to play out of the trees. Medinah, to me, was like going back home.”

Several players in the 150-man field for the national championship had competed at Medinah in the 1966 Western Open—including Arnold Palmer and Ken Venturi—but Graham, who turned pro in 1964 after a stint in the Army, wasn’t among them. “I’m not saying that I knew I could win, but I knew I could play that golf course,” he recalled.

The funny thing is no one in the field really knew how to play Medinah. But, they sure thought they

knew how to. Because of the heavy rains that lead up to tournament week and storms that wreaked havoc on practice rounds—including a vicious thunderstorm on Tuesday that wiped out almost the entire day and even forced the evacuation of the press tent—Course No. 3 seemed vulnerable. And then players would trudge in with their scorecards marked up with numbers they couldn’t fathom, would scratch their heads, and would wonder why they couldn’t dent the softened façade. Palmer couldn’t solve the puzzle. Neither could three-time champion Jack Nicklaus, the reigning Masters champion who was getting a sixth chance to go after the elusive grand slam. Defending champion Hale Irwin seemed to have a game tailor-made for Medinah, and he had proven his chops the previous year at brutally difficult Winged Foot. He wasn’t a factor, although he managed to post a back-door tie for third with a strong final round.

Opposite: Lou Graham about to accept the U.S. Open Trophy.

Irwin walked away from the championship calling it the “Chokers Open,” and he didn’t exempt himself from the assessment. “This was the easiest Open to win I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Everybody was just throwing it away.”

“At the end of it,” agreed Nicklaus, “about twenty guys will be saying, ‘If I could have played at all I’d have won by ten shots.’ I feel that way.”

All the while, the “drawling string bean” Lou Graham, only marginally successful to that point with just a pair of wins on the PGA Tour, kept missing trees or escaping from them and making pars. He played by the philosophy, “I’ll pass more people making pars than will pass me.” And he did it for seventy-one holes when he needed one more par for the win. However, a bogey at the last out of a greenside bunker dropped him into a tie with John Mahaffey at 3-over-par 287. It seemed like a crushing development—to everyone but Graham.

THE 1975 VERSION OF COURS E NO. 3, hosting the 11th U.S. Open in the Chicago area, wasn’t much different from its U.S. Open debut in 1949 when a field of 162 players encountered a par-71 layout that topped out at 6,981 yards. Bunkers numbered sixty-two and trees a whopping 4,500. So everyone knew what they were facing— a supreme test of tee execution. No. 3 was only marginally longer this time at 7,032 yards, and while control off the tee was paramount to avoid the lumber, the amount of rain that had fallen before Thursday’s opening round figured to make the course longer but still vulnerable to scoring because of softened greens. Nicklaus and Tom Weiskopf, another pre-tournament favorite, predicted that the rain expanded the list of contenders beyond the known entities. They would not be wrong.

A pair of twenty-four-year-olds led the way by posting 4-under 67s, despite playing on fairways that hadn’t been mown for three days because of the weather. One of them was fourth-year tour pro Tom Watson, who had won his first PGA Tour title less than a year ago at the Western Open held fifteen miles to the south at Butler National in Oak Brook. The Kansas native was keen to erase the disappointment of a year ago when he held the fifty-four-hole lead at Winged Foot but cratered with a final-round 79. Oregon’s Pat Fitzsimons, who was in his third year on tour, joined Watson atop the leaderboard mostly on the strength of his first hole-in-one as a professional. Fitzsimons aced the 187-yard, par-3 second hole

Journeyman Jim Wiechers was third with a 68, but the name that stood out on the leaderboard was Arnold Palmer, T-4 after a promising 69. “I got charged up,” the fortyfive-year-old King said. “I’d like to have three more rounds just like it.”

Meanwhile, Lou Graham wasn’t even low Graham at the start, putting up a pair of 37s for a 74, three behind David Graham. Lou played better in round two, posting 72, but lost even more ground to Watson, who stayed as hot as the weather with a 68. Temperatures soared into the 90s with high humidity. At 146, Graham was eleven strokes behind Watson’s pace and not thinking much about winning anymore. “Tom just seemed to be playing too well,” Graham recalled.

Three ahead of the pack, Watson—who at 135 tied the championship record— was feeling confident that he had learned from the setback at Winged Foot. “I am more sure of myself and my ability to handle the pressure,” Watson told reporters after a round that featured two delays—one by Watson, who refused to begin his second round because of lightning in the area. As if the saturated course needed more rain, a thunderstorm moved through in the afternoon causing another thirty-five-minute suspension.

Three-time NCAA champion Ben Crenshaw was the nearest pursuer after his second-round 68 left him at 138. Only four other players were under par—Fitzsimons (73) at 140 and two-time U.S. Open winner Lee Trevino (69), Terry Dill (69), and Wiechers (73) at 141. Nicklaus shot 72 to climb into a share of seventh at even-par 142. Palmer fell back with a 75 early in the day when the humidity was its most suffocating. “It got to me. Physically, I don’t think heat has got to me that much since Washington,” he told reporters, referring to the furnace-hot 1964 championship at Congressional.

The cut came in at 149 with sixty-seven players advancing. The biggest name sent home was Sam Snead who lost the 1949 U.S. Open at Medinah to Cary Middlecoff by a stroke after he bogeyed the seventy-first hole of the championship. The sixty-threeyear-old Snead shot 78-76–154.

Still soft and gettable for Saturday’s third round, Medinah surrendered a 67 to Frank Beard, a tour veteran who had recently missed thirteen cuts in a row before finishing fifteenth in Philadelphia the week prior to the Open. Beard, thirty-six, previously had enjoyed some success at Medinah, winning $50,000 by beating Ben Arda of the Philippines, 71-73, in a 1969 episode of Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf. (A win in

this U.S. Open was worth $40,000.) A Dallas native, Beard was the 1969 leading money winner on tour and had won eleven times, though his last victory came in 1971. It was no wonder he said, “That’s my finest round in three-and-a-half years.”

Then he said something else, which summed up the day rather perfectly. “This may sound like a pompous ass, but I can’t believe the golf course, which gave me a 67 today, was eating up most everybody else.”

Indeed, Medinah meted out harsh judgment on many notables, leaving Beard as the lone player in red figures at 3-under 210. Watson missed two short putts early, bogeyed three of his first four holes, and then claimed that someone in the gallery shouted, “Remember Winged Foot!” Unnerved, he bled bogeys all day in a round of 78. Still, he was tied for second with Fitzsimons, who was hanging around after another 73. Among those who struggled were Crenshaw with a 76 and Trevino and Nicklaus with 75. Palmer ruined a decent day with a double bogey on 18 for a 73.

“My game was right, but nothing happened,” said Nicklaus, who began the third round seven strokes behind Watson but had only six players in front of him, but then found himself seven behind Beard with fourteen players in front of him after fifty-four holes. “I just have to shoot an extra low one tomorrow. That’s the attitude I’ll have to take.”

The second-best round of the day went to Lou Graham, who cobbled together a 68 and was now tied for fourth with Crenshaw and Peter Oosterhuis at 1-over 214. He’d erased seven shots on his deficit, and he was feeling good about his prospects. “I finished third the previous year at Winged Foot. The U.S. Open wasn’t as scary to me,” he said.

ON WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18, the eve of the championship, The Dispatch in Moline, Illinois, published a first-person review of Course No. 3 that would prove somewhat prophetic. The author was John Mahaffey. At ninth on the season-long PGA Tour money list but without a win in 1975, Mahaffey was one of twenty-eight players exempt into the championship, but his name was barely mentioned among the pre-tournament favorites. When you have Nicklaus, Irwin, Weiskopf, Trevino, and Johnny Miller— plus a still-capable Palmer—to bother pondering the prospects of a twenty-seven-yearold, third-year pro with one win and eight second-place finishes seemed inessential.

JACK VS. ARNIE: “HERE WE GO AGAIN”

APAIRING THAT FANS WANTED TO SEE during the final round was that of famed rivals Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer, who found themselves together again in the hunt for the national championship. Tied at 4-over 217, the duo teed off at 1:14 p.m. Fourteen players were ahead of them.

“The worst thing that could happen to Arnold and me was when we were paired in the same group,” Nicklaus said. “We got so focused on beating each other that we would let someone sneak past us. That happened a number of times. We even said to each other that we have to stop and play the golf course. But, of course, we never did.”

“There was no one I wanted to beat more. Every time I played against him, I wanted to beat him to a pulp, and I think Jack felt the same way,” Palmer wrote in his final autobiography, A Life Well Played, published shortly after his death in 2016. “We knew we were good theater, and we enjoyed it at least as much as the fans and reporters.”

Nicklaus and Palmer were paired together for the first time in the U.S. Open since their final-round showdown in 1967 at Baltusrol, when Nicklaus birdied the final hole for a closing 5-under 65 and 275 total, eclipsing Ben Hogan’s U.S. Open scoring record by a stroke. However, it was the second time they were paired as in as many majors; several weeks earlier they traipsed around Augusta National Golf Club together in the third round of the Masters that Nicklaus eventually won. Jack shot 73 after holding the thirty-six-hole lead, while Arnie had a 75 that day. “It’s hard to recall when Arnold or I ever played well while in the same group,” Jack said. “No doubt it hurts our scoring,” Arnie agreed.

When they stepped on the first tee at Medinah in 1975, Jack smiled at Arnold and said simply, “Here we go again.”

And nearly the entire golf course went with them. One reporter wrote as he followed the pairing, “The leaders would tee off and go around with hardly a soul in tow. Frank Beard and Pat Fitzsimons, Lou Graham and Tom Watson, Ben Crenshaw and Peter Oosterhuis. Their caddies followed them, but only out of a sense of duty. If the truth be known, they, too, wished they could have been watching the two most magnetic men in American sports.”

Palmer, age forty-five, didn’t have his best stuff, canceling birdies with bogeys and shooting 73 to finish tied for ninth place at 6-over 290. It marked his thirteenth and final top-ten finish in the U.S. Open. “The golf course is harder than anyone thinks it is,” Palmer said. “The individual holes aren’t that difficult, but the golf course as a whole is damned difficult.”

The finish also proved difficult for Nicklaus. Already a threetime U.S. Open winner, the thirty-five-year old Golden Bear opened with a four-footer for birdie and turned in 2-under 34. He was only one stroke back. Palmer thought Nicklaus was “a cinch” to finish the comeback. Then nothing happened. Nothing good anyway.

At the par-4 16th, he pulled his tee shot into the rough

into a lie so terrible that he couldn’t reach the green. Then he drilled a 4-iron over the green at the 17th and chunked a pitch shot that didn’t reach the putting surface. He got up and down from there, but still it was a costly bogey.

“You don’t see a lot of good golf at U.S. Opens, but this was ridiculous,” Nicklaus said after stumbling in with a 72 and 289 total to end up joint seventh.

Palmer, who graciously agreed to join his friend in the interview room, shook his head as he listened to Nicklaus bemoan his weak finish. Finally, he said, “Jack, I’ll tell you what, why don’t you scurry your ass on out there and play them over again.”

“I had the whole tournament in my hands, and then boom, boom, boom. I finished bogey, bogey, bogey,” Nicklaus said. “How does a fella do that? Who knows why. If I knew that, I certainly wouldn’t be here trying to explain it.”

The explanation was simple, really, and he couldn’t blame Arnie. It was Medinah.

“I honestly don’t even remember doing that,” Mahaffey recently recalled of his editorial contribution. “I do remember that I thought Medinah was very hard but very fair. I loved it, and I felt like I understood it.”

As the final round wore on, he understood better that it wasn’t going to take perfect golf to win the tournament. As would happen fifteen years hence in the 1990 U.S. Open at Medinah, a long birdie putt would prove consequential to the proceedings. Mahaffey, who did not break par in any round, buried a forty-foot putt on the 14th hole and then made pars the rest of the way for a 71 that got him in the clubhouse at 3-over 287. Playing alongside Trevino, Mahaffey had submitted a marvelous score. All he had to do was wait for everyone else to crack.

A few hours earlier, with only Nicklaus making a move in the desired direction, the leaderboard was bunched, no one was under par, and oil was leaking all over the property. As the final groups were approaching the turn, this was how things shaped up: Beard, Crenshaw, Graham, and Fitzsimons all at +1; Nicklaus and Oosterhuis at +2.

“It’s interesting,” broadcaster Jim McKay said during the ABC broadcast as he assessed the scores, “that all these fellas are tied for the lead, and they all look miserable.”

And their collective mood wouldn’t get any better. Even Nicklaus, trying to rally in front of a massive gallery while paired with Palmer, folded down the stretch. The shaggy-haired Golden Bear bogeyed his last three holes for a 72 and watched his latest attempt at the grand slam get “slammed” as he said so eloquently himself in the aftermath. Meanwhile, the pain was rolling in behind him. Beard crumbled to a 78 and tied for third with Crenshaw, who had a 74, Irwin and Bob Murphy, who with a 69 joined Irwin and Tommy Aaron (69) as the only players to break par on that humid afternoon. Oosterhuis finished with a 75. Fitzsimons shot 77, as did Watson.

The last man standing, playing in the penultimate group with Watson, was Graham, and he was loitering in the fairway at 18 with a one-stroke lead, waiting for Crenshaw and Oosterhuis to clear the green. He recalled later that he never felt comfortable playing the hole. “I played it five times and never hit the green in regulation once,” he said, giving away the plot of what happened next. His approach splashed in the right bunker and his third exited the sand with little energy, leaving him about twenty feet from the title. The winning putt was dead on line but died ten inches from the cup. He called his last few strokes, “pathetic.” But at least they weren’t fatal.

Sunday’s final leaderboard shows John Mahaffey and Lou Graham tied at 287, forcing an eighteen-hole playoff the following day.

Lou Graham still had a chance. “I actually didn’t feel that bad about that bogey once I got over the initial disappointment of playing the last hole so poorly,” he said. “I was really a nobody that came from nowhere, and I was in a playoff for the U.S. Open.” His peers had a nickname for him, in fact: “Golf’s Forgotten Man.”

So, in the year of the golden anniversary for Medinah Country Club, in what was the diamond anniversary of the U.S. Open, two players of little renown or success, the thirty-seven-year-old Graham and twenty-seven-year-old Mahaffey would square off in the twenty-fourth playoff in the history of the championship. “Sam Snead was right,” joked one reporter, “that literally anyone can win the United States Open.”

That somebody was the nobody from nowhere.

The playoff was an exercise in tedium to which Graham seemed better acclimated. He had come into the event believing par was his friend, but a few timely birdies sure were welcome in his head-to-head battle with Mahaffey. Graham never trailed after he birdied the fourth hole with an eight-footer, and he also added birdies at Nos. 5 and 10 to offset three bogeys. Mahaffey, meanwhile, was stone cold on the greens, starting with a three-putt bogey at the second. He didn’t make a birdie all day.

“I gave away the tournament on the greens,” he said. “Probably one of the worst putting days I had in my career. And in such a crucial round of golf. You want to win golf tournaments. It meant more to me to win than the money. And I really wanted to win that U.S. Open.”

There was a glint of drama on the final hole. Graham hooked his drive into the left trees and was told by ABC on-course reporter Bob Rosburg that the ball would have gone

out of bounds had it not hit a spectator. As it was, Graham appeared stymied near a tree and Rosburg believed that his only play was to wedge out. Instead, Graham hooked a low 4-iron that trundled just short of the green. With Mahaffey on the green twenty feet from the cup, Graham’s pitch was too firm, and it skittered eight feet by. If Mahaffey could make his birdie try and Graham missed, the playoff would proceed to sudden death. Instead, Mahaffey came up wanting one last time. Graham calmly sank the par he could have used twenty-four hours earlier, having told himself, “There’s nothing to worry about; you’ve made his putt a thousand times in your mind.” He shot par 71 to Mahaffey’s 73. Graham, who still holds the record for largest thirty-six-hole comeback in the championship, struggled in the immediate aftermath to find the words for what he had accomplished. “It’s hard to say,” he began. “You hope to win it. You hope you have the guts to win it. But it’s really hard for me to sit here and think ‘I’m the U.S. Open champion.’ It’s the dream of a lifetime.”

day.

GRAHAM’S SECRET WEAPON

THE 1975 U.S. OPEN was the last in which the U.S. Golf Association disallowed competitors from using their regular caddies that they employed at PGA Tour events. Lou Graham still asked his caddie to come with him to Medinah, and the move turned out to be one of the primary reasons Graham eventually emerged with the trophy.

Graham had met Air Force pilot Norm Allerup at the Hawaiian Open a few years earlier, and when Allerup retired, he called his fellow military veteran— a former member of the Presidential guard —looking for a job. Graham was only too happy to oblige.

“He worked for me for eighteen years,” Graham said. “He was really good at his job.”

Allerup had moved to California by 1975, and after Graham finished tied for thirty-fourth in the IVB-Philadelphia Golf Classic, he asked Allerup if he would stop in Illinois on his way home and help Graham walk Medinah’s Course No. 3. They went around together on Monday and got all the yardages plotted.

“They didn’t have yardage books back then,” Graham said. “You’d get a tree or look at a house, walk to the green, and write it down. He and I worked together really well. He was just there the one day and went home, and then I had a sixteen-year-old kid on my bag. He was a good kid. I liked him, and he knew the course pretty well it seemed. But having Norm doing that work, I didn’t have to worry about if I was getting the right information.”

When the two men reconnected a month later at the annual Westchester Classic in Rye, New York, Graham handed Allerup a check for $1,000. “He was there just that one day, but that one day was big,” Graham said. “He deserved it.”

A lifetime later, he still has some trouble coming to grips with it. “I don’t know if I ever believed that I was good enough to win a U.S. Open,” he said. “But I only had to be good enough one time, and I did that.”

Mahaffey might have felt more crestfallen had it not been for Graham’s wife Patsy. “I was so disappointed. I felt like I couldn’t have hit the ball much better,” he recalled. “But there was something that happened at the very end that made me grateful for the experience and has stayed with me ever since. We were sitting at the trophy presentation and Patsy Graham was sitting right behind me. She put her arms around me and whispered in my ear. She said, ‘I have to tell you something. I know how disappointed you are right now, but let me tell you, this was Lou’s last chance, probably. You’re going to have a lot more.’ I thought that was a lot of class. And, of course, I won the PGA Championship a few years later. I get chills just telling that story. It made a big difference in how I looked at things.”

Indeed, before leaving Medinah, Mahaffey told reporters, “I think I’ve got a good chance to win some major championships. I think I might win the PGA.”

Three years later, he did just that, defeating Watson and Jerry Pate in a playoff in the 60th PGA Championship at sturdy Oakmont Country Club near Pittsburgh. Mahaffey shot a final-round 66 to rally from a seven-shot deficit—a record that still stands.

Chapter Ten

PLAYER PREVAILS

The 1988 U.S. Senior Open Championship

AS MEDINAH WAS PREPARING TO WELCOME the third U.S. Open in 1990, Medinah had a chance to host another championship, this time for the fifty-and-over set in 1988. From August 4–7, Course No. 3 was the site of the ninth U.S. Senior Open, and many of the players who had become familiar with Medinah from past editions of the Western Open and the 1975 U.S. Open returned for one more bite of one of golf’s most beguiling apples.

The defending champion was Gary Player. Arnie returned. So did Lou Graham, back for the first time since his 1975 U.S. Open victory. Other notables included Billy Casper, who won the third of his four Western Open titles at Medinah in 1966, Gene Littler, Chi Chi Rodriguez, the reigning PGA Seniors’ champion, and Bob Charles, who came in as the Senior PGA Tour’s leading money winner.

With temperatures soaring near 100 degrees on the remodeled layout, Palmer was never a factor. He was unable to recover from a double hit in an opening-round 75, while Casper, after leading by three at the halfway point at 4-under 140, faded on the weekend. Despite each man starting slowly, Player and Charles, each fiftytwo years old, became the main protagonists. They shared the lead after fifty-four holes at 1-under 215, one ahead of Graham and Casper. They ended up still tied after seventy-two holes at even-par 288. How they arrived at that score at the end of regulation was the real story.

Player methodically managed to par his final seven holes to salvage 73, but with four holes to play, he trailed the left-handed Charles by three shots. The former British Open champion from New Zealand proceeded to bogey three straight holes starting at the 15th, a collapse he had a chance to correct at the last with a twelve-foot birdie try. It was not to be, and a crestfallen Charles couldn’t answer the impeccable round by Player in the eighteen-hole playoff. Hitting sixteen greens in regulation, Player authored a bogey-free 68 to win by two strokes.

“I was swinging so well today that I had supreme confidence, and you don’t often have that in a round of golf,” the South African said. “I felt if I could get up quickly and capitalize on the fact that

Bob let me in the door, psychologically, it would help.”

“After having the tournament in my pocket yesterday,” Charles said, “and thinking back that I played [the final four holes] in 3 over and 1 under today, they were not quite the monsters I made them out to be. Probably, this is the biggest disappointment in my career.”

Insert: New Zealander Bob Charles lost to Gary Player after the 18-hole playoff round on August 9, 1988. Opposite: Gary Player hoists Francis Ouimet Trophy after winning the U.S. Senior Open at Medinah.

Chapter Eleven

A DREAM COMES TRUE

The 1990 U.S. Open Championship

UNTIL HALE IRWIN

holed a remarkable forty-five-foot birdie putt on his final hole in the fourth round, the story of the ninetieth U.S. Open was not about which player could win at Medinah. Instead, it was about how many players could claim their own personal victory over the proud Course No. 3 layout.

After sinking that incredible putt, Irwin danced around the 18th green, high-fiving with a score of fans from the sea of spectators who engulfed the eighteenth green. Over the years, hundreds more have sworn they were among the lucky ones who clasped hands with the momentarily insane and monumentally intense competitor.

The next day, Irwin tipped the golf world back on its axis. He became the first man to win the U.S. Open in a sudden-death playoff—and remains the only man ever to triumph after being granted a special exemption.

There were a lot of players who thought they could conquer Course No. 3 in 1990. More than had ever enjoyed such prosperity in a U.S. Open. Certainly more than the USGA could have imagined, otherwise the setup men might have rethought their approach. And exceedingly more than the membership in 1990 would have allowed had they some say in the matter. “Jesus, we play a tougher course than these guys,” one unnamed Medinah member told the late Hall of Fame golf writer Dan Jenkins at the time. “The USGA has embarrassed us and turned us into the Quad City Classic!”

This, of course, was far from true. It would take a 12-under score of 268 for Curt Byrum to win what was then the Hardee’s Golf Classic the previous September at Oakwood Country Club in Coal Valley, Illinois. At Medinah in 1990, Irwin and journeyman Mike Donald managed to shoot 8-under 280—this after Irwin and Gary Player predicted a winning score of par 288. Player would know, having shot 288 two years earlier on Course No. 3 to force a playoff he eventually won against Bob Charles in the U.S. Senior Open. The score of 280 happened to tie the U.S. Open record in relation to par set a decade earlier when Jack Nicklaus won his fourth national title with a record 8-under 272 total at Baltusrol’s Lower Course in Springfield, New Jersey. It’s okay for Nicklaus to shoot 8 under because he’s Nicklaus, and it’s okay to shoot 8 under at Baltusrol, where

Opposite: In one of major golf’s most memorable moments, Hale Irwin high-fives patrons after holing a forty-five-foot birdie putt on the seventy-second hole to force an eighteen-hole Monday playoff with Mike Donald.

Jack previously set the Open scoring mark. But no one should be able to shoot 8 under at Medinah.

This sort of effrontery to Medinah’s reputation had been going on all week. With the layout softened by heavy pretournament precipitation and the air warm and still until Sunday, Medinah wasn’t set up to challenge golf’s finest craftsmen the way it did in 1949 or 1975. Meanwhile, USGA Executive Director of Rules and Competitions

P. J. Boatwright and his crew further abetted the assault by trimming the rough and the collars around the greens and watering the greens themselves to make it more accommodating to scoring after listening to player gripes about the difficulty of the setup. Furthermore, the greens at No. 2 and 13 were cut higher because of their severe slope.

A record thirty-nine players broke par in the opening round, and that mark stood until the following afternoon when forty-seven more players finished in the red. Medinah started fighting back on the weekend, but twenty-four players still bettered par on a hot summer afternoon, and then, with pressure finally finding its footing and the wind picking up, only fourteen players came in under the line. The 124 subpar rounds decimated the previous championship record of 64. Irwin’s closing 67 not only was tied for low round of the final day (with Steve Jones), but it also was low for the weekend, and, ultimately, he prevented the thirty-four-year-old Donald from becoming the most surprising U.S. Open winner since Orville Moody captured his only tour title in 1969 at Champions Golf Club in Houston.

Of course, it took a little bit of luck, and a lot of sweat, nineteen extra holes, and a true battle with the real Medinah, but Irwin somehow managed to win his third national title, and the membership at least could walk away knowing that its vaunted layout was redeemed in the waning hours of a long and disconcerting week.

IRWIN ARRIVED AT MEDINAH with two U.S. Open titles and eighteen PGA Tour titles under his belt, but he hadn’t won a tournament in five years. What he did have was a dream and a sense of déjà vu that would only come to him as he was losing his mind. The lead story heading into the championship was Curtis Strange, who was vying for a third straight U.S. Open, a feat achieved only once previously when Scotland’s

Willie Anderson ran off three in a row from 1903–1905, a run, coincidentally, that included the 1904 title at Glen View Club just north of Chicago. Strange tried to downplay the pressure, dismissively saying, “There’s always pressure in the U.S. Open.”

Nevertheless, in a telephone interview in 2024, Strange said he hadn’t slept for two months and lost more than ten pounds before arriving at Medinah, weighing in at 165 pounds and noting how his clothes were hanging off him loosely. “Stress? Probably,” he said.

Though ranked No. 1 in the world at the time, Greg Norman said Strange was the man to beat, even though the Virginia native had gone winless since his successful defense at Oak Hill in Rochester, New York. Then Norman said something astounding. “I’m pulling for Curtis—I really am. Just for the history of it. We’re all trying to beat Curtis. But I would like to see him win. If he doesn’t do it this week, it could be another hundred years before someone does it.”

“What comes to mind first,” Strange recalled, “is that when I took the thirty-sixhole lead at Oak Hill, all the stories were about Ben Hogan being the last player to win two in a row. Then I shot 73, and there was no mention of it before the final round. After I won, it was all Willie Anderson [in the media] for the next year. I was playing okay heading to Medinah, but not great. But when I got there, I started feeling pretty good. I really liked the course. It was a classic U.S. Open course.”

It was a bit less “classic” in the sense that it was still relatively new. Medinah had approached the USGA about hosting the 1980 U.S. Open, but it took another decade

before the USGA granted a return—though with the condition that certain upgrades be made, including a more demanding finishing hole. Chicago architect Roger Packard was awarded the job, and he not only lengthened the course to 7,195 yards—then the longest in championship history—but he also gave No. 3 two all-new holes at 17 and 18, with the latter a highly demanding 440-yard par 4.

THE OPENING ROUND was delayed thirty minutes at the outset after one-and-a-half inches of rain fell overnight. Strange embarked on his title defense at 9:32 a.m. with British Open winner Mark Calcavecchia and U.S. Amateur champion Chris Patton. The group directly in front happened to include the ultimate underdog: Mike Donald. Irwin wouldn’t go off until 2:19 p.m. with fellow U.S. Open champions Ray Floyd and Fuzzy Zoeller. Not that it mattered when anyone started. Scoring conditions were ideal all day, a rarity in a U.S. Open when the usual formula calls for conditions to become more difficult as the hours expire.

Tim Simpson, who had gone salmon fishing and hadn’t touched a club for eleven days before Open week, posted an early 6-under 66 that featured hitting every fairway but one green in regulation, and he was putting from the fringe on that one. Two lip-outs prevented him from posting 64. He was matched by 1987 champion Scott Simpson (no relation) and Jeff Sluman, the 1988 PGA champion, who both teed off in the afternoon. Donald and Steve Jones shot 67. Irwin submitted a promising 69, his first sub-70 score in the U.S. Open since 1984 at Winged Foot when he led after fifty-four holes before cratering with a 79. Fifty-year-old Jack Nicklaus had a 71, as did Chicago’s Chip Beck.

One notable player who didn’t get the memo on what was uncharitably called “Madonna No. 3” by several reporters was a highly frustrated Strange, who took thirtythree putts in his 73. “Medinah will never play easier,” he said. “If I lose this thing by a couple strokes, I’ll look back at today. I missed four putts that strung together might stretch out to sixteen feet.”

Norman groused that the opening round, attended by more than forty thousand people, didn’t feel like a U.S. Open, but the ever even-keeled Nicklaus, the four-time

champion, assured that scoring adjustments were coming. “Medinah ultimately will win out,” said the Golden Bear, coming off a victory in the Senior Players Championship. “Chances of having another day like we had today are not great.”

Friday’s second round was all roses and caviar … and helicopter rides. Yep, helicopter rides returned to Medinah with the club and the USGA extending air service from the player hotel to the course after several competitors got stuck in traffic trying to access the property on Thursday. Bob Tway actually had to abandon his vehicle in order to avoid disqualification. After Medinah proved so accommodating to scoring the previous day, nobody wanted to miss his tee time.

Only a handful of players took the air hop, but forty-seven guys were on cloud nine with their contribution to another subpar assault on the “fair” U.S. Open setup, which is the code word for “easy.” Tim Simpson claimed the lead all to himself at 9-under 135 after a 69. In eleven previous U.S. Open starts, Simpson had posted two sub-70 rounds, and here he was equaling that in one championship. He led by one over Sluman, who still hadn’t made a bogey. Donald and Mark Brooks, after matching 70s, were two and three behind, respectively. Irwin and Scott Simpson checked in at 139.

Mike Hulbert’s 66 tied the course record set a day earlier, improving by ten strokes. Strange changed to an old Zebra putter and managed a 70 to at least advance to the weekend. The cut came in at 1-over 145, another record, another ignominious development as the greens remained receptive and the breeze failed to encroach on DuPage County. Sixty-eight players advanced, including Nicklaus and amateurs Phil Mickelson and David Duval, the latter, at eighteen, the youngest player in the field.

“I’m not nervous or scared,” Simpson, thirty-four, said after making a birdie at the last and eliminating nine players at 146 who had hoped to sneak inside the cutline with the ten-shot rule, among them Fred Couples and Tom Lehman. “But winning the U.S. Open would change my life. It’s the trophy, not the money.”

AFTER OCCUPYING THE LEADERBOARD through the first two rounds of the U.S. Open, Mike Donald heard from a friend who offered a piece of advice. Donald had followed up an opening 64 with an 82 in the Masters two months earlier, and his friend tried to encourage him by saying, “Forget about the Masters.” Which only made Donald chuckle. “How can I forget about the Masters when he’s reminding me of it?”

But Donald dutifully did as he was told. A third-round score of 72 put the Florida resident on even footing with U.S. Open newcomer Billy Ray Brown at the top of the

leaderboard at 7-under 209. Clearly, however, Medinah was starting to offer increasing resistance, and several of the pretournament favorites got themselves into contention, including the indefatigable Strange.

Brown, twenty-seven and in his first U.S. Open after failing to qualify on five previous occasions, shot a 69 and became the first player in any of the three U.S. Opens at Medinah to post three sub-par scores. Still, he was a wreck, telling reporters, “It’s frightening being the leader.”

Conversely, Donald was more comfortable with the situation. Excited even. “I’m going out with a chance of achieving a dream. Since I was a little kid, it’s been my dream to win the U.S. Open,” he said. “How lucky can you be? I’m thrilled to death.”

You know who else was thrilled? About another two dozen players who at one point on Saturday had started to think they might be out of contention. Then Scott Simpson, who had moved out front at 9 under, played his final three holes in 5-over par. Tim Simpson and Mark Brooks each bogeyed two of their last three. And even Donald gave one back late. When the dust settled, there were twelve players within two shots of the

making one of his signature recovery shots, tied for thirty-third after a closing 76.

tied for third, which was his secondbest U.S. Open performance.

lead, nineteen within three, and twenty-seven within four shots. “You couldn’t really count anyone out,” Donald recalled in a phone interview, “which made it easier in a way because you couldn’t afford to be distracted by anyone else.”

Brooks and Tim Simpson still were only a shot behind at 210 along with 1983 champion Larry Nelson and Sluman. But among those now firmly in the hunt were Strange and Nicklaus, who each shot 68, tying for the day’s low round. Strange, who capped his rally by sinking a curling twenty-footer for birdie at the tough 17th, was two behind with five others at 5-under 211. He had begun the third round with thirty-two players between him and the lead. Now there were only seven. Nicklaus only trailed by a manageable four strokes with a group that included Seve Ballesteros and a disappointed Irwin, who struggled to a 74. In between at 212 was a dangerous Nick Faldo, who had won his second straight Masters in April. He also had carded a 68.

“I had found something that was working, and I was right where I wanted to be,” Strange said. “It’s what I had been looking forward to for a year, just to have a chance.”

TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE CHAMPIONSHIP, Hale Irwin had a dream about winning the U.S. Open. He didn’t dream about winning at Medinah; in fact, the location was never clear to him. “I’ve never had a dream like that before or since,” he said. “Almost all my golf dreams are ones of frustration. Sally [his wife] knows this. I’ll hit a perfect drive right in the middle of the fairway, and it’s in the middle of a brush pile. Or I’ve got a big lead, and I hit the ball on the green. It takes this terrible bounce into a lake. I hit another one. It has the same bounce. I lose the lead. So this one comes out with a different result. Now, was it the exact result? No. Other than winning, the mechanics of it were far different. But I won.”

He won with the most elementary and mundane approach—one hole at a time. Irwin and playing partner Norman had teed off at 10:53 a.m., nearly two hours before the final pairing of Donald and Brown, and through ten holes, Irwin was stuck in neutral and had lost four strokes to the world No. 1. And the fiery Irwin was fuming.

“Greg birdied 10, and I think he was only two or three back [he actually trailed Donald by just one], and I can’t remember what I said to myself, but I thought, ‘If he makes a couple more birdies, who knows? So I needed to catch up,’ ” Irwin said. “At 11, there was a scoreboard of the top fifteen, and I was tied for sixteenth. Top fifteen at the time gets you in the next year. So that was the goal. And I played 11 great. Hit it close and made a six-footer, and I’m now in the top ten. And then I just kept pushing it.”

A 5-iron at 12 stopped four feet from the cup. Then he set up a third straight birdie with a 4-iron to two feet. “Now I’m top five, and I’m thinking, ‘Yeah, don’t get stupid here.’ ” Still, he converted a twelve-footer for a fourth straight birdie at the par-5 14th to leave Norman in the dust. The Shark got to 7-under par, 5 under on his round, until he chopped up the 14th, made bogey, and then suffered another coming home.

Behind Irwin, not much was happening. Donald birdied the first two holes and then played steadily, while many of the other contenders were unable to make headway up the board. Strange, inexplicably, was among the notables who came up empty. A weak bogey at the second signaled trouble. “I hit a fat 4-iron, and you just can’t do that,” he said. “I could feel I didn’t have what it was going to take to win it,” he said. “I still fought hard, but when I bogeyed 12, I knew it was over. That took the wind out of my sails.”

He closed with a lethargic 75. “The thing about going for three in a row is that there is no other place you can finish except first. Everyone plays to win, but I had to win. It was all or nothing,” he said.

Irwin knew in his gut that if he was going to have any chance of winning, he needed one more birdie. But his rally stalled, and at the 18th hole, with a 7-iron in hand, he could only manage to find the front portion of the green. Incredibly, ABC Sports, broadcasting the coverage, didn’t capture live what happened next. Irwin faced a forty-five-footer that had to go over a mound with five feet of break for his birdie. As the ball mounted the crest and then zeroed in on the hole, Irwin was on the move. The ball found the heart of the cup. Irwin found his legs.

He raised both hands in the air as he ran towards the back of the green and pumped his fist. Suddenly, he veered hard right towards the rope line and high-fived five spectators and a volunteer. As he worked his way back to the green, he pumped his first again and then blew a kiss to the crowd. His celebration lasted nearly thirty seconds. ABC replayed the electrifying scene several times the rest of the day.

“There was unbelievable excitement in that moment,” Irwin recalled more than three decades later. “You try to make a putt like that because you’re trying to win, but you don’t expect to make it. My reaction was as much about the crowd, the roar after making that putt, as it was about where I stood with the clubhouse lead. It was a show of appreciation to the fans.

“What was funny is that in that moment I had this flashback to the ’75 Open. I had finished strong that year, too, and for some reason that flashed in my mind.”

On a day when a gusting wind finally became a factor, Irwin played his final eight holes in 5-under par to shoot 67. “It was without a doubt the greatest nine holes of my life,” he said.

But then he had to wait. He cooled his heels for the rest of the afternoon in the TV tower. When Irwin holed his improbable birdie putt, Donald and Brown had just begun the inward nine. Brown had hurt himself with a double bogey at the seventh, but he managed to stay within striking distance while Donald, after birdies at the first two holes from eight and three feet, respectively, was refusing to crack. The most dangerous player appeared to be Faldo, who climbed within one stroke of Donald and tied Irwin at 8 under with an eight-foot birdie at 14. The Englishman bogeyed 16, however, and his tying birdie attempt at the last lipped out.

It was all in Donald’s hands, and it was a wonder how he came to look so steady in the biggest championship of his life. It all started with a mistake. Donald, whose only victory came at the 1989 Anheuser-Busch Golf Classic, was a huge fan of Butler National, in Oak Brook, which was hosting the Western Open the week before the U.S. Open. A member of the PGA Tour Policy Board, Donald arrived at Butler National on Monday for meetings, but when he went to check in for the tournament, he discovered that he had forgotten to enter. “I had never forgotten to commit to a tournament in my life,” he said.

Hale Irwin finishing his highfive lap around the eighteenth hole after making his fortyfive-foot birdie putt to land in a playoff with Mike Donald.

He could have stayed in Chicago, but instead he flew to Texas to see instructor Paul Marchand, whose pupils included Donald’s pal Fred Couples. “I changed my grip, and I changed my shoulders, and all of a sudden, I wasn’t hooking the ball anymore,” he explained. “I was hitting dead straight balls. And it was like the damnedest thing, because I always fought a hook. And that swing stayed with me pretty much the rest of the year.”

Donald encountered his periods of stress but managed to extricate himself from trouble—including a miraculous twenty-five-foot par save at the 12th and a fifteen-footer for par at 14. But he couldn’t dodge the tough par-4 16th hole, where he bunkered his approach and failed to get up and down. Now he and Irwin were tied. Brown, who also had bogeyed the 16th, added to the increasing drama by sticking his tee shot at 17 and brushing in a two-footer to get back within a shot.

Facing an even longer birdie putt at the last than Irwin had made, Donald did well to get down in two putts. After Donald’s birdie try narrowly missed on the low side, Brown could have made it a three-man playoff. He sized up a great look from ten feet above the hole to reach 8 under, but he borrowed too much on the left. He bent down in disappointment, resting his head on the top of his putter grip. Brown then tapped in for a 72.

Unlike in the 1975 playoff, there was an obvious favorite and underdog in the ensuing eighteen-hole playoff. Donald remembers thinking only one thing after completing his final-round 71, and it wasn’t disappointment or nervousness. “I honestly thought, ‘This is the greatest experience of my life.’ And to this day I still think that way,” he said.

WITH HIS YOUNGER BROTHER PETE on the bag as a steadying influence and the appreciative gallery continually buoying him, Donald seemed the more composed golfer on a difficult afternoon with gusting winds. He trailed through eight holes, but he got his nose out front for the first time since a birdie at the opening hole with a two-shot swing at the ninth. Turning in 2-over par and without a birdie, Irwin proceeded to bogey 11 and 12 to fall two strokes behind.

After matching birdies at the 14th and pars at 15, Irwin was running out of time. Both men would later concede that what soon happened from the middle of the 16th fairway was the turning point. With the pin set back left, Irwin, whose preferred ball flight was a fade, faced an uphill shot of 205 yards that he had to draw around the huge oaks. His 2-iron shot was a majestic high draw that stopped six feet right of the flagstick. When he sank the birdie putt, he pumped a fist.

“There aren’t many full shots I’ve hit better, especially given the circumstances,” Irwin said. “There are shots you envision before you hit them, and that was exactly the shot I wanted to hit. And I needed it because Mike was in control.”

“That 2-iron was just an incredible shot. It was Hale at his absolute best, hitting a shot that went against his tendency,” Donald said. “He got a bounce back in his step he didn’t have all day.”

Opposite:

Hale

Historians always skip over 17 to Donald’s hooked tee shot into the left rough at 18 that led to the bogey that dropped him into a tie with Irwin and set up the first sudden-death playoff hole in U.S. Open history. But the drama at the new par-3 17th was riveting. Irwin came up short on his tee shot, clearing the water but settling in the collar. He skidded a chip shot that barely missed on the right. Donald then faced a tricky 12-footer for birdie with a huge right-to-left break. It curled around the cup and grazed the back edge. “And that was, in hindsight, the championship right there for me,” Donald said.

Serving as a volunteer marshal that week, member Dick Day made his way across the bridge at 17 just after Irwin’s approach into 16, and, he said, “lived with every shot on 17 and 18 by the fans’ reaction,” as he headed for his car on the driving range. But once he realized the playoff was headed to sudden death, he and friends crossed the lake on the

A SPORTING GESTURE

IN THE MIDST OF HIS OWN DISAPPOINTMENT and exhausted by a three-year pursuit of history, Curtis Strange left the grounds of Medinah Country Club late Sunday afternoon following the final round of the 90th U.S. Open feeling not so much relieved as utterly spent. He hopped in a car with his wife, Sarah, and his twin brother, Allan, and his wife and for the first time realized just how tired he felt.

But before he departed, he performed one final task, one of kindness and sportsmanship.

Mike Donald had just two-putted for a par on the seventy-second hole that earned him a tie at the end of regulation. Strange had stuck around to see if Donald would claim the U.S. Open trophy that he had held the previous two years and knew that Donald’s par meant he faced an eighteen-hole playoff against Hale Irwin the following day.

Strange stuck a Post-it note on Donald’s locker wishing him the best of luck. In fact, that’s all it said. “Mike — Best of Luck — Curtis.”

“Hale was a friend of mine. I wasn’t necessarily rooting for Mike over Hale, though I knew Mike pretty well,” Strange said. “But Hale had already won two U.S. Opens. For Mike, the next day couldn’t get any bigger. It could change his life. I wanted to wish him the best. I wanted him to play well. I just felt it was the right thing to do.”

mementos, including the crystal he won for low round in the 1990 Masters when he opened with a 64. “It was perfect. It was Curtis, direct and to the point, and I can’t tell you what it meant to me. That he thought enough to do that for me, that was something.”

Donald, of course, did play well the next day, but victory eluded him. Irwin won his third U.S. Open. Donald left with the silver medal and the memory of what he still considers the greatest moment of his career. “People may not believe this, but I honestly feel it ended the way it was supposed to end,” he said. “Hale winning that third U.S. Open, that was important to his legacy. It puts him in another category. Had I won, my life might have taken a different turn, but I don’t know if it would have been better. I wouldn’t trade the life I have had for that one win, as great as it would have been. Just to have had the chance to win, that was a cool experience, as cool as it gets.”

“I still have that little note, if that tells you anything,” said Donald, who hasn’t kept any of his trophies or other

Donald keeps the note from Strange in a box in his house in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Also squirreled away for safe keeping is his U.S. Open medal.

second-hole bridge to the first green. Relatively few people, he recalled, were able to get to the first green because of the congestion on the bridge at 17. His volunteer shirt earned him a front-row viewing spot.

The ninety-first hole of the 90th U.S. Open belonged to Irwin. He lofted a wedge high in the air and his ball stopped eight feet left of the hole. After Donald lagged a thirty-footer up to two feet, Irwin aimed at the left edge with his birdie attempt, and with a foot to go he knew it was falling in the cup. He leaped in the air and then offered

Donald a hurried handshake before hugging his wife, Sally, and daughter Becky. He did well stifling tears.

So did Donald, who didn’t quite know where to be but lingered on the green and manned up for a live TV interview with Bob Rosburg. His voice cracked a bit talking about friends who sent telegrams or flew in for the playoff. “It’s just great to have friends and be able to play this great game of golf,” he said. A year later, he missed the cut at Hazeltine National, and a year after that, he had to qualify for the U.S. Open. He didn’t make it and played in only one more, in 1993 at Baltusrol, where he tied for thirtythird place.

IN EARLY 1990, Hale Irwin was filling out his U.S. Open entry form when a letter from the USGA informing him of his special exemption arrived in the mail. Irwin was preparing to go through qualifying because his ten-year exemption from his 1979 victory had expired. He certainly was not expecting the invitation, but once in hand, he wanted to make the most of it. When he had gotten himself in contention through thirty-six holes, he talked about the self-imposed pressure he was putting on himself.

“I think each person invited by the USGA as exempt adds something to the field,” he told reporters. “Hopefully, I will have added something to their field this year.” All these years later, Irwin actually remembers making the comment. “I wanted to show that their invitation was justified. And I think that set the tone for the entire week for me.”

Indeed, Irwin not only added to the field in the 90th U.S. Open, but he also added to his legacy. He captured his third national title, and only four men own more. He became the oldest winner of the championship and still the only man to triumph after receiving a special exemption. And, finally, Irwin produced an enduring signature moment that is among the most inspiring in the game’s history. He owns it, though not alone. It also belongs to Medinah.

Chapter Twelve

TIGER RUNS THE TABLES

The 1999 and 2006 PGA Championships

IT WAS ONLY FITTING that Medinah Country Club should host the last major of the last decade of the twentieth century. An occasion of such chronological significance should only be held at an institution whose hallmark for excellence stretches across generations. And it was only fitting that Tiger Woods should win that major, the 81st PGA Championship, to carry the torch across the timeline, bridging a century that belonged to Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer, and Jack Nicklaus to a new one that he would define in the early decades by his own exploits and dominance. And sure enough, a few years into the new millennia, Woods would secure a second victory at Medinah, capturing the 87th PGA Championship in 2006 and thereby supplanting all previous luminaries who attained dominion on the noble Course No. 3.

“I don’t know what else you can say except that we enjoyed our place in history during the era of Tiger,” said Steven Ruffalo, who attended the 1999 championship during the process of becoming a Medinah member and served on the Organizing Committee in 2006.

“I remember having credentials [in 2006] to be inside the ropes, and I was helping at the driv ing range—I think it was Thursday or Friday.

All of a sudden there’s this buzz, and you start seeing this mass of people congregate, and here comes Tiger, of course, and the whole atmosphere changed. It was amazing. Then he starts hitting balls, and the sound of the club hitting the ball was something.

“And the attention that the other pros paid to his warm-up was noticeable,” Ruffalo continued. “They all just stop hitting, and they’re watching what he’s doing, and he’s taking 5-wood, 5-iron, 3-wood, and he’s hitting

shots that are intended to go above the tree line in the event he wanted to cut a corner on a hole during his round. It was just purposeful; it was so cool to see his disciplined approach. Everyone was mesmerized. It was the Tiger Effect in full bloom.”

When Medinah successfully secured its first PGA Championship in 1993, Woods already was earning his share of renown by winning his third U.S. Junior Amateur title in a row that year. That was quite a feat, but he had not yet emerged as a true generational force in the game—he had not yet captured an unprecedented three straight U.S. Amateur titles from 1994–1996, something not even golf’s most celebrated amateur, Bobby Jones, had accomplished. Having not lost in match play in an unfathomable six years, Woods turned pro after the 1996 U.S. Amateur at Pumpkin Ridge in Portland, Oregon, where

Opposite: Tiger Woods raises the Wanamaker Trophy after securing his first PGA Championship.

he rallied to beat Steve Scott in front of twenty thousand spectators. (In the years since, it’s unusual if a U.S. Amateur final draws more than one thousand people.) NBC Sports registered the highest rating for its coverage in the event’s history—and a higher rating than the PGA Tour’s World Series of Golf at Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio, broadcast on CBS.

By 1999, Woods was among the most popular and highest-earning athletes in the world.

Knowing they wanted another major event, Medinah scored a bonus, annexing an eternal piece of a legend.

WHAT’S INTERESTING about Woods’ first triumph at Medinah is the fact that he won in a manner opposite to the performance of Hale Irwin nine years earlier, but it probably brought a modicum of satisfaction to the club membership. In the 1990 U.S. Open, Irwin had birdied five of his last eight holes, sizzled with a final-round 67, and caught Mike Donald at the tape before beating him in a sudden-death playoff to win his third national title. Woods, meanwhile, who was seeking a second major title to go with his record-shattering Masters victory in 1997, played his final seven holes in 4-over par, limped in with an even-par 72, and stumbled across the finish line just one stroke ahead of Sergio Garcia.

Garcia, who had turned pro earlier that year after finishing as low amateur in the Masters, didn’t figure to be much of a factor on the tight, tree-lined course that had been lengthened to 7,401 yards, the longest in championship history at sea level. (Columbine Country Club in Littleton, Colorado, measured 7,436 yards.) One of a record forty-two foreign-born players in the field, Garcia had made his pro debut in a major in July at Carnoustie, and it was a disaster for the nineteen-year-old Spaniard. He shot 89-83, a shocking result when he had gone to Scotland as one of the favorites.

Somehow, the youngster shook it off when he got to Medinah. With birdies on three of his last five holes, Garcia took the outright lead with an opening 6-under 66—with an assist from Mother Nature, again. Rain began to fall just as Wayne DeFrancesco, a club pro from Pikesville, Maryland, was hitting the first shot of the championship, giving the

PGA a colorful beginning as umbrellas popped up in the gallery. Eventually, play had to be halted for forty-seven minutes, leaving fifteen players on the course as darkness encroached. At least it was a break from the searing heat of the previous few days.

“It seemed like I had to prove something,” said Garcia, who gave the event relief from the pretournament chatter about player compensation and rumblings of a boycott for the upcoming Ryder Cup that had dominated the media cycle. “Everybody kept asking about the Open. The difference is here I played good. Everything went right. At the Open, everything went wrong.”

Garcia tied the competitive course record, two strokes ahead of veteran Jay Haas, J. P. Hayes, and Canada’s Mike Weir. Former U.S. Open champion Corey Pavin was among five players at 69, while a large group at 70 included two notable names—Irwin, paired with Garcia and referring to him as “my grandson,” and Woods, who got there with birdies on the last two holes.

Short-hitting but deadly accurate Skip Kendall had “one of those rounds you dream about, especially in a major,” in breaking the course record the following day with a morning 65 amid rain and some swirling winds. Garcia backpedaled after a 73, while Haas, with son Jay Jr. on the bag, became the pacesetter, shooting 67 to reach 9-under 135, already bettering the winning score in relation to par in 1990. Weir was a stroke behind. Irwin, the oldest player in the field at age fiftyfour, was in the hunt at 139 after a 69, tied with Garcia and Stewart Cink, who shot 70. “I have had some success on this golf course,” Irwin said with a wry smile.

But the man who made everyone nervous had made his move. Seeking to reclaim the No. 1 ranking from David Duval, Tiger shot 67 after charging out with birdies on his first three holes. “It wasn’t necessarily a statement. I just wanted to get off to a good start,” Woods said. “I’m in contention after two rounds. That’s right where you want to be.”

Don Larson, the general chair of the championship, seemed to be in the right place, too. Or at least his cart was. After handling a few tasks, Larson returned to his cart to find Earl Woods, Tiger’s father, sitting in the passenger seat. The elder Woods was content to ride along as Larson headed to the CBS television compound, enjoying the chance to get off his feet

Stewart Cink’s third-round 68 brought him within two of the fifty-four-hole lead.

while recovering from a recent surgery. They eventually found Tiger on the ninth hole. When the younger Woods spotted his “Pops,” he made a beeline to the cart for a quick fist bump.

“Tiger was very appreciative, and he said, ‘I can’t thank you enough for taking my dad around. He had a great time,’ ” Larson recalled. “After the tournament was over, Tiger sent me ten signed pin flags. He told me to use them for a good cause. I think I still have the note. I gave them to different charitable organizations. I also gave one to Medinah, and they put it in a case. Someone jimmied the case open and took it. Fortunately, I had another one to give to the club, and they put it under lock and key.”

The cut came in at 2-over 146 with seventy-four players advancing to the weekend, though only two dozen players at most had a realistic chance to win—if they could keep Woods close.

A third-round 68 catapulted him into a share of the lead at 11-under 205 with Weir, who managed a 69 thanks mainly to pitching in for eagle at the 14th. Cink and Garcia were the nearest pursuers, also shooting 68 to post 207. Another three strokes in arrears were Haas, who skidded to a 75, Kendall, two-time PGA winner Nick Price, and Jim Furyk. The clock struck midnight for Irwin, who tumbled to a 78. Mark Brooks didn’t figure into the narrative, but the 1996 champion registered an ace at the par-3 17th, using a 3-iron from 206 yards. Brooks said he hit it fat, but his ball carried the water, landed in the collar, and tracked into the cup.

In his brief pro career, Woods had held the fifty-four-hole lead eight times. He had won seven. “Yeah, but I’m not leading. I’m only tied for the lead,” he quibbled.

That was true until the second hole on Sunday. Woods and Weir teed off at 1:20 p.m., and by 2 o’clock Weir had bogeyed the second and third holes on the way to a dispiriting 80. Years later, the left-hander insisted that he was not in any way intimidated by Woods after a head-to-head battle at the Motorola Western Open in early July at Cog Hill.

“He won the tournament [at Cog Hill], but I beat him on that day,” recalled Weir, who shot 70 to Woods’s 71 and lost by three strokes. “Heading into the final round at Medinah, I was thinking, ‘I can do this.’ But I had just an awful putting day; pressure rears its head on the greens. I thought Medinah was just a great golf course. I learned a lot from that day. I got my first win three weeks later [at the Air Canada Championship] in Vancouver. I was able to take a lot of positives from it.”

Woods also took positives from that week at Cog Hill, and not just because he had won his second Western Open and third tournament of the year. On Tuesday, he

eschewed practice at Cog Hill in favor of playing twenty-seven holes at Medinah with Michael Jordan.

After Woods birdied the 11th to stretch his lead to five shots, the whole of the known world was positive that he was going to cruise home. Then Garcia, the only player in the field younger than the twenty-three-year-old Woods, decided to make it interesting. In a thirty-five-minute span, Woods’s seemingly insurmountable lead got to looking surmountable. He bogeyed the 12th, and moments later Garcia buried an eighteen-footer for birdie at the par-3 13th. El Niño then looked back to the tee and raised a fist toward Woods. Tiger said he didn’t see the gesture, but he sure felt Sergio’s presence. “I didn’t mean anything bad by it,” Garcia said. “I just was letting him know that I was here.”

Woods followed by pulling his tee shot on the 219-yard hole into a lie thick as cabbage, needed two to find the green, and walked off with a five. The double bogey chopped his lead to one.

Garcia gave back a shot with a bogey at 15 and seemed destined to lose at least one more when he pushed his drive into the right rough at the par-4 16th. His ball ended behind a tree 189 yards from the green, but his eyes-wide-shut, pirouetting, Hail Mary swing with a 6-iron somehow launched his ball onto the putting surface. Standing fifteen feet away, on the other side of the ropes, was Zach Johnson, who was not on

SERGIO’S TREE

SERGIO GARCIA’S

FAVORITE SLOGAN IS “SUERTE O MUERTE,” which translates literally to “luck or death,” and in a more general sense is the Spanish version of Arnold Palmer’s mantra of “go for broke.” Never did Garcia live up to that motto more than in the final round of the 1999 PGA Championship when his tee shot on the 16th hole settled in a spot that could only be described as the unkindest meeting of land and tree.

Attempting to chase down Tiger Woods, the nineteenyear-old Garcia pushed a 3-wood just far enough right of his intended target that he knew it could be trouble. And it was. His ball ambled near a large red oak 189 yards from the green. Actually, it was more in the crook of its base. He was two behind Woods after a bogey at 15, and he initially thought of pitching out sideways. But instead he pulled out his 6-iron.

“I really just figured, what the heck. I wanted to win the tournament,” Garcia recalled. “There was a bit of a chance of hitting the tree with the club. I wasn’t as worried of that as I was of the ball hitting the tree. Then if the ball hit me, it’s a penalty and I might make 8. I knew I could get into the ball with the club, but the problem was getting it up quick enough over that edge of the tree.”

“I didn’t think he could pull it off,” said caddie Jerry Higginbotham. “I wanted to tell him to pitch out. But I’ve seen him pull off so many shots, I figured he should go ahead and try it.”

on the follow through and fell back a step. The ball started for the left rough but began to slice to the right and kept slicing about twenty yards in all. After regaining his balance, the teenager sprinted up the hill and then leaped like an Olympic hurdler. The ball ended up on the left portion of the green, sixty feet from the pin. He two-putted for par.

“I am reminded about it quite a bit, which is a nice thing, definitely. It’s always nice to be reminded about good shots,” Garcia, nicknamed “El Niño,” said. “It definitely is one of the best shots of my career under the situation.”

A spectator with one of the best views of the situation was Matt Lydon, who was serving on the Ecology Committee. He was sitting in a cart with fellow member Dave Edwards about ten–twelve feet away. “We thought he’d break his wrists,” Lydon said. “But whatever was going to happen, it was going to be interesting.”

“You small children, don’t watch this,” CBS broadcaster Gary McCord said to television viewers just before Garcia began his backswing.

As a protective measure, Garcia closed his eyes and turned his head just before his club made impact. Then he pirouetted

The shot lives on as one of the most memorable in Medinah history. Sadly, the tree did not live on. After a decade full of golfers marching dutifully to the spot to try Sergio’s hero shot, it had to be taken down. Lydon happened to be around then, too. He was playing on a Saturday in late September, and as he neared the 16th green, he felt the ground shake. A large limb had broken off the giant oak.

“Think about the weight of that limb, that you could feel it shake the ground one hundred yards away,” Lydon said. “It didn’t look that bad, but it was hollowed out.”

The tree was quietly taken down. No pomp or circumstance. “They just did it,” Lydon said. “There was no sense in telling anyone. It wasn’t going to change the fact that it was a potential danger.”

Mike Scully, Medinah’s director of golf at the time, oversaw the removal with Curtis Tyrrell, then director of golf course operations. As a final tribute, Tyrrell preserved a portion of the trunk and made it into a memorial marker piece.

the PGA Tour and was in attendance as a spectator. “It was an absolute miracle shot,” he said, intoning a word that would echo through the corridors of Medinah years later.

Woods then bogeyed the same hole from a greenside bunker. Again, one shot separated the two. But that was as close as Garcia could get.

Locker room attendant Fito Garcia remembers chatting with Woods before the final round, and their conversation remains emblazoned in his mind. “Tiger was a little shy then. He didn’t speak much,” Garcia said. “He was more reserved than when he came back in 2006. He looked uptight; I knew he really wanted to win. I put my hand on his shoulder and told him, ‘Tiger, today, you’re going to win the tournament. I got a feeling. And when you win, this is going to be your town.’ And he turned around and he says, ‘Fito, I’m going to win the tournament, but this never will be my town.’ I asked why, and he said, ‘Because this is Michael Jordan’s town.’

“After it was over, he came back in and says to me after he won, ‘Fito, what did I tell you? But it’s still Michael Jordan’s town.’ And then he thanked me for the [vote of] confidence. Not that he needed me, but it was so nice to hear.”

Bob Verdi, longtime columnist for the Chicago Tribune who has been a member of Medinah for decades, covered both of Tiger’s wins for Golf World magazine. His take was slightly different. “You look at his record here since, what, 1998? He kind of owned

golf in this town,” Verdi said. “He had a good record in several places, but he sure beat the crap out of zip codes around Chicago.”

Woods said recently that his first win at Medinah was huge because of the swing changes he had made in 1998 but hadn’t mastered until early 1999. “It basically took a year and a half to get really dialed in, and winning that second major was so important,” Woods said. “It validated my Masters win and gave me confidence, and I went on a nice run for a few years. Yeah, that was a good stretch.”

Woods would run over everyone in 2000, winning nine times, including the last three majors. That’s notable because when he triumphed at Medinah, he mused that “Jack had a [career] Grand Slam by twenty-six. Maybe I can do the same.” And there he was winning all four majors by the age of twenty-four. Then he completed the so-called “Tiger Slam” by securing the 2001 Masters. From the 1999 PGA at Medinah to that 2001 Masters, just four players finished ahead of Woods in major championship play: Vijay Singh, Ernie Els, David Duval, and Loren Roberts.

The 2006 PGA Championship

WHILE HIS 1999 WIN KICKED OFF a historic run in the majors, Woods’ victory in the 88th PGA Championship in 2006 represented another milestone: He became the first player in history to win multiple professional majors in consecutive years. He successfully defended his British Open title at Royal Liverpool just a few months after his father had passed away. Then he stomped the field by five strokes at Medinah for his twelfth major title and improved to 12-0 in majors when having at least a share of the fiftyfour-hole lead, beginning the final round tied with a local favorite of sorts, Englishman Luke Donald, who had attended Northwestern University and at the time had a home near Medinah. Woods tied his own championship record for under-par scoring with an 18-under 270 total and became the first man to win the PGA Championship twice on the same course.

Was it that easy? Well, not entirely. In fact, the formula was weirdly similar to his 1999 road to victory. An opening 69 left him tied for tenth, the exact same place in the standings he found himself seven years earlier. He stood 7 under after thirty-six holes, same as 1999, and then moved out front with a 65 to join Donald at 14-under 202,

which tied the championship mark in relation to par. Again, the nearest competitor was two behind, this time in the figure of Mike Weir (still loving Course No. 3 after also shooting 65). And, finally, it didn’t take long for Woods to nose ahead for good with a birdie at the opening hole from ten feet. Only this time there would be no struggles on the inward nine as he closed with a 68 thanks to what he called “a magical putting day.” Only a bogey at the 17th marred the proceedings; it prevented him from breaking his own PGA scoring record he set in 2000 at Valhalla. Shaun Micheel, the 2003 champion, was second at 13-under after a 69.

After moving into contention with a third-round 67, Garcia closed with a 70 (one better than his final round in 1999) and ended up with a share of third at 12-under 276, a score he would have dearly loved seven years earlier. (This time, there was no phone call from the prime minister of Spain: In 1999, José María Aznar telephoned Garcia after he came up just short to Woods.) Also at 276 were Donald, who shot 74, and Australia’s Adam Scott, who had a 67.

At 7,561 yards, following yet another upgrade by Rees Jones, Course No. 3 was the longest in major championship history. The biggest change was made at the famed

par-3 17th hole, the fourth time in as many majors that Medinah had hosted that the hole had been changed. This time the green was restored to a position closer to the water and shifted slightly to the right. The purse was $6.8 million with a winner’s share of $1.224 million—nearly double the $630,000 Woods pocketed in his previous Medinah conquest.

Not that the added length proved an issue against a field that featured ninety-three of the top one hundred in the world and was ranked the fourth strongest in major history. Chris Riley and Lucas Glover opened with 66s, while Billy Andrade had a 67—none of them known for wielding notable smash factor. Andrade got in the field on Tuesday as the seventh alternate. Davis Love III, the 1997 champion, was on his way to besting the field when he arrived at the par-3 17th hole at 7-under par. He left at 4 under after a triple bogey that included a whiff of his second shot from a thick lie behind the green. Olin Browne beat Love by five shots on the hole, making an ace with a 6-iron from 191 yards for, quite amazingly, his third hole-in-one in the championship.

Soft conditions left Medinah vulnerable to the tune of sixty players breaking par, a record for the championship. That included not only Woods, but also defending champion Phil Mickelson, who equaled Woods’s 69 while the pair played in the same group for the first time in five years.

“He’s in his own world, and we take care of our own game and our own business,” said Mickelson, downplaying their head-to-head battle that drew massive galleries.

The third member of the group, U.S. Open winner Geoff Ogilvy, was more in awe of the number of photographers pressing in on the 10th tee at the start of the round than

SLUMAN’S SWING COACH

ACTOR AND COMEDIAN BILL MURRAY, a passionate golfer who teamed with fellow Illinois native D. A. Points to win the 2011 team title in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, has been an occasional figure at Medinah Country Club. During the 2012 Ryder Cup, he played in the Ryder Cup Captains & Celebrity Scramble prior to the matches and pretended to steal the coveted trophy walking off the first tee, the Ryder Cup stuffed in his lavender-colored vest.

Of course, Murray, who was born in nearby Evanston, starred in one of the most popular golf movies of all time, Caddyshack. He even once caddied for Scott Simpson, another pro partner at Pebble Beach, in the 1997 Western Open at Cog Hill.

He also served as a golf instructor for former PGA champion Jeff Sluman. Well, he really was just acting.

In the week prior to the 2006 PGA Championship, Medinah was open only to competitors. That Friday, Sluman, who lived in Chicago at the time, called Medinah head pro Mike Scully to inform him that he was, “bringing out my new swing coach.” Yep, it was his pal, Murray.

Scully could only laugh, telling the Chicago Tribune, “How could I refuse an original from Caddyshack?”

Murray came dressed rather conservatively—for him. Over the years he has appeared on the golf course in various outrageous and colorful outfits. This time, he wore a white shirt and white and pink checkered shorts and a white bucket hat. No score was reported except for a birdie he made on the 14th hole.

Over the years, film stars and entertainers have made their way to Medinah. Bob Hope played Course No. 3 in 1949, turning in a 78, and in 1952, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis snuck in a round. Interestingly, the following year, the comedy pair starred in the movie, The Caddy.

As for Murray, more than once he benefited from Sluman’s willingness to abet unauthorized play on a tournament course. A year or two prior to the Medinah incursion, Sluman and Murray played a practice round before the start of the PGA Tour stop in Miami, Florida, at Doral Resort (now known as Trump Doral). They finished eight holes before officials caught on.

“I told Bill we’ll finish the ninth hole and then we better get the heck out of here,” Sluman recalled, laughing. “It worked better at Medinah. We got in the whole round. I’m glad they took it well. I don’t know what we shot. I don’t remember that many details. I probably spent a hundred nights with Bill that were more entertaining. If I wrote a book, I’d have to spend two or three chapters on him.”

of the large galleries. He, too, shot 69. “It was probably the most memorable ThursdayFriday of any tournament anywhere,” he said. “On Thursday there must have been five hundred people inside the ropes. Unbelievable.”

Seventy players made the cut at even-par 144 as the second round was conducted amid cloudy and misty weather. More than a third of the survivors, twenty-four players, were crowding the top of the leaderboard, bunched within four strokes of one another paced by Andrade, Donald, Tim Herron, and Henrik Stenson at 8-under 136. Woods was only one behind but not happy about his form, and he stalked off to the practice range after signing for a 68. First, however, he met with the media, and he managed a grin when, during the interview, Mickelson held an umbrella over his head as rain began to intensify. It was twilight when Woods reached the range with caddie Steve Williams and swing instructor Hank Haney in tow. Only two Illinois PGA officials and club photographer Nick Novelli watched as Woods started rifling 5-irons under the illumination of temporary lights while rain fell.

After several minutes, Williams unsheathed the yawning umbrella from Woods’ bag. Haney moved under it, too. Woods glanced back without moving his head, noticing what his minions had done. He addressed his ball but didn’t move. A few seconds elapsed. Then a few more. Finally, he glared at Williams and Haney.

“It was like, ‘Really guys?’ He’s out there working in the rain. He didn’t think they should be under an umbrella,” Novelli recalled. No words were exchanged. Williams closed the umbrella. Woods resumed his work with his 5-iron.

“The IPGA guys and I just looked at each other,” Novelli said. “What did we just see? We knew right then there was no way Tiger was going to lose that championship.”

If that was one sign that Woods was going to win it, Donald provided another. Ranked eleventh in the world and getting a fair amount of support for his Northwestern ties, Donald was nearly as good as Woods on Saturday, countering Tiger’s courserecord-tying 65 with a 66 as they broke away from a logjam that at one point featured ten players tied for the lead. Then he showed up on Sunday for his 2:50 p.m. starting time with Woods wearing… a red shirt? Uh oh. The Sunday red look belonged to Tiger. In 2024, he even launched his own apparel line called, fittingly, Sun Day Red. Donald never made a birdie in his closing 74. Coincidence?

“He showed up on Sunday wearing that red shirt, and the tournament was over by the third hole. I mean, it was the worst decision he could have made,” said Medinah member Ryan Potts, who spent the final round as a sort of forecaddie for Woods to ensure that if he hit his ball offline, it would not be disturbed by the gallery. There weren’t many times Potts’s help was required. Woods played solidly.

“God, I love this place,” Woods told club members during a champagne toast in the aftermath. Art Frigo, the tournament’s general chair, promptly bestowed on Woods an honorary membership. He is Medinah’s only honorary member.

“That’s something, isn’t it? I wasn’t aware until JT [Justin Thomas] mentioned it. That’s pretty good, huh?” Woods said in 2024. His 133 on the weekend was the lowest of his career in a major, one better than his 134 over the final thirty-six holes in his 1997 Masters win. The victory moved him into second place all-time in major championship history, one more than Walter Hagen. Only Nicklaus with eighteen was ahead of him— and, of course, remains so.

He rewarded himself the next day by flying to Texas to pick up a pet labradoodle he named Yogi. “That trip was a lot more fun with the Wanamaker,” Tiger noted.

It was a grand time for Medinah, too. Course No. 3 took a beating, sure—including the third albatross in PGA history in the third round when Joey Sindelar holed out

his 3-wood second shot from 241 yards at the par-5 fifth hole—but the club had held another successful major championship. And another big event soon would arrive: the 39th Ryder Cup in 2012.

“It was a great week, but what I enjoyed about the tournament most was the fact that the Medinah membership accepted it so well and came together,” said John Fennell, president in 2006–2007. “We have a membership that volunteers tremendously. We like the tournaments. People get involved; they’re interested. It’s never like some guys are saying, ‘Oh, you’re taking my club away.’ There is never anything except excitement. And at the end of the week, we knew that we’d had a great tournament, and we couldn’t wait for the next one.”

Tiger Woods was given Honorary Member status after winning his third PGA Championship and second at Medinah.

Chapter Thirteen

THE “MIRACLE AT MEDINAH”

The 2012 Ryder Cup

AS THE ONLY MAN to win two major championships at Medinah Country Club, Tiger Woods has an abiding affection for the club and its Course No. 3. And, indeed, why shouldn’t he? Winner of fifteen major championships, Woods won multiple majors on only three layouts—Augusta National Golf Club, the Old Course at St Andrews in Scotland, and Medinah Course No. 3, site of his PGA Championship victories in 1999 and 2006. Upon pointing this out, Woods nodded his head affirmatively without comment, obviously assessing this bit of information with only a slight smile. Then he said something surprising.

Opposite: The scene at the first tee as Bubba Watson of Team USA marches down the fairway in the first Sunday Singles.

“Oh, yeah, Medinah is a great place. It was obviously very good to me,” he said. “But it’s a shame about that team event.”

That team event was the 2012 Ryder Cup. All these years later, the memory of that epic biennial event— one of the most improbable and astonishing in golf history—still stings, still sizzles upon the consciousness of a player who enjoyed more success at Medinah than anyone else in the game’s annals. What has come to be known as the “Miracle at Medinah” is a sporting event of historic proportions. But in sports, what is remembered as a miracle tends to gloss over an underlying narrative of epic disappointment for the losing side.

As longtime Boston-based golf writer Jim McCabe once noted, there are many Ryder Cups in the modern era in which one team establishes itself and seems destined to win. There have been two exceptions, both occurring on American soil. In 1999 at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, the Europeans were on their way to victory until the Americans staged a rally for the ages, winning eight-and-a-half of a possible twelve points in final-day singles matches for a stunning one-point decision under Captain Ben Crenshaw. No one had ever seen anything like it. Nothing could compare to it.

win eight points to retain the Ryder Cup, which they had reclaimed in 2010 at Celtic Manor in Wales. But they went one step farther. They won the matches outright with their own eight-and-a-half-point comeback. What’s more— and this is what makes it more incredible—is that they did it on a U.S. golf course that in all of its major events had never seen anything but American winners going back to Byron Nelson’s Western Open triumph in 1939.

“We had belief,” said Justin Rose, who provided one of the points for Europe by winning the last two holes and stunning Phil Mickelson. “But you still have to go out and do it. I’m telling you … we were almost as shocked as everyone else by what we did.”

Shock is probably the most appropriate word here. The result shocked the sporting world. But inside the confines of proud Medinah, the outcome left just about everyone stupefied.

“There is no doubt it was a memorable Ryder Cup. You still see it talked about. But it took a while to process that,” said Joe Ebner, club president in 2010–2011. “You should have seen the member tent after the closing ceremonies. The place was cleaned out. I think I was the only guy in there. Nobody was there. Nobody showed up.”

And the memory of it still lingers.

Then came the 39th Ryder Cup at Medinah, held September 28–30, 2012. Europe not only turned the tables, they one-upped their American counterparts. The U.S. led by four points heading into Sunday singles, the margin by which they trailed in 1999. The Europeans had to

“I’m still not over it. There aren’t many days that go by where I don’t think about it once or twice,” said Keegan Bradley, who was a rookie on the 2012 squad, going 3-10, and was the U.S. captain in 2025. “That [2012] Ryder Cup is the most fun I’ve ever had in any event. But then

those last two–three hours, I couldn’t have felt worse. I can be doing anything, and it will pop in my mind, and I get so bummed out. The ending was horrible. It’s so confusing to have those conflicting emotions.”

Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland could only agree, though his memory is exactly opposite. “It’s funny. I’ve probably had more enjoyable weeks in the Ryder Cup than I did in 2012. I will say that it was the greatest final day I’ve ever been involved in. I mean, 2014, 2018, and 2023 were all a lot more fun because the whole week was great. But 2012, it was just isolated to that one day. I’ve never experienced a greater sense of euphoria after a tournament. It was surreal. It was a rough few days before we got there.”

companies signed up for corporate hospitality. “The Ryder Cup was the most fascinating event I’ve ever seen here,” John Potts said. “I met Ryan at 6:30 a.m., they had just opened the gates; it was maybe 7:10 or so, and we see waves and waves of people already storming in. I’d never see anything like it—not at our other events. We realized quickly, ‘Whoa, this is bigger than we ever thought.’ But we were ready.”

So were the American players, who yet again were showing that Medinah Country Club was one of the great home-field advantages for American golf.

MEMBER JOHN POTTS met his son Ryan at the club early Monday morning and got a snapshot of what the week would be like. The Ryder Cup was poised to be a huge success for Medinah—and the receipts would verify that. The event was a sellout by early 2011 with forty thousand tickets sold. The PGA of America had projected sales of fifty-three chalets and clubhouse packages and ended up with seventy-six. Some 250

Through the first two days, everything was going according to plan under the leadership of Davis Love III. The Americans, anchored by veterans Jim Furyk, Phil Mickelson, and Tiger Woods, fielded four rookies among their twelve-man squad, but one of those rookies was U.S. Open winner Webb Simpson. Only Nicolas Colsaerts was making his debut on the European side, which boasted world No. 1 Rory McIlroy, the reigning PGA champion. It was time for the Yanks to defend home turf on a No. 3 layout that again had undergone changes by Rees Jones and now measured out at 7,658 yards. European captain José María Olazábal conceded that beating the Americans “is a tall order.”

Friday, September 28 — Day One

THE FIRST-DAY STARS were Mickelson and Bradley—soon to be called “Team Terrific”—who won twice to help the U.S. seize a 5-3 lead. Their 4-and-3 victory in morning foursomes dealt Luke Donald and Sergio Garcia their first loss together in the alternate-shot format. The U.S. and Europe split the foursomes session before the home side won three of four in the afternoon. With the enthusiastic Bradley at his side, Mickelson, forty-two, was an opening-day double winner for the first time in nine Ryder Cup appearances.

Simpson and Jason Dufner also won their first matches as rookies. In foursomes, Dufner won alongside Zach Johnson in a 3-and-2 triumph over Lee Westwood and Francesco Molinari. Simpson joined Masters champion Bubba Watson to crush Paul Lawrie and Peter Hanson, 5 and 4, in afternoon four-balls.

The only downer was Woods finding himself on the losing end twice, the fourth time in seven Ryder Cups that he had lost both matches on opening day. In fourball, Colsaerts was the Tiger slayer. The Belgian played spectacularly, shooting 62 on his own ball with eight birdies and an eagle as he and Westwood edged Woods and Steve Stricker, 1 up, to avoid a sweep. DAY ONE RESULTS TEAM USA 5 TEAM EUROPE 3

Saturday, September 29 — Day Two

THE WOODS-STRICKER LOSS the previous afternoon hardly slowed the Americans down. Another 5-3 effort on Day Two propelled the home team to a lead thought relatively safe. Mickelson and Bradley kept rolling, dismantling Donald and Westwood, 7 and 6, in morning foursomes. In forty-four holes, the pair had combined for twenty-one birdies. “We’re having so much fun,” said Mickelson, who then asked Love to give the duo the afternoon off—a decision questioned that evening and in the intervening years.

“I was the standard bearer for the Mickelson-Bradley match against Donald and Westwood,” said member Tony Palazzolo said. “That day was euphoric for the Americans, and the Euros were so distraught that Luke Donald’s wife and a European TV commentator yelled at me during the match that I was changing the numbers too quickly.”

The U.S. won three of four points in the morning and then the first two four-ball matches of the afternoon as Dustin Johnson and Matt Kuchar topped Colsaerts and Lawrie, 1 up, and Watson and Simpson posted another easy 5-and-4 decision, thumping Molinari and Rose. At that point, the Americans were ahead 10-4. Love was looking brilliant as the first U.S. captain since Billy Casper in 1979 to sit each of his players at least one match before singles.

Above:

Team USA’s Webb Simpson had plenty to cheer about Saturday afternoon in a Four-Ball match with teammate Bubba Watson.

Below:

Team USA’s Dustin Johnson blasts from a bunker in the lead afternoon match.

The rout was on. Until it wasn’t.

Donald birdied three of his final five holes, which was just enough to enable him and Garcia to hang on for a 1-up win over Woods and Stricker— though only after Stricker, the University of Illinois product, lipped out a birdie try from seven feet that would have meant a crucial half-point. Woods birdied five holes on the inward nine but came up short again after he and Stricker trailed 4 down at the turn.

What followed next as the sun softened was nothing short of astounding. England’s Ian Poulter, paired with McIlroy, became a man possessed—and he looked it, as his wild-eyed celebrations of each of his five birdies on the last five holes left an indelible imprint on the day’s proceedings—and carried over to the final day. A left-to-right fifteen-footer at 16 gave the Euros their first lead of the match against Dufner and Zach Johnson, and Poulter’s last two putts, from eight and ten feet, respectively, preserved the 1-up decision. It was growing dark when he sank the last one.

America didn’t understand how much darker it could get.

“We had to make birdies,” Poulter said after his late-stage heroics that improved his Ryder Cup record at the time to 11-3. “Yeah, I surprised myself. I mean, match play,

I love the fight of it. You get to stare your opponent straight in the face, and sometimes that’s what you need to do.”

“Winning those two points on Saturday night to go from 10-4 to 10-6 was huge,” McIlroy recalled. “That gave us a spark. All we really had was a chance, and I think that’s all we could say. But at least we had a chance.”

Nevertheless, American prospects still appeared bright. In five of its six pairings wins, Europe had triumphed by the slimmest of margins, 1 up. And in two of those matches, the Americans lipped out tying birdie putts on the 18th hole. The visitors had to work hard for every point. America had coasted in several victories. An air of inevitability still wafted through Medinah’s wooded acreage and its hospitality chalets.

“We were playing well. We still had a comfortable lead,” Love remembers. “When we were putting together our singles lineup, we even had discussions about who was going to get the winning point. ‘If we put Jason Dufner here, he probably gets it.’ We still felt very good about our position.”

Fred Couples, three-time winning captain in the Presidents Cup, had a different feeling, and he revealed years later that one of his biggest regrets was not speaking up to express his reservations. “We were just a little too amped up before the pairings that night. It’s not that anyone thought we had it won, but we were excited,” Couples said. “I read the room, and I didn’t think we had quite the right mindset. I wish I had said something.” DAY TWO RESULTS

TEAM USA 10 TEAM EUROPE 6

Team Europe’s Ian Poulter’s clutch putting guided him to 4-0-0 performance.

Sunday, September 30 — Day Three

ON THE FINAL DAY on what became one of the most remarkable Ryder Cup afternoons in the event’s history, the Europeans wore their hearts on their sleeves, as they always do, but this time it was the literal truth. The Americans, meanwhile, wore their standard red, white, and blue but mostly only saw red, and it was in their faces and not on the board, where they had been dominating for the previous forty-eight hours.

In a move that inspired his players, Olazábal marched out his top-heavy singles lineup in white shirts emblazoned on the sleeve with the image of the late Seve Ballesteros, the emotional Spanish firebrand for the Old World-contingent. Complementing their white polo shirts were navy slacks, completing Ballesteros’s trademark ensemble.

“I wanted to have Seve’s image, or presence in a way,” Olazábal said during a recent interview at a PGA Tour Champions tournament in Akron, Ohio. “I went to talk to Carmen [Ballesteros’s wife], and I told her the idea I had in mind. It was going to be the first time that Seve was not going to be with us. He had that silhouette tattooed on his forearm, and I thought, you know, we needed that inspiration, and we needed him there with us.

“I spoke to Davis about it well beforehand, because, obviously, the United States has the red, white, and blue, and he was very kind in that regard. But honestly, Seve’s presence was there during the whole week. We showed videos, and we repeated some lines he had said in his Ryder Cup career. We weren’t doing a very good job up until

Sunday playing in his honor, but I think on Sunday, everybody in the team rallied around Seve’s memories.”

Just as Ben Crenshaw had front-loaded his singles lineup with his hottest players to turn the tide in 1999, Olazábal did likewise, which actually created an early problem he could not have foreseen. McIlroy was scheduled to play in the third match against Bradley at 11:25 a.m. but was nowhere to be found. Somehow, he had gotten confused on starting times as they related to the central time zone. Or so the story goes.

A police escort helped get the Northern Ireland native to the club with just enough time to put on his shoes and stroke a few putts on the practice green. Then he dispatched the red-hot Bradley, 2 and 1.

“I honestly think it helped that I didn’t have time to be nervous,” McIlroy said. “I barely had time to think.”

Jason Kinander, Ryder Cup co-chair in charge of the off-course organizational duties, was in one of his twice-daily “spec” meetings with the PGA of America, local law enforcement, Homeland Security, and others around 11 a.m. when an officer from Lombard suddenly excused himself. Kinander learned later that he helped get McIlroy to the golf course. “That was pretty wild.”

And the day was just getting started.

Love had put Watson and Simpson in the first two matches because they liked to play fast, and then followed with Bradley, Mickelson, Snedeker, and Dustin Johnson. Olazábal countered with Donald, Poulter, McIlroy, Rose, Lawrie, and Colsaerts. Europe swept the first five matches, while Johnson momentarily stemmed the tide by stopping Colsaerts. Love was on his radio not so much in a panic but disbelief.

“We had a plan for the first two days, but then we didn’t have a plan for the third day, and that was one of the lessons we took from that,” Love said. “If the momentum switches mentally and physically, you cannot overcome it.

“My favorite story, hard as it is to talk about, is that sometime late that night, maybe 10 o’clock, the guys from the other team come in our team room, and we chitchat. [European vice captain] Darren Clark grabs me and takes me outside, because he knew we had a patio where he could smoke a cigar. He sits me down and he says, ‘What in the world were you thinking? That lineup? You knew we were going to load the boat, and you didn’t load the boat.’ Darren and I, unfortunately, we still laugh about that talk, but he laughs about it because they won. And I laugh about it because I’m trying not to cry.”

The key match turned out to be Rose’s 1-up win over Mickelson. Rose would win the 2013 U.S. Open, and he gives some credit for that to what transpired over the final three holes against his famous

left-handed opponent. First, Rose, 1 down at the time, sank a twelve-foot putt at 16 to halve the hole, and then he converted a thirty-five-foot birdie putt from the back of the 17th green to square the match. Another twelve-footer for birdie at the home hole capped the rally—and likely tipped the scales permanently in Europe’s favor.

“They coined it the ‘Miracle at Medinah,’ and my match had a little bit of that feeling,” Rose remembers. “Everything about that week felt like we were on the end of a thumping. I hadn’t really bought in yet that the Ryder Cup was that important to my career, and then we’re getting hammered, and I’m thinking, ‘I’m not sure this juice is worth the squeeze.’ And then all of a sudden it turned into one of the best days of my career.”

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“I just really pushed there at the end, thinking maybe I can at least get a halfpoint,” Rose added. “Sometimes you push and it goes the wrong way. But when I made that putt at 17, I wanted to dive-bomb into the lake. We had a match. And then to

Team Europe’s Justin Rose’s twelve-foot birdie capped a rally to defeat Team USA’s Phil Mickelson, 1 up.

Martin Kaymer is mobbed by teammates after his five-foot putt on the eighteenth hole clinched the point to enable Europe to retain the Ryder Cup.

finish it off … just a very special moment. But then the guys behind us had to come through.”

When Martin Kaymer holed a six-foot par putt on 18 to beat Stricker, the German star pumped both fists above his head. His was the eighth victory of the day, and Europe had its fourteenth point, ensuring a tie and retention of the Cup. Olazábal fought back tears. Rose pointed at the silhouette of Seve on his sleeve and then to the sky. Molinari made the comeback complete when he halved his match with Woods in the final game. Winner of fourteen majors to that point, Woods had played well but finished the week 0-3-1, and the general thinking was his services were wasted in singles as the U.S. anchor man.

Six of the twelve matches that warm Sunday went the distance, and Europe won five of them.

“There is so much history at Medinah, and for us to have a piece of that means a great deal to us because you’re talking about the Ryder Cup,” Olazábal said. “I know that for us, the Ryder Cup means… I wouldn’t say almost everything, but it’s one of the most important events that you can be part of, period. There was a lot of joy in that victory, but, man, there was a lot of pain and suffering before we got to that point. And I suppose that’s what makes it a very emotional thing for our side.”

DAY THREE RESULTS

TEAM USA 13½ TEAM EUROPE 14½

The Celebration

DON LARSON, the Ryder Cup Committee chair, was witness to all that emotion later that evening. And in one sense he was not surprised by the outcome.

“The memory I have from that week was the difference between the two teams in the locker rooms,” Larson said. “The Americans were very much individuals, all businesslike and extremely uptight, and the Europeans had a cohesive team and they kept things light. I think Davis learned a lot here, and he took that and went on to become very successful at Hazeltine [in 2016].”

“The Europeans got to calling the Americans ‘the ice princesses.’ They were chilly all week,” said past president Bill Kuehn, who served on the Ryder Cup Executive Committee. “Even when they were down, the Europeans seemed to stay loose, and I don’t know, maybe that contributed to what happened the last day. Things started snowballing, and there was nothing the Americans could do. It was clear it was an avalanche.”

And it rolled on right into the night.

“I remember that Ollie hung a clock around Rory’s neck during their celebration,” Kinander said. “They were a pretty happy bunch of guys, and it was pretty cool to see what it meant to them.”

Above: The teams on stage for the Closing Ceremony

Inset: José María Olazábal accepts applause while hoisting the Ryder Cup.

Dana Gattone, then a starry-eyed teenager, was able to take advantage of the Europeans’ generous nature not long after the closing ceremonies. “It’s still one of my favorite memories,” she began. “After the Ryder Cup sort of let down for a lot of people, the whole place emptied out … so my brother [Joe] took me out to kind of walk around, and Team Europe was actually celebrating on the putting green. There was a photo shoot. I had nothing for them to sign. My brother grabbed a little European flag from somewhere—and I still thank him for this moment—and then I turned around and got a picture, and I have one of Sergio Garcia coming up and kissing me on the cheek after he exed out the ‘I love USA’ tattoo on my cheek. So that was really cool. I think I cried after that moment.”

“I’ll never forget being in the European team room until 10:30 Sunday night,” Larson said. “José María invited me in for the celebration. It was the men’s card room, and the champagne was flying all over the room, and guys like Lee Westwood could barely stand up, and they were writing notes on the bulletin board like, ‘Rory, please be on time tomorrow when the plane leaves. Otherwise, we’re leaving without you.’

It was quite a scene. What a time that was.”

It’s an event frozen in time. It lives on in memory and lore. And in hearts both fulfilled and injured.

“We won the Cup back in ’16 and Brandt Snedeker still apologizes for what happened at Medinah, and I know other guys feel bad about it, but nobody feels worse than me,” Love said. “People love to talk about it, and we hate that we lost, but to take the positive out of it, we did learn quite a lot. It’s something that’ll always be there for us. I’m sure in every sport there’s examples of, like, the Falcons in the Super Bowl [in 2017] or whatever in every sport. There’s an element of ‘what could have been’ that you’ll never get over.”

“To this day I still find it amazing that we won,” McIlroy said. “It’s funny … we really only had one great day. I’m just glad it was the one day that mattered.”

One miracle day.

Chapter Fourteen

THE DAY MEDINAH GAVE IN

The 2019 BMW Championship

BECAUSE of the numerous updates that have been executed on Course No. 3 over its nearly one hundred-year history, scoring records do not reflect an ordinal progression, even as it makes a chronological one.

Until Justin Thomas came along with that scintillating 11-under-par 61 in the third round of the 2019 BMW Championship, no one had shot a lower raw score on No. 3 since “Lighthorse” Harry Cooper’s 63 (7 under on what was a par-70 layout) in the 1930 Medinah Open event. And, yet, in 1933, Tommy Armour was credited for a course record of 67, 5-under par, having shot it on a course beefed up considerably. In the 1939 Western Open, Dick Metz of Lake Forest opened with a 4-under 67, earning credit for tying Armour’s mark.

During the 1949 U.S. Open, first alternate Ed “Porky” Oliver submitted a 5-under 66 in the final practice round—nice work but not official. Unfortunately for Oliver, because no one withdrew, Porky did not make it into the field. What did count was the record-tying 67 by eventual champion Cary Middlecoff in the second round.

Opposite: Justin Thomas celebrates on the 18th green after winning the 2019 BMW Championship.

Eddie Merrins, known as the “Little Pro,” bettered the mark with a 66 in the third round of the 1962 Western Open when No. 3 had been further stretched to 7,110 yards. “It was thought by the players of the time that Medinah was the hardest golf course in the country without trickery,” Merrins said. Skip Kendall, like Merrins, wasn’t a big hitter, and yet he knocked another stroke off the mark with a 7-under 65 in the second round of the 1999 PGA Championship when the course had muscled up to 7,401 yards.

Then Thomas blew up the place. And he didn’t do anything particularly crazy in the process. He just filled up the cup like he was rolling a marble into a canyon. “I remember I made some putts early, and then it was just a matter of riding a wave. I had a lot of confidence,” Thomas recalled.

In fact, he made five straight birdies to open the round and secured eight birdies in all. The Kentucky native, son of a PGA Professional, added two eagles on the inward nine, the first coming at the par-5 10th after a 5-wood approach to two feet. At the par-4 16th, he holed out for an eagle-2 from 180 yards with an 8-iron.

“It was all really solid and kind of in front of me,” Thomas said. “I just took advantage of all the opportunities and chances that I had. You know, I did catch it on a good day. As far as we all hit it now, if you give us soft conditions and not very much wind, we’re going to shoot nothing.”

True, venerable Medinah was rather vulnerable, softened by rain, while the wind took a sabbatical. Not that Thomas is a stranger to having his scorecard hanging in pro shops. He fired an 11-under 59 on the way to winning the 2017 Sony Open in Hawaii at Waialae Country Club, and his 61 in the 2022 Sentry broke the Plantation Course record at Kapalua Resort. Since 2015, Thomas’s nine rounds of 62 or lower is more than anyone else on the PGA Tour. That includes a 63 at the 2017 U.S. Open at Erin Hills that tied the championship record (since broken by Xander Schauffele and Rickie Fowler).

Thomas explained that his appetite for course records was first whet during a practice round for the Junior World Championship two decades ago when he set his first record as a nine-year-old. It came on an executive course, but he was darn proud of it. The previous mark was held by Tiger Woods. (Thomas has admitted he never gave Tiger any grief for this in fear of the verbal retaliation he would receive.)

Woods, it should be noted, was on hand, seeking his eighty-second tour title that would tie him atop the tour’s all-time list with Sam Snead. Victory No. 81 came in April when he won his fifth Masters title and fifteenth major championship. Nursing a mild oblique strain, all he could manage was a tie for thirty-seventh place at 7-under 281.

Had he not gone on to win the BMW, a playoff event on the PGA Tour schedule, Thomas said the 61 would have been memorable but not quite as special. He has always been about the wins and shooting a final-round 68 to beat Patrick Cantlay by two shots was what he relished most as he collected his tenth career title. His 25-under 263 total was seven shots lower than Woods’s winning score in the 2006 PGA Championship.

“Winning is so hard,” Thomas said. “And I think winning at certain golf courses does carry more meaning. Medinah has a certain reputation. You want to be a part of that. You always want to say you won at great golf courses. Big picture, that’s what I’ll think about when I think about that week.”

Justin Thomas holds the Wadley Cup after the final round of the BMW Championship.

Chapter Fifteen

MEMBER GOLF AT MEDINAH

TO PUT A SPIN on a line from the great Bobby Jones—you can take everything out of Medinah Country Club except golf and you would still have one of the greatest clubs in the world. Golf is what Medinah is known for. Golf is what carries the day and has throughout its history carried some of the financial load for the club, as well. Golf was infused into the Medinah mission from the start and imposes upon the physical boundaries of the club property and on its spiritual identity. It is the major pastime.

“I would have to say that there’s a consistent theme of a love of golf here at Medinah,“ said longtime member Ronald Hacker. “At its heart, Medinah is mostly about the golf. It’s at the center of what goes on, and that has always been the case whether it’s the tournaments that we’ve held or the day-to-day activity.”

With fifty-four holes at their disposal—three quality courses that could stand on their own—the members of Medinah Country Club who love the game know they have got it good. They do not take it for granted.

“I joined for the golf, to entertain clients mostly,” said Keith Acker, who celebrates his fiftieth year as a

Medinah member in 2025. “You talk about making an impression. My guests mostly wanted to play Course No. 3—and you understand why with the history we have there—but they were always impressed by whatever course we played. You have that kind of facility, three great courses, and there is no secret what people know best about Medinah. I didn’t have much interest in the other things. I love the golf.”

Acker has a lot of company. Even with Course No. 3 out of commission for renovation for half the year in 2024, Medinah still recorded nearly fifty thousand rounds.

Above: Members ready to tee off, circa 1930

Below: Governors Trophy, 1927

“Medinah’s identity always has been and always will be golf, even as we have begun to put more emphasis on other parts of the club,” said former board member and Golf Committee Chair Ryan Potts.

“I like to say that Medinah is a golf factory. I mean that in a good way. I think some members don’t necessarily like that reference, but it is what it is,” said Blue Kelly, nine-time women’s champion. “We have phenomenal facilities, and we develop more and more good players. Our golfers are so blessed with our courses, and we just have this wonderful culture. And it’s consistent. People are excited to play here. Nothing beats Medinah.”

Whether its recreational play, outings, leagues, or the many special events, golfers at Medinah are passionate about the game and about playing it at such a historic and highly acclaimed venue. And not only are they passionate, but they also are quite good.

“Our handicap roster, I think, is pretty impressive,” said Casey Brozek, who became director of golf in 2024. “We’ve got some really low handicappers here at Medinah. Even if the player is a 7 or a 9 [handicap], the thing I appreciate the most is the golf IQ. That’s what I’ve been impressed with even more than the number of players who are low handicappers on the roster.

“It’s been more about the 12 and the 15 and the 7 handicapper that are just really core golfers that really, truly appreciate the game,” Brozek added. “That’s why they’ve invested in coming here to Medinah and making this their second home, so to speak. They have a real appreciation and respect for the game and the club, and it’s a really cool culture and adds to the overall culture.”

The culture of good golf extends beyond the traditional Club Championships. The Opening Scramble kicks off a litany of events, including but not limited to the Medinah Classic, the Medinah Open, the Wanamaker Invitational, the Bendelow Cup, the Kadijah Tournament and the interclub “Ryder Cup” or “Solheim Cup.”

Ron Gottfred, who played in the first Medinah Classic and won it one year with his son, David, called Medinah “a blessing” because of its quality of golf. “I played a lot of courses all over the country, and when I come through that great gate, I always felt that our property was as good as anybody’s,” said Gottfred, who was a one-time captain of Medinah’s team in the Western District Golf League and won the Club Senior Championship in 2007. “I hope that future generations can uphold that thought process of having golf be the keynote of the club.”

Women’s Club Champions

THE FIRST NEWSWORTHY golf accomplishment by a member of Medinah Country Club was achieved by a woman. On August 29, 1933, at the fourth annual White Fez Day, Mrs. T. A. Heyer recorded two holes-in-one on Course No. 3. As reported in the Chicago Tribune, Heyer aced the par-3 13th and 17th holes. Her gross score was not part of the dispatch, nor what clubs she used to achieve the feat, but it is known that despite her back-nine heroics, Mrs. Heyer did not win any of the individual prizes in the event in which 602 women played.

Participation among women always has been significant at Medinah. Both the nine- and eighteen-hole leagues have healthy numbers, around 120-130 players each, and then there are offshoots, so to speak, such as the Tuesday nine-hole mixer of golfers known as Bandits and Banditas, men and women who compete under a variety of formats in a season-long competition that ends with awards for players of the year. John Tufo is credited with starting the Bandits in 2005. Other mixed golf events, organized by the members themselves and not official club events, have flourished, too.

Carol Hacker, a former women’s golf chair who still participates in the “Wunce Wuzzers” tournament that includes all of the past golf chairwomen, met husband Ron at Medinah when they were juniors and just starting out in the game.

Carol remembers participating with Ron in a couples’ twilight outing each summer in which the spouses were not teammates—perhaps a rather smart idea.

“At three or four o’clock we played nine holes and then went in for cocktails and dinner,” she said. “We divided up, and you could not be on the same team with your spouse, and we played foursomes the whole summer. Then we’d have a big party at the end of the year and celebrate the victor. If you really want to go back in time,” Hacker continued, “there used to be a picnic row out by the driving range, and couples would have their own private golf tournament. There were so many couples who would get together, and then they would have it catered out there and have a barbecue, and that was something my parents loved to do.”

Likewise, Ellie Fredrickson, a member since 1962 and proud to say she was still active in the game when she granted an interview for this book in 2024, mentioned a twice-yearly couples event that also stipulated that spouses could not be partners. Their “league” was known as “The Golden Throne.”

“We had one event in spring and one in the fall. And we drew for partners. And whoever was the worst player of that couple, they got to sit on this toilet that was painted gold,” she said. “Someone found this abandoned toilet in the woods out by

THE WUNCE WUZZERS

IN 1927 AN EIGHTEEN-HOLE LADIES’ LEAGUE was formed with Josephine Burnett as chair. Sixty-eight women have held that role since that time. Today, women elected as chairs serve for a total of six years: two years as assistant, two years as the chair, and two years as ex-officio.

In 1976, Cynthia Whitaker, a previous chairperson, came up with the idea of forming a group of all past chairwomen to gather annually for a day of “fun, food, and golf frolic,” and so the “Wunce Wuzzers” came to be.

In later years, the group discussed having a structure placed on Course No. 2 to honor those who had served the 18-Holer ladies of Medinah. Lynn Kinander-Marinelli presented to the board of directors the idea of placing an arbor somewhere on the course. The “Wunce Wuzzers Walk” was erected between what was then the fifth and sixth holes. During the renovation of Course No. 2 in 2016, the Wunce Wuzzers Walk was removed, but the arbor was later restored and now stands in the garden between holes 14 and 15.

The Wunce Wuzzers still meet in the late summer every year, and as each chair ends her term, she is awarded a gold camel charm and a scroll inducting her into the very elite group of Medinah ladies.

our old driving range, and we kept it, and we toasted the player who sat on the Golden Throne, and they had their named carved into the wooden seat. It was fun.”

It’s all fun. Even when the competition is serious.

Some impressive players have honed their games at Medinah, including twelvetime Women’s Club Championship winner Adeline Potter Marilyn Platte won the club title six times in a row from 1969–1974. More recently, Becky Roscich notched four victories in a five-year span starting in 2012. And, of course, there’s Blue (Kinander) Kelly, who has been one of the strongest players in club history.

She was taught by legendary Scottish-born golfer Errie Ball— whose pupils also included King Charles—and was a successful college player at Tulsa, where she was a member of the Golden Hurricanes team that won the national title in 1988. Future LPGA players Kelly Robbins and Melissa McNamara were teammates. Blue Kelly went on to win nine Women’s Club Championships with her first coming in 1990 and her last in 2019. Her accomplishments also include five Player of the Year titles in the Chicago District Women’s Golf District, and she has played in both the U.S. Women’s Open and U.S. Women’s Amateur.

“It was really just kind of a blind journey, and without Medinah, I can’t say that I would have played golf,” Kelly said modestly. “Basically, I took the game up just so I could spend time with my dad and my brothers, so it was the only way I could really hang out with my dad. He was trying to get our family business up and running. I mean, that’s truly why I started to play golf.”

“She was by far the best golfer among our family,” said Blue’s brother, Jason Kinander. “There was just something about her, and our dad recognized that and he took her to Butler National to see Errie Ball, and he just nurtured her talent.”

The dominant woman golfer from 2020 to 2025 was Dana (Gattone) Estes, who captured six consecutive championships. It was Kelly who invoked the term “queen” for Gattone with equal measures of respect and appreciation—and with good reason. Twice Gattone prevented Kelly from adding a tenth club title. In 2020, Gattone, a fourtime club junior champion, collected her Women’s Club Championship by an astounding thirty-seven strokes. Gattone posted a 3-under-par 213 to become the first woman to break par in the championship. The following year when the championship was contested at match play, Gattone dispatched Kelly, 4 and 3.

MAKING A SPLASH

WITH HER SIXTH STRAIGHT VICTORY in the Women‘s Club Championship in 2025, Dana (Gattone) Estes is enjoying one of the most impressive winning streaks in Medinah history, matching the six in a row captured by Marilyn Platte from 1969–1974. But Gattone is halfway to equaling the incredible run of Adeline Potter, who won the women’s title twelve times, including nine in a row from 1947–1955.

Potter, an Indiana native, was quite an athlete—and golf was not even her best sport. One of five children, Potter did well regionally, competing in the Women’s Western Amateur and winning co-medalist honors in the 1949 Illinois State Women’s Open. Impressive for a woman who didn’t pick up the game until 1941, when she was twenty-four years old. Her husband, Cleo, was a golf enthusiast who ran an advertising art firm in Chicago. He also had an ownership interest in Rivermoor Country Club in Waterford, Wisconsin, and the couple bounced between Rivermoor and Medinah.

Tommy Armour gave Adeline her first lessons in 1941, and three years later she won the first of her Medinah Women’s Club titles. Her last came in 1961.

Where she truly excelled, however, was in water sports.

A graduate of Northwestern University, Potter (whose maiden name was Price) was a member of the 1940 AAU championship team in water ballet, competing for the Lake Shore Athletic Club. She later became the instructor for that program.

Potter also was a national finalist in diving in 1942 and 1943. She stayed true to Medinah by participating in water shows and competing in club meets in swimming and diving, leading Medinah to the girls title in the 1943 Tribune Chicagoland races.

In 1944, she was pictured in LIFE magazine as part of a photo spread featuring the Lake Shore swimmers, and in 1956, Chicago Tribune Magazine published a fitness feature on Potter under the headline, “Keeping It Fit is Fun! This 39-YearOld Housewife is a Champion Golfer, Swimming Instructor and a Very Happy Woman.”

Potter, who in later years went by Potter Beier, extolled the virtues of both sports in the article, being quoted as saying, “Golf and swimming make you stretch, so that your muscles retain elasticity... If you have time for one, make it swimming, but I couldn’t give up either one unless I were incapacitated. I hope to keep going until I’m 85.”

Adeline Potter kept going until she was eighty-nine; she passed away on September 21, 2006, in Lisle, Illinois.

Like Kelly, Gattone, the daughter of members Joe and Susan, grew up at Medinah. She played golf at the University of Illinois and has remained active, working at TPS Golf Academy in Downers Grove. In connection with the 2026 Presidents Cup at Medinah, Dana took on the role of co-chair for the Junior Presidents Cup competition.

“I think the level of golf is really going up a notch to when Blue and Becky Roscich were winning so much,” said Gattone, who edged Isabella Samudio, a former Northern Illinois player, for her fifth straight win. “I mean, this year [2024] was really hard. It’s awesome that we have so many good players here, women and men. I’m just very lucky to have gotten started here at Medinah. I’ve really loved it. Since I was like six years old, I couldn’t wait to go out and play.”

Ruth Lake, who won a Women’s Club Championship in 2004, said the younger wave led by Gattone is special. “I’ve played almost fifty years out here, and the quality of women’s golf has improved so dramatically. It’s just hard to believe,” Lake said. “There never used to be scratch golfers out here. Now we even have plus handicaps, and I don’t know if it’s the equipment or the ball or what. I have never seen anybody hit it as far as these young ladies and score so well. It’s just wonderful to see.”

It’s more than a little poetic, not to mention coincidental, that Elaine Pope pulled off a feat that would have made Mrs. Heyer smile. On Wednesday, September 18, 2024, Pope aced the par-3 13th hole on the new Course No. 3, becoming the first member to record an ace on the new Course No. 3. Pope holed her tee shot from 118 yards with a knock-down 6-iron to record her second career ace.

Men’s Club Champions

BLUE KELLY’S “GOLF FACTORY” ASSESSMENT can’t be denied. The women’s talent pool at Medinah clearly is getting deeper, while on the men’s side, the number of bluechip golfers is impressive. Kelly and her husband, Timothy, have contributed to this legacy through their two sons, both standout golfers. There’s Will, a former member of the Florida Gulf Coast golf team who won the Medinah Club Championship in 2023. And there is older brother Tee-K, who arguably is the most accomplished player of recent vintage. Granted, he has a ways to go to surpass Dean Refram, two-time Medinah club champion and a winner on the PGA Tour who played in thirteen majors, including three starts in the Masters Tournament. But he’s working his way to it.

Tee-K (whose given name is Timothy) was an All-American golfer at The Ohio State University and was the first Buckeye to win an NCAA Regional title in 2016 before embarking on a pro career. The following year, competing on the PGA Tour

Harold “Mush” March — 1965, 1968, 1970, 1971, 1972

Harold March was born in Silton, Saskatchewan, and played right wing for the Chicago Blackhawks for seventeen seasons. Nicknamed “Mush” after the sled-dog command—he became a fan favorite, recording 153 goals and 230 assists in 759 games. March scored the first goal ever in Maple Leaf Gardens on November 12, 1931, and netted the overtime winner that clinched the 1934 Stanley Cup.

Latinoamerica, Kelly won the Puerto Plata DR Open. He also has competed on the Korn Ferry Tour. Medinah offered him the ideal lab for concocting a solid game.

“It wasn’t just the great facilities, but also having a great membership, and the sheer amount of good junior golfers we had just made it really fun to play golf all the time,” said Kelly, twice an Illinois Amateur champion and 2021 winner of the Illinois Open. “When I was like twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old, I was playing with sixteen-to-eighteen year olds every single day and especially every Tuesday. I mean, Tuesday during our junior days, it was like Christmas morning for us, just to be able to go out there and play with our buddies, and I’ll remember those days for the rest of my life.

“We’d play in the morning, and then go do chipping contests and hit punch shots at the range cart, and then afternoon came around and we were allowed to go back out. We’d go play again. And we couldn’t really play No. 3 until we were thirteen, and that would have to be with our parents or with another member or something. We played No. 2 a lot, and back then it was claustrophobic tight with tiny greens. It was just a super fun course to grow up on. Because of that, we all had good short games and we just had learned how to play golf and we learned how to score.”

Other golfers of note who have excelled include Brad Klune, who went to Boston College; John Callahan, who played at Northwestern; and Danny Stringfellow, who had a fine career at Auburn before also trying the pro ranks. Now a reinstated amateur, Stringfellow was the CDGA Player of the Year in 2024. This list, by the way, does not include many other good players who could have competed in college but did not pursue it.

Sean Bidzinski is glad he snuck a club title in while he could. Bidzinski, who played at Loyola University Chicago, has only been a member for a few years but has seen how deep the field is getting. He won the 2024 title on Labor Day weekend thanks to opening with a 65 on Course No. 2 and then hanging on, shooting 78 on the new Course No. 3 with a breezy final day to finish at even par over fifty-four holes and complete a wire-to-wire victory. Quincy Van Eekeren was runner-up, four strokes behind.

“It was on my radar, and it made up for the year before when I had the lead and then lost to Will [Kelly] when he had a solid final round,” Bidzinski said. “I’m not that old, but I have a young son now, which makes golf less of a priority, and the window is starting to close against all these good young guys we have out here.”

Bidzinski, among others, knows that the Men’s Club Championship has been a story of parity the last twenty-five years, with John Madden and C. J. Koroll leading the way with four titles apiece. T.J. Blakemore has won it three times. It’s an anygiven-weekend situation.

“That’s exactly right,” said Madden, who has played twice in the U.S. Senior Amateur, including the 2024 edition at The Honors Course in Ooltewah, Tennessee. “You never really know any more who is going to show up, and that kind of includes me. I won three times at stroke play when I always thought I’d be better at match play, but I somehow figured it out. I know Bill Becker won nine times [from 1979–1997], and there were a few guys in his time that could challenge him, but now it’s not like that. A lot of guys can win it, which is fun to see.”

Madden also has a couple of wins in the Senior Men’s Championship, which was started in 2002, but that’s no easy road either. Aiden Walsh won his fourth senior title in 2024. John Kneen has won the senior edition five times. And don’t overlook Tim Kelly adding to the family trophy case with his 2017 senior title.

While competition is keen, there is something to be said for the recreational aspects of the game as well. Golf is a pastoral pursuit, meant to be savored with friends and family, and it’s those times that resonate the most distinctly among the Medinah membership. It also can foster greater social interaction, which is why the men’s Thursday league is conducted in such a way that players never know who they will be paired with week to week.

“I think it brings more inclusiveness and familiarity throughout,” Brozek said. “It’s nice to have a club where you could show up on the putting green and have a threesome on the tee going off and they say to someone, ‘Hey, come on over and join us; let’s tee it up.’ Nobody gets left behind is the thing.”

“I love golf, love great golf, and love the thought of being out here on this big property with three great courses,” Michael Crance said. “I didn’t know a lot of members at the time I joined but quickly joined a good community of friends. My kids grew up here now, and that’s the other part of it, sharing it with them.”

“I played most of my golf on No. 3, but we always used to have great times with family golf and go over and play the No. 2 Course,” Ron Hacker recalled. “I remember fondly the Fourth of July. It was like a vacation for the whole place with all of our friends and families. The guys would get there earlier in the morning and play golf. We’d get off the golf course and [go] out to the range where they had the kids’ races, and then somebody would be saving a table, so we’d have a quick dinner. Then we’d all go grab clubs and we’d go bang around No. 2 before it got dark to watch the fireworks. I mean, you can’t replace those memories.”

Perhaps most representative of the heart and soul of Medinah golf is this group of gentlemen—Bob Pinion, Ed Lake, Jim Jennings, Mel Lee, Bill Higgins, Dave Henderson, Jim Cross, Bill Pape, Harry Roper, and Bob Switzer. During the summer, they meet four days a week at 7:00 a.m. and play eighteen holes. They always walk. They call themselves, simply, the “Golf Guys.”

BEYOND GOLF

Chapter Sixteen

MORE MEMBERS DOING MORE THINGS

329 —

AHOY MATEY! — 340 —

FINDING STRENGTH IN UNCERTAINTY — 347 —

Chapter Seventeen

THE BONDS OF MEDINAH — 355 — A PHILOSOPHY OF PHILANTHROPY

360 —

MEDINAH’S EVANS SCHOLARS

362 —

THE FAMILY TRUST — TREASURING THE STAFF

368 —

PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORIES

370 —

Chapter Sixteen

MORE MEMBERS DOING MORE THINGS

MEDINAH ALWAYS has been more than a country club. Through the years, however, complementary amenities have been overshadowed by what has been the most marketable, reputationally enhancing, and financially beneficial aspect of the facility. When there are national and international golf events boosting Medinah’s renown and its bottom line, and when the club can further add to its income stream by hosting outings on any of its three wellrespected courses, it’s only logical where the club’s focus would be drawn.

But a renewed emphasis on other amenities—mainly racquet sports, aquatics, and trap and skeet shooting—has transformed Medinah Country Club into a more wellrounded and more popular and utilitarian club. Its 640 acres have seen more members doing a lot more things.

Opposite: The tobaggon and ski jump was built in the late 1920s.

Former President Bill Kuehn explained the evolution of thinking that prompted the club to invest in other somewhat neglected assets to not only attract new members, but also to provide more value to current rolls. As noted in the seventy-five-year history book on Medinah by Tim Cronin, Margaret Schmidt, the daughter-in-law of charter member August Schmidt, said that Medinah, “was established as a family club.” August Schmidt was one of the brothers who owned the construction company that built the extraordinary clubhouse.

Medinah has returned to its roots as a way to blossom fully.

While the social calendar has never really missed a beat over the years—including popular occasions such as Fourth of July celebrations, Thanksgiving, the Inaugural Ball that celebrates the ushering in of each new club president, the Candlelight Dinners, and the Children’s Halloween and Christmas parties—there was an obvious need for club leaders to look at the facility holistically.

“We had just redone Course No. 1 with Tom Doak, and we still weren’t full. We still didn’t have a waiting list,” Kuehn said. “Then we redid Course No. 2 with Rees Jones; still not full, still no waiting list. What’s going on? Robert [Sereci, the former general manager] came in, and he said, ‘You guys need to do other amenities.’ We needed to make it easier to get families to join. We really did. And that was the step that we were kind of missing. So, we engaged some professionals, various

consultant groups to help us look at our other amenities, whether it was dining, the lodge, golf facilities outside of just courses and a range, tennis, and paddle. We had spent some money on the pool the last time we renovated, which was in the nineties. The pool was okay, but the footprint wasn’t very big; there were never enough chairs on busy days. For whatever reason, though, we diligently ignored the advice we were given. Finally, the moment that we said, ‘We’re going to spend money on the amenities and build up the amenities,’ that membership list turned around, and now we have a waiting list. So I would suggest that that was incredibly important.”

“This isn’t news,” board member and Membership Chair John Q Smith said, “but the 2020 plan was the game changer in my twenty-five years here.”

“We kind of reset what member expectations are, and I think they’re just going to go even higher,” added fellow board member Eric Achepohl.

Much already has been written about the importance of the club’s long-range strategic planning and changes through the Medinah 2020 plan, but it bears repeating here that the significant work on the Lodge and Gun Club about twenty years ago and the more recent work on the swimming pool, the Racquet Center, and the addition of the Golf Learning Center to augment the golf experience—all of which promote yearround utilization of the club—has made Medinah bigger, stronger, and better in just about every quantifiable measure.

“We had to come to the realization that we needed to focus on more than just golf,” said member Ann Gunst, who holds the distinction of being the first female board member at Medinah. “It didn’t mean that we weren’t a golf club, of course. It was to make it easier for the families to be here, offer more value for the membership. Give them the dining experiences they want. Build the paddle tennis and racquet center, build the GLC, with the simulators and bay doors where you can hit in inclement weather, and have lessons, and club fittings, and professional computerized stuff. Expand the Lodge; make the Lodge a little bit nicer.”

Nearly all of this has been done in the last six-to-eight years, but it sets up Medinah for years to come to offer something for everyone. The fact that nearly half the existing membership has come on board in roughly the same time frame is the ultimate validation. Members have more ways to wine, dine, and unwind.

“We’re famous for being a great golf club, but all of the ancillary facilities, including the Golf Learning Center, have taken on an identity of their own,” said Mark Valdick, a board member and chair of the Heritage Committee in 2024. “Really, just about everything at the club has grown, and people are enjoying things year-round, making new friends.”

Racquet Sports

Above and center:

Earliest photos of the original tennis grass courts, circa 1929

Above, upper right: Tennis was expanded to three clay surfaced courts with fencing erected.

The eighteenth green of Course No. 3 can be seen in the background.

Above, lower right:

Tennis courts by Lake Kadijah, circa 1986

IT IS BEYOND DISPUTE that the single most important improvement to Medinah’s year-round profile has been the Racquet Center that was a main component to the Medinah 2020 plan and was completed in 2018. Tennis has made a comeback. Pickleball is gaining popularity, and Medinah is likely to expand that offering in the near future. But paddle tennis has become all the rage, attracting participation of more than three hundred members and their spouses.

The renewed positioning of racquet sports as a priority resulted in a complex that includes four new synthetic clay tennis courts, four platform tennis courts for paddle tennis, and a warming hut that features a central bar, tables and chairs, televisions and bathrooms, plus the office of Anthony McPherson, who has been director of racquet sports since 2017. One of the tennis courts can be converted to a pickleball court, but McPherson said that because he gives as many lessons for pickleball as he does for tennis, additional facilities will likely be on a future agenda soon.

“Definitely, we need to create a much better center and more courts for the demand we’re seeing,” said board member Elizabeth Levy-Navarro. “We have a multiyear wait list. Members that won’t be able to join [as full members] still have access to paddle and pickleball, so we’re creating a large, vibrant pickleball and paddle tennis community.

Eventually, we can add paddle courts, add pickle courts, bring food into that center. Right now we’re at three hundred-ish people that play paddle tennis, which is pretty good if you think about a thousand households [of membership]. But we could easily get over 450 if we had pickle courts and a pickleball program. So you’re talking about a meaningful addition to the sense of community at the club.”

Growing interest in racquet sports is a vast departure from the past. “We always had tennis facilities, but we paid little attention to it until we wanted to expand our membership,” past president Matt Lydon said. “When I joined, the tennis courts were neglected. Nobody played on them except maybe for the junior programs.”

“If you showed up in your tennis duds in 2000, you’d have been laughed out of the place,” said longtime member John Madden, the four-time club champion who enjoys utilizing the club’s other entertainment choices. “That’s just how it was. Now we have hundreds and hundreds of members out there.”

Indeed, and paddle tennis is driving that resurgence. It has become a popular pursuit for members whose primary interest is golf. Sean Bidzinski, the

2024 men’s club golf champion, and his wife, Celine, like to play paddle sports. So does current board member Levy-Navarro, who is on one of the seven women’s paddle tennis teams and also played for Medinah’s team in the Women’s Eighteen-Hole Golf League. They are just two of many “crossover” participants.

In 2024, there were seven men’s and seven women’s traveling paddle teams of various levels competing against other clubs in what is called the Southwest League. Medinah members also play in a division of the more established North Shore League. In-house leagues are also flourishing. And, of course, recreational participation is surging.

“Yeah, it’s funny, my wife [Peggi] never was out here at all. She’s not a golfer, but when they put paddle up, she’s now an avid paddle player, which is just very strange because she was never out here,” past president Bruce D’Angelo noted. “She didn’t even know her member number, and now she certainly does. It just shows you how the things we did are having a tremendous impact.”

John Q. Smith tells a similar story about his wife, Karen.

“At my very first meeting on the Membership Committee in 2018, Jean Mitchell was mentioning to a prospective member that we have a bridge club, and my wife,

Karen, knows how to play bridge, right? So she started coming out and playing, and coincident with that, after the first year of paddle, she said, ‘Well, I’m going to start playing paddle,’ and the rest is history. She is out there all the time. She took on paddle tennis, and she created this whole new group of friendships.”

McPherson, who played tennis collegiately at Elmhurst University, has enjoyed the constant activity at the Racquet Center, which he points out is not unique to Medinah.

“I think it’s been really fun to be kind of in this era, and it’s not just at country clubs,” McPherson said. “I mean, this is all over. Even tennis clubs historically that only were tennis, they had to evolve. And I’ll tell you, people are really enjoying it because it’s just bringing a fresh new outlook—not just tennis, but to all racquet sports. And for me personally, it’s been kind of a cool journey because it kind of livens things up.”

Opposite and above:

Details of the Racquet Center

The Pool, Swimming, and Diving

SWIMMING ALWAYS was meant to be a primary recreational offering from the get-go, but because of the financial struggles of the early years, followed by the onset of the Depression, the first swimming pool wasn’t completed until 1938—and it didn’t meet the lofty early designs of a pool and recreation area shaped like a pirate ship.

Through the years, the swim facilities have seen a lot of activity, beyond, that is, the usual traffic as an everyday summer hangout. The pool underwent a major remodel in 2001 and then saw further enhancements in 2017 with the expansion of the deck and the addition of the adjacent Cabana Bar that were elements of the Medinah 2020 plan. The operation has seen changes, too, in the form of poolside service that promotes a real resort atmosphere.

Swimming and diving competitions have been a staple through the years, and in a bygone era there were Medinah members who competed in national Amateur Athletic Union events—and with some success, most notably Adeline Potter, who excelled at diving and was an AAU champion in water ballet in 1940. Potter, the most decorated women’s club champion in golf, also was among a traveling team that offered water shows at the Medinah pool. The outdoor, evening pool parties known as Lido Nights, also were common.

Opposite: An evening dive competition, late 1940s

AHOY, MATEY!

IN THE SUMMER OF 1934, as Medinah clawed its way out of the Depression, the club’s board considered an idea bold enough to defy the times—proposing a new recreation area that would have a swimming pool encased withing a replica of an old wooden ship.

They called it “The Good Ship Medinah.”

Designed by the Chicago landscape architects F. A. Cushing Smith & Associates, the plans were ambitious and also included masts, sails, high-diving platforms, wading pool, waterfall, children’s playhouse and playground, show dancing terrace, locker rooms, bar, and an auditorium for stage

performances. But by autumn, reality set in. Material costs were rising, and some members feared the design too whimsical for the club’s formal image. The club’s board shelved the concept, and the plans were packed away in the club’s archives.

Though never built, “The Good Ship Medinah” lived on in memory—the grandest vessel that never sailed, floating only in the dreams of a daring summer. In hindsight, the concept foreshadowed the club’s ongoing commitment to imaginative, resort-style amenities that continue to define the Medinah experience today.

To this day, junior swimmers compete against other clubs as part of the Medinah Monsters in the Dolphin League Conference. It’s a successful program that includes approximately two hundred or so juniors, ages five to fourteen.

THE CHILDREN OF MEMBERS who participate in Medinah’s long-running Junior Program introduces them to golf, aquatics, and racquet sports. Teaching professional Eva Rogers conducts golf lessons, while McPherson handles the tennis lessons, Mia Carone is the dive coach, and Gabi Knott is the swim coach. While the swimmers square off against other swim teams, they also participate in club swimming and diving competitions at the end of the summer. Junior club titles also are contested in golf and tennis in different flights.

The Junior Program is among the most treasured memories of many members. Talk about an idyllic childhood. To have “the run of the place” as Jason Kinander mischievously called his younger days at Medinah, was to know that summers held endless possibilities for fun in an enriching environment.

“Every Junior Day, there’d be lessons at the range from the pros,” Ron Hacker remembers. “Then we’d all go out and play, and then the juniors would do things in the

pool, like swimming races. It was quite an active program. That’s where I met [wife] Carol. We kind of did everything. We also went on trips. We had an old bus back then, and Carol’s mom was the Junior Chair, and she drove that doggone bus to the roller skating rink with all of us kids. So that was one of my first pseudo dates with Carol.”

Jefferey Schulze, whose grandfather, Arthur, was one of the early buyers of a perpetual membership—his membership certificate was No. 56— said that not only was he enrolled in the Junior Program, but that his three children went on to participate in it. Swimming, he admits, wasn’t quite his thing, however.

“I was terrible in the pool, but later my kids were on the swim team, and they were good. A lot better than me,” said Schulze, who has been at the club all his life and has proof—a photo of him at the swimming pool when he was just a few months old. “Mostly I remember when I was six years old, I started with the twoholers and then the three-holers and playing golf with the other kids. We didn’t really do tennis. We spent a lot of time at the pool. We used to lay down in that cold water in the tunnel underneath, which is the foot bath, and then go running up the stairs to jump in the water as little kids would do. And then we loved the high dive [board] there that they took down for safety purposes. I don’t know what year, but we had one member who dove off the high dive and hit her head on the low dive.”

“I just remember Junior Tuesdays,” Dana (Gattone) Estes said. “We would be out here doing swimming and diving and tennis and golf, and, I mean, it was a marathon of a day. I have two older brothers, and I think our parents signed us up for everything they possibly could. Then we’d grab a shower, have dinner, and go home. We would pack the car to leave at 6 a.m. and get home at 10 p.m., and we were just spent.”

As one former Heritage Committee member wrote more than a decade ago, “The Junior program remains an important part of the generational legacy of our club.”

FINDING STRENGTH IN UNCERTAINTY

MEDINAH COUNTRY CLUB has weathered some challenging periods in its illustrious history, and the COVID-19 pandemic was only the latest period of uncertainty, throwing a very big wrench into the operations and budget of the facility. Not that Medinah was alone in that regard, but the club encountered its own unique set of circumstances. The clubhouse was closed to a membership that had just finished investing millions into a substantial upgrade. Preparations for the renovation of Course No. 3, including a search for the right design team, were hamstrung by travel restrictions and health considerations.

“It was an interesting time,” Joe Gattone, club president in 2020–2021, said with a wry grin. “The world was shutting down.”

Indeed it was.

But the members of Medinah are nothing if not resilient. And resourceful. And determined.

Gattone and his leadership team were central to helping shepherd the club through a difficult and confusing time, when information about the virus kept changing as did the rules for businesses and the society at large. The last thing a country club wanted to embrace is something antithetical to its ethos called “social distancing,” but it didn’t have a choice. All Medinah could do was make the best of the situation.

“It’s funny,” Gattone recalled. “Mike Scimo, he kind of joked, when I became president and he was the outgoing president, that we had just finished Medinah 2020. We kind of had all the construction done, and Mike said, ‘Joe’s the perfect guy for the job now. He’s going to come in and run things.’ Then he said to me, ‘Just don’t screw it up.’ Well, who knew what was about to happen?”

Lockdowns really started to hit hard in March 2020, and Medinah’s members weren’t certain that the club could open. The board was meeting five or six days a week while the management team was trying to keep up with new rules constantly coming out of the governor’s office.

golf was limited to twosomes in fifteen minute intervals before more sane rules prevailed. But carts weren’t allowed—which was not the worst thing. Medinah brought in hundreds of push carts. Everyone walked. And the summer weather was quite ideal. Not just the men got out more. “Our nine-hole league just boomed,” remembered member Blue Kelly. “Being with our friends meant so much to us.”

Tables and chairs were set up in the open spaces, and the Medinah community bonded as best they could. Meanwhile, members utilized the club and supported the staff who were keeping the club going by ordering food for takeout. And the Lodge also saw an uptick in participation. Suddenly, the place was packed, recalls member Tony Palazzolo.

“Medinah is a very costly facility to run. If we shut the gate tomorrow and have nothing coming in other than dues revenue, it’s going to be very hard on the membership. So, as we were analyzing and understanding the rules, we’re like, ‘Geez, we’re going to lose $3, $4, or $5 million.’ So, we’re trying to make decisions on how to make the facility available to the extent the rules said at the time. It might change next week. That was a very difficult time for the board, for the management team.”

As spring approached, people around the country turned in greater and greater numbers to one outdoor activity that wasn’t frowned upon. Golf participation started to boom. Obviously, Medinah couldn’t have been better positioned. At first,

“I’ll tell you what,” said Director of Purchasing Rod Buckner. “Because of COVID, we became experts in carry out. We honed in on that, and that has helped us become even better in our year-round service. So something good came out of that time.”

That wasn’t the only thing. The membership stepped up to help their employees by establishing a disaster fund that kept workers on the payroll for most of the lockdown. According to Head of People and Culture Tammy Napoli, a fund of $360,000 was collected to distribute to the club’s staff incrementally. Money left over from that fund has been paid forward into what is now an employee relief fund to which the staff can apply.

“People just stepped up right away. They just really care so much about everyone here,” Napoli said.

Despite the uncertainties of the time, the financial strains and the general unease in dealing with the coronavirus itself, Medinah came through the pandemic in relatively good shape and even more tightly knit.

“It was probably one of the most fun summers we ever had,” Gattone said. “People had really nothing to do except come out to Medinah. We kind of bonded even more. We were with our friends and our families, and as challenging as it was, we got through it and made the best of it.”

The Lodge

ASIDE FROM GOLF, clay shooting is the longest-running activity at Medinah. Members started shooting trap on December 26, 1925—on a day when temperatures were below freezing. On October 14, 1928, a grand opening was held for the Gun Club’s first Lodge, though electricity wasn’t added until February 1929. On November 8 of that same year, a member named L. W. Pettise organized a celebration that included food and music. Weekend turkey shoots were well-attended on the two trap fields that stretched out over Lake Kadijah. Skeet machines were introduced in the 1960s.

Medinah hosted its first interclub competition against Glen Oak Country Club on March 11, 1928, which began a run of successful competition. The club hosted its first invitational shoot in April 1929, with fifteen suburban district clubs competing.

Medinah won it and then won it again in 1930 among ten clubs when member E. E. Hall shattered ninety-nine of one hundred clay pigeons. By 1932, Medinah was holding an invitational in which shooters from forty-two clubs attended.

Then as now, the shooting doesn’t begin until November 1, after the closing of Course No. 3, and the season runs until April 1 with the Gun Club open four days a week, on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. With the Golf Learning Center up and running, several members have noted that it’s not unusual to spend part of their day at the GLC and then migrate over to the Lodge for some shooting.

When the Lodge was rebuilt in 2004, it had to remain on the same footprint due to zoning and building code restrictions, but the addition of the lower safe room adds to the convenience of allowing members to leave their guns and ammunition in a secure storage area. Pub-style food and barbecue offerings have been a winner for the hundreds of shooters. The atmosphere overall is warm and informal. Arturo Medina, who for decades has been a fixture managing the Gun Club, is always on hand to assist members and to see to it that food and drinks are served efficiently. Burgers and egg sandwiches are favorites. The steaks are stellar.

“We are kind of famous for our food,” Medina said.

“My favorite place is the Gun Club. It always has been just because it’s a more intimate setting,” said Gunst, who is not alone; regular users have more than doubled to nearly 150 in recent years. “I just enjoy that kind of environment; it’s more casual and relaxed.”

Gunst enjoys telling the story of her role in overseeing the upgrade of the facility when she served on the board in 2003–2005. It was important to have a new Lodge built in time for the 2006 PGA Championship so that it could be used for hospitality. The upgraded structure replaced the 1961 building erected after a mysterious fire leveled the original. “I was in charge of sports and pastimes, and I knew that I needed to get better acquainted with the Gun Club,” Gunst said. “So I remember going out there and opening the door and smoke is all over the place, and there’s just a bunch of old guys sitting at this poker table. And they all look at me, like, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Talk about intimidating. But we made it bigger and more comfortable. And it’s so popular now it probably needs to be expanded again somehow.”

Men and women can enjoy recreational and competitive shooting, and the latter options are very popular. There’s the Medinah Clay Shooting League, a season-long team handicap skeet league that meets on the second Wednesday of each month. Another season-long event is the Lodge Cup Skeet Tournament. And some of the club’s best shooters can compete for Medinah in the Country Club Skeet League that features competition against shooters from Glen Oak Country Club, Oak Park Country Club, and White Gates Skeet Club.

The Chairman’s Cup is the big event, a single-day tournament among the topthirty shooters at Medinah competing in all three shooting disciplines at the club: skeet, sixteen-yard trap, and five-stand. Shooters also compete for club skeet and trap championships as well as for overall club champion. Ryan Vance won in 2024, his first club title. A couples’ competition also tends to draw strong interest.

A few young shooters have distinguished themselves through the years. Two of note are David Menconi and Ryan DeRosa, who won Illinois Junior Skeet Championships in the mid-1990s and early 2000s, respectively.

While celebrities and athletes have beaten a path to Medinah’s golf courses, the Gun Club has also had its share of notable visitors, among them NFL Hall of Famer Dan Hampton and other members of the Chicago Bears.

Below:

But just as Ann Gunst described it, the Gun Club and Lodge is a place to unwind in a casual setting. It’s likely that in addition to post-round shooting, members will enjoy a convivial atmosphere and more often than not a few card games will ensue.

It’s not a bad place for quiet reflection, either—once the guns go silent, that is.

“The fact that it overlooks the water, it’s actually the most scenic and best view for dining of any place we have,” said Ed Lake, who with his wife, Ruth, has been a member since 1976. “You can sit inside or if you’re with someone who wants to smoke a cigar we have tables underneath the overhang with infrared heaters, and it’s just the nicest setting. It’s a beautiful little place.”

Chapter Seventeen

THE BONDS OF MEDINAH

“Everything …”

THAT’S USUALLY the first word said by members when reflecting about Medinah Country Club, and invariably this one-word answer punches the air to start. “Everything” covers a lot of ground, but, then again, there is much ground inside the storied gates of Medinah, so there is much to love, appreciate, and enjoy.

“There are a lot of perks to being a member of this club,” said John Duggan Jr., who is a member of the committee for the 2026 Presidents Cup. “You have the perks of the facilities, and there are the perks of the camaraderie that you sense that is a lift to your spirits.”

Medinah is a club for families. It is also a club that feels like a family. These are the bonds that have held the club together for a century. Though the number of members has, at times, receded—as recently as earlier this decade the number hovered around six hundred—the core has remained steady and steadfast, and the devotion to the ideals of a community of like-minded souls has remained unshaken, even amid the struggles of the early years or

during the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There’s a lot to be said for the spirit here,” said Matt Lydon, president in 2014–2015. “I think about what they had to go through way back, which was the Depression years, where they had to come together with committees to keep the club alive. It was a meaningful thing, what the Shriners did. I’m not sure what would have happened to Medinah; it probably would not have survived. Being a member here is about great privilege, but I think we have a sense of great responsibility, too, that keeps the heart of it alive.”

It may be the golf that draws people to Medinah in many cases, but it’s the relationships that keep people

Inset: The end of World War II brought members together to celebrate at a Harvest Dance in 1946.

Opposite: Fourth of July festivities, 2025

around. It’s not difficult to find friends here. Medinah members are typically salt-of-the-earth types, grounded, successful yet humble, inclined to check their egos at the front gate, eager to make an investment of their time more than their treasure for the sake of ensuring a first-rate experience today and in the future.

At the time of the writing of this book, there were nearly 1,100 dues-paying members across seventeen membership categories and about 2,500 people who are affiliated with Medinah when factoring in family relations. Since 2015, the club has welcomed five hundred new members. They have all gone through a detailed and earnest interview process that drills home the important qualifications.

“When we talk to a prospective member,” said John Q. Smith, the membership chair through 2024, “we indicate to them that their invitation is subject to approval by the committee. And then approximately a week later, approval by the board. And my closing comments to the invitees is that Medinah is built on three pillars—tradition, superior championship golf, and family values. That’s the literal playbook. And to everybody on the committee, myself especially, family values are the most important of the three pillars.”

The unique privilege of membership at Medinah means different things to different people, but there are common threads that run through those various viewpoints. Here, in their own words, are members’ thoughts on the essential question—what does it mean to be a member of Medinah Country Club?

VAUGHN MOORE

Member since 2011, President 2024–2025

“We have something so special here; it’s a gift that you just keep receiving over and over, and you almost can’t believe how good you’ve got it sometimes. The feeling

that you get from coming through the gates is that you are entering an oasis. You are arriving at your oasis. It’s 640 acres of bliss. It’s an amazing feeling. I joined because of the golf opportunity, but beyond that what drew me to Medinah was the camaraderie and the ability to not only enjoy the club from the experience [of doing] business, but also being able to make new friends in the area was something that was very appealing to me. So it certainly has accomplished that and more.”

TONY GRAFFIA

Member since 1984, Past President 2012–2013

“I can’t describe it as clearly as I would like, but the best part of being a member is not about golf. It’s not about any particular amenity. It’s really about enjoying a place that becomes your social center. So for me, it became my social center, I made a lot of great friends here. It is interesting. I don’t come here to play golf just to pick up a game. I want to play golf with my friends, people that I know, and I’ve made a lot of friends here. So to me, it’s important to spend time, quality time with people that I want to be with. There’s a lot of just really nice, good people here.”

ELLIE FREDRICKSON

Member since 1962

“People are not just friendly, they are modest and down to earth. They don’t show off or pretend that they are better than anyone else. My husband and I loved the golf, but if we were dining or going to one of the functions in the clubhouse, you never felt like you didn’t belong.”

DON LARSON

Member since 1971, Past President 2002–2003

“Medinah ranks pretty high up there after your faith and your family. It’s been a big part of everybody’s life. To

that point, if you talk to the locker room guys, they’ll tell you that if somebody is moving out of state or having to quit for health reasons, guys sit at their locker and cry for an hour before they’re cleaning their locker out. It’s the memories that you have here of the births and the weddings and the christenings and the confirmations, and even the celebrations of life that have taken place. This has been an important place to everybody.”

WILLIAM KUEHN

Member since 1994, Past President 2022–2023

“This is a fun place. And you know what? That’s what it should be. It has so much to offer—and it’s more than just championship golf. It is a full club and there’s so much to do. Generally, we have people who are very highly motivated, highly successful in their own walks of life, no matter what it is. So you end up in a scenario where you have to create kind of a culture where those people can all come together, have a great time, enjoy

their club, enjoy the amenities we offer. And that’s our consistent theme. And then we have these big events. I think our membership is energized by them, and they bring yet another level of excitement about what we have here. You open up the gates, you invite people in, you see ’em just walking around, and they are just blown away by what they see. And it just gives you another level of appreciation for what we have going on.”

HOLLY MADDEN

Member since 1998

“I always say that I met people I never would’ve met in different generations, and that’s really been inspiring for me. The people at Medinah, they’re very successful and industrious people who have great stories to share, and it’s just really a part of golf and the club that I love is the relationship part. I have a great fondness for that. And I do have to say that my favorite thing is that beautiful entrance. It never ceases, in any season, to kind of bring

you to your humility and be grateful for opportunity to be in a spot as pretty as that.”

JASON KINANDER

Member since 1989

“I need a Kleenex, because it’s something that is hard to put into words. This club has been a part of our family for a long time. My first memories of Medinah were going to the pool and the Junior Program and playing tennis and trying not to get into trouble. My father [Harold “West” Westfield Jr.], he was chair of the 1990 U.S. Open, and he died in 1991, a week before he was going to become president of the club. And my older brother, he went by West like my dad did, also passed away at an early age. They used to call him the ‘Mayor of Medinah,’ because everybody knew my brother. People still tell me how much they miss him.

“We’ve had a long family history out here. And it means the world to me to be a member. I consider it an honor and a privilege. And my kids, they’re not members yet, but they get to use the club, and we’ve

instilled in them that being out here, you drive through that front gate, man, you better be the happiest person who ever lived because of what this place means.”

LYNN HUGHES

Member since 1960

“The club has been a wonderful source of happiness for my husband Howard and I and our whole family. It has been a wonderful experience throughout our lives to have the friends that we have known at Medinah, and we have been involved in just about everything, be it the golf, the swimming pool, shooting, the lodge, the parties … you name it.”

ERIC ACHEPOHL

Member since 2014, Treasurer 2022–2025

“What don’t I love? I try to enjoy all aspects of Medinah from the golf, obviously, and paddle, shooting. I guess what I really enjoy most is when I get on property, I actually feel like I get to relax. It’s like I am on vacation finally, so I try to put my phone away, try to not listen

or respond to email and just try to enjoy a bit of respite close to home without having to go on vacation. Also what’s nice about Medinah is everybody comes at it from a different perspective. I bring guests that are associated with my business, but I really enjoy getting out there and just playing with the other members, and nine times out of ten, I have no idea what they do, and it doesn’t really matter. It’s just a good time with really good people.”

RON HACKER

Member since 1963

“Medinah was our summer vacation place. Other friends had summer cottages in Wisconsin and so forth, but our kids grew up out there at Medinah. They loved the Junior Program. We all played golf. Both my daughters played on high school golf teams, and so we were a golfing family. And what a place for that.”

ELIZABETH LEVY-NAVARRO

Member since 2019

“I’m a relatively new member. The new love of my life, we got married and wanted to start a new life. And since we didn’t have small children and weren’t going to meet friends through the way we might have before, we felt

like a country club would be a great way for us to find our community as adults, which has worked really great. It’s been great for us as an opportunity to sort of find our people. And what I love most about Medinah is really getting to be part of the women’s paddle tennis and golf communities. I have been so fortunate.”

C. J. KOROLL

Member since 1996

“It’s our second home. We grew up out here as kids. I was very fortunate. My father was a hockey player, so he had summers off. So we either drove to Canada and we went to Minnesota to see my mom’s family, and the rest of the time we were at Medinah. We never had a lake house, so we would come here every day. It was our escape. And the friendships you’ve grown and developed through the years, it was priceless, and we were just so blessed because of that.”

MICHAEL MORRISROE

Member since 1995

“I love the friends that I’ve made and developed here. We have a saying, and I agree, that the minute you come through the gate, you do realize you’re coming into a very

A

PHILOSOPHY OF PHILANTHROPY

MEDINAH CARES is more than just a catchphrase or a slogan. It’s a philosophy of philanthropy that is shared and embraced by the membership of Medinah Country Club—an inherited aspect, one might say, of its long-ago ties to the Medinah Shriners who made giving back to the community central to their mission.

Building on the club’s history of giving back, Medinah Cares highlights a key aspect of what is expected of a Medinah member. Over the years, Medinah has been able to create partnerships with local organizations such as The First Tee, the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Folds of Honor, and one of its most important relationships (and longest, dating to the 1930 Medinah Open), the Shriners Hospitals for Children. As of 2025, Medinah has raised and donated more than $3,000,000 for the Shriners Children’s Hospital thanks to the generous support of Medinah’s

members and guests. This includes $640,000 in 2025 from Medinah’s annual Shriners Golf Outing held every May.

The Shriners Golf Outing is just one of many events that Medinah hosts to raise money for charity. Others include the Country Shrine Charity Golf Tournament, which has been held for nearly sixty years.

“Medinah Cares is about our employees and our community,” said Michael Morrisroe, who has served on the Membership Committee for more than a decade. “We have

several programs in place for the employees, and then we raise a lot of money through the scholarship programs. And then we have other committees, which just donate locally. We have so many people who want to do their part.”

Woven into the fabric of Medinah’s golf tradition is the Evans Scholars Foundation and its Chick Evans Scholarship Program, which was created in 1930 and offers housing and tuition college grants to caddies. The caddie program is integral to the golf experience at Medinah. They make each round of golf uniquely enjoyable and, in fact, enhance it. In reciprocal manner, members recognize that the young people aren’t merely working at the club, they are working toward bettering themselves. And so, the Evans Scholars enjoys a special place in Medinah’s tradition of giving back. In the most recent decade alone, Medinah has raised more than $1 million for the foundation.

“Medinah has always been charitable because of the Shriners affiliation, but also with the Western Golf Association with the Evans Scholars,” said Jason Kinander, a former director of the WGA. “This is very special to the club.”

“My favorite charity is the Evans Scholars Foundation. That’s where I hang my hat,” said longtime member Ed James, who was a past WGA chair and remains a life trustee whose family directly supports one of the Evans Scholars at Northwestern University. “To me, giving these kids a chance to go to college, that’s something where you see the benefits. And they appreciate it. And then they tend to give back themselves. And you can’t ask for any more than that. So, that’s a strong identity of Medinah. That’s a big deal.”

As of 2025, 142 Medinah caddies have graduated as Evans Scholars.

“I was caddie chair for a year, my first year on the board, and let me tell you, that was a great experience,” Michael Crance

added. “I saw first-hand how important that it was to these kids to not only have the opportunity to work at Medinah but to interact and create relationships with our members.”

Caddie Manager Ben Engle is responsible for overseeing what is one of the largest caddie programs in the country. Medinah boasts an annual roster of more than 350 caddies ranging in age from middle school to collegiate youth.

“Ben has done a spectacular job of recognizing and vetting these kids and walking them through the process of what is expected of them,” Kinander said. “And also introducing them to people like me and others who can get to know these kids and mentor them and say, ‘Okay, this is how you qualify for the scholarship, and this is what your responsibilities are to get that scholarship.’ And they work hard. We have really neat kids who are going to go on and do some great things.”

There is other uplifting work undertaken by the Medinah membership to give back. The Medinah chapter of the 100 Women Who Care program, begun in 2016 by Peggi D’Angelo, raises money for local charities. In 2024, the recipient organizations, chosen during quarterly meetings, were Reclaim 13, Doodlebug Workshop, We Are Called To Care, and Western DuPage Special Recreation Association. More than 150 women participate in the Medinah chapter.

“Medinah really tries to be a good steward and a good partner in the community,” Eric Achepohl said. “It truly is a calling for the membership.”

“I’ve played in Shriners events over the years, and I’ve done some other charity events on The First Tee we used to do with the kids,” said past president John Fennell. “We’ve supported Blind Vets, and other charity events. There’s been a nice char ity element to this club going back all the way to the beginning. And it’s nice knowing that we have a membership that will continue to do that.”

MEDINAH’S EVANS SCHOLARS

Above: Caddie Day, 2024

Since 1956, the Western Golf Association has awarded 142 Evans Scholarships to caddies from Medinah.

Joseph Andronowitz.......University of Illinois.................... 1956

Robert Lynch Northwestern University 1959

Francis Sekyra University of Illinois 1961

Thomas Clark University of Illinois 1961

Thomas Lynch Northwestern University 1961

James Ellinger University of Illinois 1963

George Wetzel Northwestern University 1970

William Blue.........................University of Illinois..................... 1970

Robert Brandl University of Illinois 1973

Alan Simon University of Missouri 1975

Jay Bollyn Northwestern University 1975

Mark Magnuson University of Michigan 1975

Richard Steffens Indiana University 1975

John Masciola University of Illinois 1977

Robert Gornik University of Illinois 1977

Scott Anderson Northwestern University 1977

Mark S. Gentuso University of Illinois 1978

John E. Marshalla University of Illinois 1979

Mark Masciola Indiana University 1979

Paul Bensen Northwestern University 1979

Ronald Gentuso ................Indiana University ........................ 1979

Stephen Pottle University of Illinois 1979

Steven Kliff ...........................University of Michigan.............. 1979

Dean Gentuso Indiana University 1981

J. T. Oury Indiana University 1981

Christopher Miller Northwestern University 1982

Edward Marshalla University of Kansas 1982

James Heckman University of Illinois 1984

Robert J. Grosskopf Purdue University 1984

Fabio Baum..........................University of Illinois.................... 1985

Michael Keegan University of Illinois 1985

Kenneth K. Konetzki University of Illinois 1986

Glenn Balog University of Illinois 1987

Seong Mitter Indiana University 1988

Chang Mitter Purdue University 1989

Stanley Balog University of Illinois 1989

Bernard Siwik University of Illinois 1990

Marc Brauer Marquette University 1990

Scott Vancura University of Illinois 1990

Matthew Ford Northwestern University 1991

Neil Heckman University of Illinois 1991

Patrick McDermott Northwestern University 1992

Roger Rotter ........................Northwestern University ........ 1993

Gregory Gordon Marquette University 1994

Jacques Kolzow University of Missouri 1994

Kristopher Wolmer University of Illinois 1994

Chris Lewandowski University of Illinois 1995

Patrick Kolzow University of Missouri 1995

Stephen Rotter Northwestern University 1995

Nathan Webb Northern Illinois University 1996

Aaron Lacheta University of Illinois 1997

Andrew Saxsma ................University of Illinois..................... 1997

Gregory Heinrich Purdue University 1997

Kevin Maionchi Purdue University 1997

Richard Eskra University of Illinois 1997

Thomas Rehfield Indiana University 1997

Jonn Baldauf Northern Illinois University 1998

Keith Gall University of Illinois 1999

Kevin Davitt..........................Marquette University .................1999

Christopher Rehfield University of Colorado 2000

Erica L. Powers University of Illinois 2000

Matthew K. Henry Marquette University 2000

Michael Brennan University of Illinois 2001

Bryant Crane Purdue University 2002

Dayna Herold Purdue University 2002

Joan Schaffer University of Illinois 2002

Mary Feutz Purdue University 2002

David Pawlowski University of Illinois 2003

Erin Hamilton Purdue University 2003

Jennifer Kane University of Wisconsin 2003

John Fennell Northern Illinois University 2003

Julie Syperek University of Illinois 2003

Susan Stowman University of Colorado 2003

Suzanne Turover Marquette University 2003

Ellen Nuccio Purdue University 2004

Daniel Pische Northern Illinois University 2005

Douglas Lardes .................University of Colorado ............ 2005

Jae Lee University of Illinois 2005

Neal Hawkins Northern Illinois University 2005

Amanda Hinton Northwestern University 2006

Daniel Rekowski Northern Illinois University 2006

Sarah Konkel Marquette University 2006

Christopher Hawkins Northern Illinois University 2007

Hector Marquez ................University of Illinois................... 2008

Kyle Hawkins Northern Illinois University 2008

Allyson M. Syperek University of Illinois 2009

Cheryl Rekowski Marquette University 2009

Carl Hawkins Northern Illinois University 2010

James Schwichtenberg Indiana University 2010

Jack Kleiner University of Illinois 2011

Mitchell Parod Northern Illinois University 2011

Chris Pomagier Northern Illinois University 2012

Danielle Iannarelli University of Illinois 2012

Michael Hess Northern Illinois University 2012

Anthony Noti University of Illinois 2013

Daniel Noncek Northern Illinois University 2013

Jessica Dillard Northwestern University 2013

Michael DeSario University of Illinois 2013

Barrett Parod Northern Illinois University 2014

Jerrick Gumila University of Illinois 2014

Zachary Kraus University of Illinois 2014

Christopher Gard University of Illinois 2015

Dominic Pastor ..................Indiana University ........................2015

Michael Gontarek University of Illinois 2015

Alexander Gard University of Illinois 2016

Chase Hoffman Indiana University 2016

Moneeb Elewa Northern Illinois University 2016

Nicholas Wittman Miami University 2016

Steven Sarver Indiana University 2016

Ashley Kraus .......................Purdue University ........................ 2017

Bethany Nickison Indiana University 2017

Luis Anzures Northwestern University 2017

Nicholas Kraus Indiana University 2017

Sarah Nickison Indiana University 2017

Antonia Lobocki Indiana University 2018

Ernesto Ramirez Purdue University 2018

Lucas Buchacz University of Illinois 2018

Oliver Dobon University of Illinois 2018

Scott Ruzanski Indiana University 2018

Stephen Steiner University of Wisconsin 2018

Steven Nickison Marquette University 2018

Francis Fanella Marquette University 2019

Kaitlin DeSimone .............Ohio State University ................2019

Sebastian Dobon Northwestern University 2019

Antonino Conte University of Illinois 2020

Dominic Lobocki Ohio State University 2020

Francesca McCallister Purdue University 2020

Kevin Baczek University of Illinois 2020

Kyle Harwin University of Kansas 2020

Cailee Riley Marquette University 2021

Dean Barkoulies Miami University 2021

Timothy Wolf University of Kansas 2021

Burke G. Parent University of Colorado 2022

Mateusz A. Babiuch Indiana University 2022

Alex DeSimone Marquette University 2024

Blake Henkel .......................Miami University..........................2024

Brooklyn Kuhny Indiana University 2024

Dominick Longobardi Northwestern University 2024

Lindsey Garcia University of Illinois 2024

Jasper Civella Miami University 2025

Sean O’Brien University of Kansas 2025

Alex Gajewski University of Kansas 2025

special place. And it’s the people more than anything, both the members and our employees, who make it special. I have enjoyed seeing things redevelop and grow and get upgraded so that I know other people can enjoy it.”

ANN GUNST

Member since 1987

“Medinah is a destination where I can just put all pretense aside and just be myself. I’ve been here so long that I’m not uncomfortable in any way, and I just find this a really welcoming place like home.”

JOHN CASHMAN

Member since 2003

“There is something about the people at Medinah that is special. What’s unique about the people, it’s partly Chicago and it’s partly Medinah, is that it’s a very diverse club in terms of socioeconomics. And it’s not all super rich guys. It’s not all guys. We’ve been a diverse club when it comes to gender and race for a long time, though not as diverse as we’d like to be. So that brings a membership together that’s a bunch of regular people that you love hanging out with one another. So, for me, that’s really something—that we have this unique mix of people that truly love the place and have invested so much time and energy over these years in making it great. The people here make it great. And that sounds like a cliche, but it’s honestly the truth.”

RON GOTTFRED

Member since 1962

“So in 1961 when I was twenty-two, I joined for six dollars a month as a junior member. And then … that six dollars exploded to twelve dollars a month and so. And I think as a regular member, when I was thirty-

one, it was thirty-six dollars a month. Just to put it in perspective to today. Medinah was very important in our life. I did play on the golf team in high school, and I did caddie for the pros before they had caddies at Tam O’Shanter, at the world’s and All-American tournament. So golf was getting to be part of my DNA, and Medinah was a perfect fit for me and subsequently a perfect fit for our family.”

MICHAEL CRANCE

Member since 2003

“What makes Medinah special is the membership’s excitement and energy for everything that goes on here. It gets infectious. The people here love this place, and you see it in every aspect of the things that go on here. You see it in the staff, and you see it in the people who might just come here for a day to visit.”

DANA (GATTONE) ESTES

Member since 2019

“The feeling of being on this property is so special, and if you can recognize that, it makes you want to just come back and be here as much as possible. I’ve seen a lot of changes even in my young life here, but it seems like the feel of Medinah always stays the same at its core, and I think that’s what’s really cool. You can take time and pay attention to what’s changed and staff that’s come in and out or courses that have changed. But I think when you spend enough time around people that have been here through all of it and still want to be here and still respect its traditions, nothing’s going to take away from the amazing things that have happened at this place [like] the golf events that have been here, Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson and the other great players playing here and so on. I’m getting married here, and I think that’s

really cool because there’s a lot of people that have done that, but it’s also understanding that this place is so special, and that’s just one more special way to be in its history.”

JOE EBNER

Member since 1982, Past President 2010–2011

“The biggest thing for me is the camaraderie tied in with golf. My friends here are very dear to me. You spend forty-two years of your life here, you come to understand that it’s a special place because it is filled with special people. To be able to share time with friends on the golf courses we have, especially on a championship golf course like No. 3 where so many great players have played, it doesn’t get any better. And I have to say, I think what Medinah, the membership,

has done so well over the years is support every one of these tournaments. Whenever we put out a poll on whether we want any more events, it’s overriding, the support that these events get. So I see nothing but a really great Presidents Cup coming up. It’s something that makes you proud.”

MARK VALDICK

Member since 2005

“I love a lot of things about Medinah. The one thing that kind of always struck me is when you drive through the gate, the rest of the world disappears. The calm that comes over you … all of the day-to-day things that you have to deal with, et cetera, just kind of dissipate and go away. You just don’t find that anywhere in this day and age.”

JOHN DUGGAN JR.

Member since 1989

“I think the memories of creating opportunities for members to get cool volunteer spots at some of our events has been one of the most rewarding things I’ve done. I’ll be sitting in the restaurant here, and every now and then, someone just sends a drink to my table and won’t even say who it’s from. Just, ‘Thanks for the Ryder Cup. Thanks for letting me volunteer. Thanks for letting me be a special marshal. Thanks for letting me do this or that.’ I already have people working me for the 2026 Presidents Cup. It’s been tremendous fun, and then we’ve had so many special events here as a family. Birthdays, weddings. My daughter just got married here. My brother and sister were both married here. Anniversaries for everybody in our family. I can go on and on about great memories.”

ED LAKE

Member since 1976

“It’s our getaway. It’s our summer resort. We raised our kids there, and we go over there and use it almost every day. It’s a place that you just never tire of. Even in the winter now that they have the golf simulators there, I go over there four days a week and use a simulator in the winter. We used to go to Florida in the winter. Now with our age, we feel it’s close to home and it works for us. We have roots [here].”

RUTH LAKE Member since

1976

“I’ve met so many wonderful people, and like Ed, I’ve been on a lot of committees. We wanted to contribute as much as we could, because we have had so many wonderful memories there. And everyone pitches in

and tries to take care of the club because we all feel the same way. It’s more than just a community or a place to go; it really is like a family, and we’ve been blessed to be a part of it.”

JOHN POTTS

Member since 1982, Past President 2008–2009

“Ever since my father got tickets to the U.S. Open, I’ve wanted to be a member here. He was the manager at the Wickes Furniture around the corner, and the club needed the parking lot, so they gave him tickets. I walk around, and I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, this is what a country club is like?’ I was awestruck, and I don’t think I would have been at another club. Medinah just has that certain something. But you ask me what’s special about being a member here, two things come to mind immediately. The drive in from the gate; there’s nothing like it because it just feels like your home. And the people who work here—they’re all wonderful. They make it feel like home.”

JOHN FENNELL

Member since 1976, Past President 2006–2007

“I think most people will remember the day they got in to Medinah. For me, it was April 1, 1977. I had a very good friend that was a member here, and we played the golf courses a number of times. Then through business I just thought it would be a good idea to have a golf club affiliation. What better place than to be at Medinah? It’s been a great place to be, and I’ve enjoyed everything with it. Not just golf. Everything.”

TONY PALAZZOLO

Member since 2006

“I’ve never taken for granted driving in through the front gate. Every time I drive through that front gate, I think

to myself, ‘I can’t believe they’re going to let me in here. Really, how can they let me in here?’ It is the greatest place, even to this day. Forget about for a moment, the golf courses and the facility; I think it’s the people, but not only the fellow members, but also the staff. The staff is the most welcoming staff. They’re professional, and that’s probably one of my favorite things. I believe we’re all going to heaven one day, and if we all have our own heaven, this will be mine. I’ll go up to see my family and friends, and Medinah will be there waiting for me when I get there.”

DAVID LATHAM

Member since 1998, Vice President 2024–2025

“I chaired the Membership Committee for four years, and people often said to me that they didn’t know if they wanted to join here because it’s not a neighborhood club. And I would always say, ‘Well, it may not be a neighborhood club, but it becomes your neighborhood.’ And that’s what it is. You come here and there is no pretense. There is no stuffiness. You have friends here. Your kids can come here and play. My daughters love getting dressed up and going to Medinah. My wife can come here, play golf anytime she wants, see her friends. She has her neighborhood, too.

“I work in corporate legal department. I took seven of us out for dinner to Medinah. Several guests who didn’t know what a country club was said to me, ‘I thought it would be like a stuffy, old-school, wear a sport coat and sneer at people who were less than you are. The place is not like that at all.’ I just smiled. I learned even before I was a member how special Medinah is. It is friendly place. Members wave and say hello and everyone knows your name. It’s this grand, prestigious, international, historical monument to golf, but it is where I go and hang out with friends and spend time with family.”

THE FAMILY TRUST Treasuring the Staff

LONGTIME CLUBHOUSE ATTENDANT Alejandro Caballero says that he has a dream—a recurring dream. Caballero is proud of that dream, because it inspires him in his everyday life serving the members of Medinah Country Club, his vocation for a quarter of a century.

“When I am not at work, I am dreaming of being at work,” Caballero explained. “My favorite thing about working here is to serve the members, and I am always thinking about being here and dream about being here. My wife said she has observed me dreaming about Medinah. I need to serve them their cheeseburgers, that kind of thing. And she says, ‘No, no, no, you’re not at work right now.’ But I think a lot of us are that way. We love being here and helping the members and it feels very rewarding.”

“I know what he is saying,” said Executive Chef and Food and Beverage Director Matthew Gilbert. “I am the same way. I can be at my kids’ tae kwon do class, and I’m reading the word ‘Perseverance’ on a wall of words representing the values and honor of martial arts, and then I bring that into the ongoing discussion that our management team is having about strategy and achieving goals in the face of all the challenges that the service industry throws at us. I think a lot of us who really love to be here, we’re looking for inspiration at all times. It’s a 24-7 deal that we want to bring excellence to Medinah.”

It’s no wonder Medinah Country Club feels like a second home to its members. It’s intentional. And it can’t be attributed solely to the wondrous facility—although as second homes go, Medinah is tough to beat. No, like most homes, it’s the people who create and promote that special feeling. As longtime employee Arturo Medina said, “I would simply say that the members have got to feel like they’re in their second house when they come here. That is what we try to do for them.”

successor to another strong leader, Robert Sereci, in 2023. Members comment that they are “proud” of the folks who work at the club and even “protective” of them. And, of course, they mention the family-ties spirit.

Countless members have said the same thing—that Medinah wouldn’t be special without the earnest contributions from the employees, who now work under the direction of General Manager and COO Dave Schneider, the

Above, from left: Fito and Eladio Garcia, Daniel Medina, and Arturo Medina (left) have served the Medinah membership for a combined one hundred seventy-five years.

“I think a big piece of it is culture,” said Head of People and Culture Tammy Napoli. “There’s all the mechanics of employee relations and payroll and training and talent assessment and recruiting and all those things. But our employees really are family. They’re committed to one another, and the members are committed to them. You kind of know that you’re in a great place when you can trust each other, and you’re all kind of here for a mission and you’re on the same path, and then they see the appreciation.”

The exceptional service is universally applied no matter who should drive through the famed entrance gate.

Member John Cashman attended an event for The First Tee in late 2024, and a former president of the chapter told Cashman that he had attended his son’s wedding at Medinah. “He spent ten minutes explaining to me how great the service and experience was,” Cashman said. “Here’s a guy who’s a member of a competitive club, and he went out of his way to share the experiences he had that we get every day. That’s what our folks do so well. Anyone who comes through our doors gets the same treatment.”

“It’s gotten to be a bigger club, but everybody knows your name and treats you well, and you want to do a good job for them,” said Medina, who manages the halfway houses on the golf courses during the summer and the Gun Club in the winter.

“I love every day here. It’s forty years, and it has gone so quick,” said longtime employee Fito Garcia. “I still remember my first day when I was interviewed to work here. I try to be the best at what I do. I am not saying I’m the best, but I try to be good, and I enjoy it. Every day I show up is like a new day at work. I’m going to be excited, happy to meet people, to take care of the members, to take care of the guests.

“We want everyone who comes here to feel special, whether they are a member or guest,” added Garcia, who along with his brother Eladio and cousin, Danny Medina, works in the men’s locker room. Each has been at Medinah more than forty years, with Danny having seniority. “You never know if that next guest might become a member. They say to themselves, ‘Oh, this is a place I should be.’ ”

Legacy member Jason Kinander credits Fito, Eladio, and Danny for bolstering the reputation of Medinah. “My dad used to have this great saying about Medinah, that, ‘It’s not only the members that make Medinah special, but also the people that work here.’ I truly believe that,” he said. “Spectacular people work here.

“Danny, Fito, and Eladio are the greatest ambassadors because they’re the first people a lot of folks meet when they come here to play golf. They’re already in awe of the majesty of Medinah, but then they meet those guys, and they’re treated like royalty.”

Our sommelier, Taylor [Nissen, the beverage manager] is brilliant. Everything is first-rate.”

Gilbert, who has traveled and worked in nearly one hundred countries, has brought what he calls a “globally eclectic” philosophy to the kitchen. “My role is to come in and just learn about the members, what they care about, what matters to them, and begin to earn their trust by showing that I can deliver within their sort of comfort zone or their zone of value,” he said. “And then my typical plan working out from there is pushing into territory where it’s food they like, but they never thought of it like that before.”

Gilbert called Medinah, “a very fulfilling place to work.”

EMPLOYEES WITH 30+ YEARS OF SERVICE

DANIEL MEDINA

LOCKER ROOM ASSISTANT MANAGER

— 48 YEARS —

ARTURO MEDINA

LODGE & STANDS MANAGER

— 44 YEARS —

ELADIO GARCIA

LOCKER ROOM MANAGER

— 42 YEARS —

FITO GARCIA

LOCKER ROOM MANAGER

— 41 YEARS —

FELIPE RAMIREZ

STANDS & PULLER ATTENDANT

— 37 YEARS —

JUAN DELGADILLO

STANDS & PULLER ATTENDANT

— 33 YEARS —

HUMBERTO OLIVO GROUNDSKEEPER

— 32 YEARS —

JOSE GORDILLO

GROUNDSKEEPER

— 30 YEARS —

RAFAEL ARGUELLO

GROUNDSKEEPER

— 30 YEARS —

Cashman said that Medinah’s dining experience, for which Gilbert has been responsible since 2019, compares just as favorably. “I’ve had the pleasure of eating at Pine Valley and Augusta National more than once, and that’s special, but not as special as what we have here,” he said. “At a lot of country clubs, I think the food is secondary, and that is not the case at Medinah. Our food and beverage, just incredible. Matthew is just amazing.

“We have an amazing membership. They’re just so down to earth, approachable, fun to talk to, fun to create things for with our menus and experiences,” he continued. “And then they’re just really appreciative. We’re here to serve, but it’s nice for them to recognize the effort being put forth. I feel very honored and lucky to be a part of this team, to be a part of the history of Medinah, to have found a professional home at this stage in my career.”

Gilbert also gave a shoutout to Schneider, not only for making sure that the transition was seamless, but also for demanding an even higher level of professionalism and effort. “He’s a super positive, high-energy guy, and he’s trying to inspire us to do awesome stuff. He wants us to reach higher, and we’re going to get there. It’s what Medinah deserves.”

“I think Dave has done a phenomenal job really focusing on elevating the membership experience,” Eric Achepohl said. “He and his team have educated the staff, and I couldn’t say enough about the staff before he got here because they are fantastic, and they really do make the experience for members special. When they know your name, and you know their names, and we can talk about our kids and what is going on in life, it really creates sort of a family environment where you would really want to go and spend your time.”

PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORIES

TWO CONSEQUENTIAL EVENTS occurred at Medinah Country Club in 1999: Tiger Woods won the first of his two PGA Championship titles on Course No. 3, and more significantly, at least in terms of the long-range impact, Nick Novelli was retained as the club photographer, a role that eventually blossomed into his current responsibilities as archival director.

Novelli’s story is the age-old “right place at the right time” scenario, as he likes to tell it, but rare is the person who remains for more than a quarter of a century at one place without significant contributions. In Novelli’s case, he has been the man who has given Medinah members generations of photographic memories.

He’s only too happy to report that his photography career —which stretches over forty years—has only gotten more enjoyable over the years.

A native of Fox River Grove, Illinois, Novelli started in the photography field at a young age. His father built a darkroom in their home, and Nick began processing and printing photos when he was twelve. Before attending McHenry County College, majoring in chemical engineering, Novelli was staff photographer for his high school yearbook and snapped photos for two local newspapers, the Countryside and the Daily Herald.

A week after earning his degree at McHenry, Kemper Insurance Group hired him as its national advertising photographer. His four-year stint happened to include assignments at the Kemper Open on the PGA Tour, his introduction to golf photography.

Novelli ventured out on his own in 1988. Almost a decade later, Wally Hund, then club historian at Medinah, enlisted

Novelli through a mutual friend for freelance work before the clubhouse renovations in 1999. He also shot golf course photos, mainly black and white, that were displayed throughout the clubhouse. Lynn Marinelli then asked for his assistance with the in-house Camel Trail book in 1999. Later that year, he was the official photographer for the aforementioned PGA Championship, a role he reprised at Medinah for a number of other events, including the 2012 Ryder Cup.

The rest, as they say, is history. And Novelli has been at Medinah ever since to capture it.

Needless to say, he’s a busy man, also shooting for the Chicago District Golf Association, the Illinois PGA Section, and the First Tee of Chicago while also lending his visual expertise to a number of other area golf clubs. He also has provided his services to the Western Golf Association, the PGA of America, and the Tiger Woods Foundation. Also, a classically trained photographer in commercial and location

imagery, Novelli turned to architectural photography, a passion he has enjoyed for the past twenty-five years and has had images published in two hundred publications.

“Our club is fortunate to have Nick as the gatekeeper of its rich heritage—a historian whose passion, attention to detail, and dedication have preserved not only its history, but also the spirit of Medinah,” said Emily Norris, director of communications. “His tireless work, day in and day out, ensures that our members can connect with the stories, traditions, and milestones that make this club so special.

“Beyond his historical records, Nick has also captured Medinah through photography, creating a visual legacy and lasting memories that will be cherished for years to come.

His contributions to our Centennial Celebration were invaluable, and allowed us to honor our past while celebrating the vibrant community we have today. Above all, he cares so deeply about this club and its members, a devotion that shines through in everything he does.

“Nick is as much a part of Medinah and its legacy as the members themselves, and his work will continue to shape how our story is remembered.”

In addition to chronicling the club in photographs, Novelli has been instrumental in reproducing many of the iconic photographs hanging on the walls of the clubhouse. He also was responsible for fine-tuning the displays in the Championship Lobby outside the locker rooms. In 2026, he will serve as official photographer for the Presidents Cup and produce a commemorative book for the club.

As the archival director since 2011, Novelli has had a constant presence on the Heritage Committee. It’s just one more example of the impact he has been making at Medinah. There’s a “labor of love” aspect to his long tenure.

“First of all, I owe a lot to Wally Hund [who died in 2006]. He gave me a chance,” Novelli said. “A lot of people have supported me, but he was the one that sparked this whole thing. And then you look at where we are today, and it just excites me more. It makes me want to do more. This place just inspires me.”

ONE HUNDRED

“THE

THE

Chapter Eighteen

“THE CELEBRATION OF THE CENTURY”

THE MARQUEE over the elaborate entryway read simply, “The Celebration of the Century.” It certainly was that. And more. It was a celebration of a remarkable century, one of the grandest among America’s many country clubs. It needed to be big, as big as the reputation that Medinah Country Club had forged over one hundred years.

On July 12, 2025, under idyllic summer skies, an estimated 1,700 members enjoyed a spectacular gala to mark their collective legacy of achievement and renown. Fashioned after the famed Lollapalooza festival held annually at Grant Park in Chicago (according to Mark Valdick, chair of the Centennial Celebration Ad Hoc Committee), the $1 million party that stretched across the front of Medinah’s iconic clubhouse and all the way into the parking lot of the Racquet Center and along the first fairway of the Course No. 3 was the very embodiment of what one might call a true blowout.

“When we set out two years ago, we had essentially three pillars that we were operating under,” Valdick explained. “One was we wanted to make sure we have the best food possible; we wanted to make sure we have the best drinks possible; and we wanted to make sure we have the best entertainment possible. And then we could kind of fill in with the overarching theme, make sure we bring out our heritage as the base. That was the construct of the party.”

Valdick, Vice Chair Joe Caticchio, and their committee—guided by Assistant General Manager Jeff Okland —seemed to have left no stone unturned, unless, of course, it was not worth turning over.

From the collection of vintage cars to camel rides to the historic photos and collages created by Nick Novelli with assistance from Emily Norris, Medinah’s director of communications, to an appearance of the Medinah Shriners Highlanders, there were countless reminders of Medinah’s proud and thoroughly unique past. That includes the welcome video that played on a loop as folks passed through what can be described as the heritage tunnel.

“From the first tee to the final toast, Medinah has stood the test of time,” the narrator of the thirty-eight-second greeting intoned. “Resilient, refined, and forever revered. Tonight, we honor a century of tradition, of passion, of pride. This is our moment, our story, our celebration. Welcome to one hundred years of Medinah.”

The evening offered countless moments to remember. At 5:00 p.m., as the celebration began, members entered the Heritage Tunnel to a warm welcome— glasses of prosecco in hand—offered by General Manager and COO Dave Schneider joined by a host of management and staff ambassadors who lined the entrance, applauding and offering standing ovations as members and families arrived.

On the other side, members encountered Medinah at its most engaging, its most enchanting, and at its most extraordinary.

There were a half-dozen food stations set up in the Racquet Center parking lot, with fantastic culinary choices, all of its supervised by Executive Chef and Food and Beverage Manager Matthew Gilbert. Of course there were numerous beverage and bar kiosks offering various drinks options. The Jersey Girls performed several sets on the “small stage” while the main stage featured several musical acts anchored by The Temptations Review. Other performances included a send-up to Taylor Swift and the Steve Augeri Band.

Of course, the real stars of the evening were the members who came to enjoy a one-of-a-kind celebration and share it with their friends in tribute to a club that has given them so much joy and, in reciprocity, to which they have contributed through the years. President Vaughn Moore seem to capture that sentiment with his speech to the partygoers about midway through the evening.

“We are living through one of the most remarkable stretches of Medinah’s one-hundred-year history,

unveiling the extraordinary transformation of Course No. 3 last year, celebrating our centennial, and preparing for the Presidents Cup next year,” Moore said. “It’s hard to imagine a better time at Medinah Country Club. None of this would be possible without the vision and dedication of those who came before us. I want to thank every past president, board member, and committee member who laid the foundation for what we are today. We truly stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, and we are privileged to carry their legacy. It’s not just about golf. It’s about shared moments, lasting friendships, and a community unlike any other.”

Congratulatory videos were then presented featuring well wishes from PGA of America CEO Derek Sprague, USGA CEO Mike Whan, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, and CBS Sports golf anchor Jim Nantz, who hosted the telecasts of the 1999 and 2006 PGA Championships at Medinah won by Tiger Woods.

In lieu of fireworks, the centennial celebration reached its grand finale near 11:00 p.m. with a dazzling drone show. The night sky came alive with a luminous display which formed the Medinah Country Club logo, and then turned into the words “100 Years of Memories.” Several other formations followed included the clubhouse, golf, tennis, swimming, skeet, Hale Irwin, Tiger Woods, the Ryder Cup, and finished with the Presidents Cup emblem—a shining salute to the club’s storied past and bright future.

It’s hard to imagine another private club in America has marked their hundred years of existence with more gusto and grandeur. The celebration was as memorable as it was magnificent—so very Medinah.

TIMELINE OF EVENTS IN MEDINAH’S HISTORY

— 390 —

CLUB PRESIDENTS

— 396 —

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

— 397 —

MEN’S CLUB CHAMPIONS

— 398 —

WOMEN’S CLUB CHAMPIONS — 399 —

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS — 400 — 389

Timeline of Events in Medinah’s History

In the Beginning

Medinah Country Club was founded on March 1, 1924, the result of the formation of a group of Shriners from Chicago’s Medinah Temple, driven by their shared passion of golf and community. Founding members Charles Canode, Theodore Heman, William Barbee, and Frederick Peck secured the land and searced for 1,500 memberships to be sold at $750 each. Tom Bendelow was hired to design all three courses, two initially with the third coming in 1927. Richard Schmid, a renowned MIT architect, and Shriner were selected to design the clubhouse.

1924

March 1

Medinah Country Club is founded among a group of Shriners from Chicago’s Medinah Temple.

June 26

Construction begins on Course No. 1.

November 2

Laying of the cornerstone of the iconic clubhouse before 15,000 patrons.

November 16

Clubhouse construction begins.

1925

September 5

Opening day ceremony with Shriners enjoying play on Course No. 1 and exhibition including major champion Jock Hutchison. Course No. 2 under construction. Course No. 3 construction on hold.

The Gun Club begins activities and will represent the oldest continuous activity at the club, dating from the first trap field in the winter of 1925.

1926 Spring Course No. 2 is completed.

September 26

Formal opening of the clubhouse.

1927 Spring Course No. 2 opens for play. Construction begins on Course No. 3.

1928

Dedication ceremony for the induction of the W, which was then believed to be the tallest flagpole of any golf facility worldwide.

September 23

Course No. 3 opens for play.

1929 Spring Grass tennis courts open.

Tobogganing slide and a fifty-foot ski jump installed.

The Golden Years

As the Great Depression set in, Medinah was looking for new members and generated publicity by hosting the inaugural Medinah Open, the first professional tournament on property. Medinah Head Professional Abe Espinosa was the Course No. 3 record holder (65), but Harry Cooper, Glen Oak Country Club professional, captured the title with a new record 63 and defeated the likes of Leo Diegel and Gene Sarazen. Course No. 3 was already planning a renovation on newly acquired land that stretched to what is now Lake Street. The renovation of Course No. 3 was completed in 1933. During the 1935 Medinah Open, No. 3 yielded only two sub-par rounds, a scoring average of 77, and earned rapid national prestige.

1930 Spring

The club caddie program begins.

July

Inaugural White Fez Day, opens to all women members and their guests (above right).

September 22

“Lighthorse” Harry Cooper wins the Medinah Open (right).

1933

Three-time major champion Tommy Armour begins an eleven-year term as Head Golf Professional (right).

Harry Cooper captures the first of three Illinois Open titles.

1935

June 23

Harry Cooper wins the second Medinah Open.

1937

July 25

Gene Sarazen captures the $10,000 Chicago Open (right).

1938

The new swimming pool opens, and becomes the site of water shows, diving competitions, and water ballet.

1939

Three clay-surfaced tennis courts open for members.

July 23

Medinah’s first Western Open is won by Byron Nelson.

The War Years

With the outbreak of World War II, Medinah faced significant challenges, including shortages of finances, personnel, and equipment. The clubhouse was closed from November to April, except on Sundays for members and their families to come for afternoon dinner. From 1942–1945, Course No. 1 was open, Course No. 2 was maintained by 279 sheep for two seasons; and Course No. 3 was closed for an entire year. A team of 125 members took it upon themselves to maintain the courses, including rebuilding the bunkers. Medinah and its members persevered and returned to the national spotlight in 1949 to host the U.S. Open.

1940 s

During World War II, sheep were used to graze the fairways (above).

A synchronized swimming team entertained members.

1944 August 13

The Shriner picnic, one of the club’s earliest annual events, is held.

1945

Ralph Guldahl (right), winner of the 1939 Masters; 1936, 1937, and

1938 Western Opens; 1937 and 1938 U.S. Opens; begins three-year term as head golf professional.

October 13

A brass plaque is hung up outside the club’s Brand Room, honoring the 151 men and women members who served in World War II.

1946

July 21

Byron Nelson (below) wins his next-to-last career PGA Tour event, the Chicago Victory National Open.

1948

The famed Dolphins swim group is formed.

1949

June 9–11

The 49th U.S. Open Championship, the first of three to be held at the club, is won by Dr. Cary Middlecoff, a nonpracticing dentist from Halls, Tennessee (below)

The Return of Tournament Golf

Professional golf tournaments were scarce in the Midwest in the 1950s, other than Medinah hosting several national qualifying events. The Western Open in 1962 and 1966 gradually brought Medinah back into the national spotlight. Considered a major in its early years, the Western Open attracted a field that included Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Billy Casper, and then-rookie Jack Nicklaus, producing the best crowds in tournament history. Jacky Cupit edged out Billy Casper in 1962, and Casper won in 1966. In 1975, Lou Graham recorded his only major championship, defeating John Mahaffey in a U.S. Open that extended to a Monday eighteen-hole playoff.

1950s

The club’s outdoor pavilion hosted many evenings of open-air dancing (left).

1960s

Skeet fields were introduced to those utilizing the historic gun club (below left).

June 28-July 1

The 59th Western Open is contested on Course No. 3 and won by Jacky Cupit (right).

1966

Billy Casper captures the 63rd Western Open at Medinah (left).

1975

June 19–23

The 75th U.S. Open is contested and won by Lou Graham in a Monday eighteenhole playoff over John Mahaffey. (bottom right).

On the Main Stage

Medinah’s Course No. 3 returned to the national spotlight following a USGA-initiated course renovation. In 1984, Medinah was awarded both the 1988 Senior U.S. Open and the 1990 U.S. Open as part of a package deal tied to these updates, which included major changes to most of the back-nine holes and the relocation of the tennis courts from in front of the 18th green to their current location. Patrons of the 1988 Senior U.S. Open were not disappointed by the show put on by Bob Charles and Gary Player. Tied on the last hole, they entered a Monday playoff, where Player prevailed. The 1990 U.S. Open dramatics went to a new level, led by Hale Irwin’s forty-five-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole and celebratory high-five lap with patrons around the back of the green. Irwin’s putt earned him a Monday eighteen-hole playoff berth with Mike Donald, but he didn’t capture his third Open title until holing a birdie on the sudden-death nineteenth hole.

1986

Members enjoy platform tennis as courts are located and installed near Lake Kadijah (above).

1988

August 4–7

Gary Player wins the U.S. Senior Open held at Medinah, defeating Bob Charles in a Monday eighteen-hole playoff (left).

1990

June 14-18

The third U.S. Open hosted at Medinah becomes historic for Hale Irwin, who captured his third major championship by defeating Mike Donald in a Monday eighteen-hole playoff and a one-hole sudden death nineteenth hole (below).

1997

Medinah’s clubhouse, opened in 1927, undergoes a complete renovation.

The original Medinah shield logo (left) is rediscovered during clubhouse renovations, fashioned from marble and terrazzo, and embedded in the middle of the trophy hallway.

1999

August 12–15

The 81st PGA Championship, the first played at Medinah, evolves into one of the most memorable of Tiger Woods’s career. He triumphed by a stroke over Spain’s Sergio Garcia (above).

Medinah Evolves

From the early 2000s through 2024, Medinah evolved into one of the premier private clubs in the country. Every amenity and facility has been renovated, completely rebuilt, or newly constructed. This includes all three golf courses, the Golf Learning Center and practice facilities, halfway houses, grounds facilities, the Lodge, the pool, the Cabana Bar, the Mecca, the racquet facilities, The Shop, and a full renovation of the clubhouse. These extensive upgrades took place even as Medinah continued to host major championships, including the 2006 PGA Championship, the 2012 Ryder Cup, and the 2019 BMW Championship.

2001

The renovated pool complex and Mecca opens to members.

2004

Medinah celebrates its eightieth birthday with the opening of the new golf shop.

2005

The new Lodge trap and skeet facility is completed.

2006

August 17–20

Tiger Woods captures his second PGA Championship at Medinah and third overall by five strokes over

2012

September 28–30

The 39th Ryder Cup, the only one to be hosted in Illinois, becomes known as the “Miracle at Medinah.” Europe rallies on Sunday to win, 14½

2014

Renovation of Course No. 1 is completed by architect Tom Doak.

2017

Renovation of Course No. 2 is completed by architect Rees Jones.

2018

The new Golf Learning Center (GLC) and Racquet Center open, while clubhouse renovations include the main floor dining facilities as well as the Fireside, Casbah, and a new Veranda viewing deck, Heritage Hallway, reception, and trophy display case. Upgrades are made to the pool deck, including the creation of the Cabana Bar.

2019

August 15–18

Justin Thomas triumphs in the BMW Championship (above).

2020-21

Medinah staff supports the members during the

offering limited golf and carry-out meals. The club launches an employee relief fund.

2024

July

The redesign and transformation of Course No. 3 is completed by OCM Golf led by Geoff Ogilvy.

The new Camel Trail short course and Sahara putting course are completed.”

2025

The club celebrates its Centennial, a year of reflection on a rich one hundred years as Medinah

1924-26

1927

1928

1929

1930

1931

1932

1933

1934

1935

1936

1937

1938-39

1940

Club Presidents

Charles H. Canode

Henry R. Lundblad

Morris C. Jepson

John H. Sasser

O. E. Schmidt

J. Oliver Johnson

Sydney H. Sturdy

E. H. Forke

James O. Kelso

Perry B. Brelin

Ralph L. Baker

John O. Rittermal

Charles J. LaMena

L. D. Rutherford

1941 Bert Collett

1942

1943

1944

1945-46

1947-48

1949-50

1951

1952

1953-54

1955-56

1957

1958-59

1960

1961

1962-63

1964-65

Royal L. Brockob

C. J. Johnson

Harry G. Schierholz

Sydney T. Jessop

Samuel P. Long

Warren N. Barr Sr.

E. Jack Barns

Ray A. Franzen

Gunnar E. Gunderson

C. Hilding Anderson

G. Henry Olson

G. Walter Ostrand Sr.

Walter H. Schoeneberger

George W. Fullerton

Cecil E. Sowles

Clifford Domin

1966-67

1968-69

1970-71

1972-73

1974-75

1976-77

1978-79

1980-81

1982-83

1984-85

1986-87

1988-89

1990-91

1992-93

1994-95

1996-97

1998-99

2000-01

2002-03

2004-05

2006-07

2008-09

2010-11

2012-13

2014-15

2016-17

2018-19

2020-21

2022-23

2024-25

George S. Hoban

George L. De Ment

Arthur L. Moore

Charles Stout

Paul L. Freter

John Harrison

Harry G. Kramer Jr.

Fred B. Allen

Lester C. Klenk

Raymond A. Eckersall Jr.

Eugene C. Ernsting

Richard P. Donaldson

Thoedore A. Wierbowski

Calvin E. Koeppel

Ronald F. Hacker

Richard C. Peszynski

Alvin W. Reitz II

Roger W. Quagliano

Donald C. Larson

William J. Kamm

John W. Fennell

F. John Potts

Joseph Ebner

Anthony R. Graffia

Matthias A. Lydon

Bruce D’Angelo

Michael D. Scimo

Joseph R. Gattone

William R. Kuehn

W. Vaughn Moore

Board of Directors

Directors, back row: Richard Delawder, John Cashman, David Zimner, Jean Mitchell, Erick Browark, Elizabeth Levy-Navarro, Michael Leong, John Smith, Anthony Palazzolo

Officers, front row: Treasurer Eric Achepohl, President Vaughn Moore, Vice President David Latham, Secretary Steven Ruffalo

Men’s Golf Champions

Fred T. Richardson Jr.

O. W. Wendell

S. C. Anderson

S. C. Anderson

.................................. Carl Devol

.................................. Carl Devol

D. S. Adams

............................... D. S. Adams

Peter H. Raap

A. N. Anderson

A. Kurzka

A. N. Anderson

A. Kurzka

E. B. Hall Jr.

D. Curtis Massey

E. B. Hall Jr.

D. S. Adams

D. Curtis Massey

E. Jack Barns

Carlton Drake

................................... Al Greene

Al Greene

............................ S. Junkunc III

Laddy Junkunc

Ed Sawyer Jr.

James Ferguson

Ed Sawyer Jr.

Frank B. Westerberg

James Ferguson

Ed Sawyer Jr.

James Ferguson

Stan Magnuson

...................... Robert Sederberg

John F. Green Jr.

........................ John F. Green Jr.

Jay E. Rustman

Jay E. Rustman 1978 .......................... Jay E. Rustman 1979 Dr. William J. Becker 1980 Dr. William J. Becker

Dr. William J. Becker

J. Becker

Dr. William J. Becker

Tony Petronis

................ Dr. William J. Becker

Dr. William J. Becker

.......................... John W. Kneen

.......................... John W. Kneen

..................... Calvin E. Koeppel

Robert H. Fates

Dr. William J. Becker 1996 ................................ Tom Prince 1997 Dr. William J. Becker 1998 ............................ Tony Petronis 1999 ................................ Tom Prince

John Kneen

.............................. Philip Slovitt

Tom Prince

Ryan Potts

.........................Jonathan Novak 2005 Mark Gupta

............................. John Madden

............................. John Madden

John Madden

.................................. Doug Auw

Doug Auw

John Madden

..................................C. J. Koroll

Jay Gottsman

C. J. Koroll

..................................C. J. Koroll

T. J. Blakemore

..................................C. J. Koroll

T. J. Blakemore 2019 Jarrod Asfour

.........................Jonathan Novak 2021 T. J. Blakemore

2022 Quincy Van Eekeren 2023 ................................... Will Kelly

Sean Bidzinski 2025 .................. Danny Stringfellow

Women’s Golf Champions

Mrs. F. C. Staples

Mrs. E. B. Hall Jr. 1935

Mary Lou Slibeck 1936

Mrs. John H. Kay 1937 Mrs. H. “Chic” Olson

Mrs. E. B. Hall Jr. 1939

Mrs. John H. Kay

Maddie Murphy

Jane Gneiser

Keiko Kushida

Maddie Murphy

Becky Roscich

Leslie Page

Becky Roscich

Becky Roscich

Katie Kilrea

Acknowledgments

TO THANK EVERYONE who helped contribute to this book probably would require another book. It’s no stretch to say that more than one hundred people have had a direct role in assisting me in contributing to the research, information gathering, and personal insights, the latter being so crucial to bringing the book to life in a way that I couldn’t do on my own.

Several people deserve special recognition, however, starting with bright lights, Dave Schneider, Emily Norris, and Nick Novelli of the Medinah Country Club staff. I can’t begin to accurately calculate their value to this book. Thanks to the Centennial Book Ad hoc Committee for its hard work, with a special acknowledgment to Tony Palazzolo, my lead contact who was so very supportive. Further kudos to Medinah President Vaughn Moore, Vice President David Latham—who was an absolute quote machine, disproving his self-effacing assessment of his communication skills—and all of the past presidents who not only were founts of information but also effused a passion for Medinah Country Club that was so endearing and inspiring.

As always, deep personal thanks to my friend Larry Hasak at Legendary Publishing & Media Group for his support and faith in me.

I heard countless times that the members of Medinah Country Club are a part of a large family, and I cannot thank the members enough for making me feel a part of that family, too. Good people tend to gravitate to one another, and that example thrives inexorably at Medinah. Throughout the journey in completing this project, I was aware of that very fact. So my sincerest thanks goes to everyone involved in this wonderful club. More than anything else, it’s been made clear to me that the history of Medinah is one of pure grace. That single virtue augurs a bright future for the next one hundred years.

PUBLISHED FOR THE MEMBERS OF Medinah Country Club • 6N001 Medinah Road • Medinah, Illinois 60157 • (630) 773-1700

Copyright © 2025 Medinah Country Club • All rights reserved.

—David Shedloski

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior consent of Medinah Country Club.

ISBN: 979-8-218-85100-2

WRITTEN BY David Shedloski • PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY BY Nick Novelli

PRODUCED BY Legendary Publishing & Media Group/LegendaryPMG.com

Managing Partner: William Caler • President and Creative Director: Larry Hasak • Editor: Debbie Falcone

Associate Editors: Robert Denney, David Barrett • Prepress: Matthew Ellis, Ben Matuszak • Business Manager: Melody Manolakis Medinah Country Club would like to acknowledge the following individuals and organizations for the use of photography in this book: AP Images • Charles Cherney (pages 362-363) • Getty Images • Montana Pritchard/PGA of America • USGA

As the sun sets on Medinah’s first hundred years, a new day begins— one that will carry forward our traditions, friendships, and community throughout the next century.

THE CENTENNIAL BOOK AD-HOC COMMITTEE

Terry Dixon, Chair

Tony Palazzolo, Vice Chair

Dick Day

Jim Donovan

David Latham

Presidents Cup (2026) | BMW Championship (2019) | Ryder Cup (2012)

PGA Championship (1999, 2006) | U.S. Open (1949, 1975, and 1990)

U.S. Senior Open (1988) | Western Open (1939, 1962, and 1966)