Phil's Pre-PGA Press Conference

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Defending PGA Champion Phil Mickelson had some fun with certain questions from the assembled scribblers.

Q. Obviously you use the week before majors to prepare. How disappointing was it last week to miss the cut, and has that affected your preparation for this week?

PHIL MICKELSON: Well, it's a different strategy going in. You know, I guess here's a great example of how Tiger and I prepare differently. He goes into the PGA Championship thinking that winning the British and winning the Buick Open is the best way, and I go in thinking that missing the cut is the best (laughter), and it gives me a week off to focus on my game. See, he didn't have that weekend off (laughter).
He actually took this question seriously, which provides an interesting contrast to Tiger's comments about hitting a lot of 3-woods and 2-irons:
Q. What's your plan as far as what you're going to hit off the tee this week?

PHIL MICKELSON: That's still undecided exactly, because I may go with two drivers again like I did at Augusta, I may go with one.

Really, the difference is the temperature. If it's warm enough where I can hit 3 wood on some of the other par 4s where I just want to get the ball in the fairway, then I will most likely just use one driver, and it would be the longer driver to take advantage of some of the par 5s and the long par 4s.

Medinah is such a long golf course that the extra length has come in handy.
Back to comedy hour. 
Q. If our research is correct, you and Tiger played together a grand total of one time in the majors, and that was at The Masters in '01, so Thursday and Friday will be kind of a rarity.

PHIL MICKELSON: It's amazing how those random computer pairings spit that stuff out, huh?

And as with Tiger's press conference, the longer it went, the worse the questions got.

Q. There are ten left handers on Tour this year. Do you have any thoughts on the factors that have led to more success for lefties than ever before?

PHIL MICKELSON: Yeah, that's a good question. I could try to make a joke of it, but I just don't have one (laughter). I think it's great. I think that it's nice that we have more on Tour because now we're getting more equipment opportunities on Tour, which is ultimately leading to more left handed equipment or better left handed equipment immediately to the consumer, as well. I think if we can keep that up and have equipment be accessible to everyone left handed, I think we might continue to see an increase. But it takes time, like anything.

And the finale...

Q. Not to harp on the pairings, but what's the difference for you playing with a guy like Freddie like at The Masters versus a guy like Tiger?

PHIL MICKELSON: Amount of conversation.


Tiger's Pre-PGA Press Conference

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Tiger Woods managed to go the whole press conference without one "it's right in front of you" compliment of Medinah, and he also got through it without screaming "why!??!?!!" at the top of his lungs after some really wonderful questions. First, the golf course and course management stuff.

TIGER WOODS: Yeah, the golf course is absolutely fantastic. Obviously they've lengthened some of the holes and the greens have been redone, but the golf course is such a wonderful layout, wonderful shape to it. It's one of the neat golf courses we get to play. It's old and traditional and it's just very straightforward. I mean, you've got to hit the ball well and obviously control your irons into these greens in order to have a chance.

Q. A lot has been made about your driving accuracy. Do you think too much has been made about it? And secondly, playing a course like this, do you need, do you think, to hit driver a lot, or can you hit the 5 wood stinger and 3 woods and get away with it.

TIGER WOODS: I'm not going to hit that many drivers because it won't really allow me to. Most of the holes are doglegged. Obviously I'd have to take driver up over the top of these tall trees, and it doesn't make any sense. Yeah, I'm going to use it a few times, definitely.

But overall, just like it was back in '99, I hit just a bunch of 2 irons and a bunch of 3 woods here. Just because that's the way the golf course allowed you to play. You play to a lot of the corners and obviously fire from there. If you try to take on a lot of the corners or shape the ball around the corner, yeah, you can, but it's not always the easiest thing to do.

And with this next question, the affair sprialed rapidly. Where was Julius Mason to pull the plug!?!

Q. My doctor doesn't think that golf is a very physical game, but you have a lot of ups and downs here at Medinah. How would you rate it compared to other courses as far as a walk for four days?
TIGER WOODS: Not that tough. I mean, I think I'm in decent shape. Walking 18 holes shouldn't be that hard. Twenty more years before I can ride in a cart (laughter).

Some of the other questions Tiger faced...

Q. How old were you, and was there a specific shot or a specific tournament when you knew that you were good enough to play on the PGA TOUR?

Q. Best we can tell, the only other time you play with Phil in a major is '01 at The Masters. Can you think of another? Then I have a quick follow up.

Q. Do you find it more enjoyable to play with Phil in a major or at a Ryder Cup?

Q. You kind of made reference to it earlier, 20 years until you've got to ride in a cart. I am kind of curious where you see yourself at 50. Are you still trying to add to your major totals, or are you a soccer dad or what do you see?

Q. Is it okay to ask on the spectator side I know you are a great player, great champion. I've seen this like four times in a row, but no matter what, you are a great player. I remember there was a long time ago at The Masters, you won The Masters, and I think the channel 2 commentator introduced you, and when your father passed away everybody felt sorry. My question is going to be in the near future about a charity in the memory of your parents who have passed on?
I'm going take a guess here and say that question came from an uh, overseas writer. Or a drunk one.
Q. You look at some of the guys who have played you tough in majors, Rich Beem, Bob May, even Chris DiMarco would sort of fit into this category of guys who maybe they wouldn't be the first guys you would think of. This might be a tough question for you to answer, but do you think it's easier in a way for those guys who have lower expectations to play up to their abilities against you, as opposed to guys who are ranked second, third, fourth in the world?

Q. What do you think is your impact on golf in the last decade?
Q. What are you bowel movements like?

Oh, okay, I slipped that last one in. 
 

Ogilvy's Pre-PGA Press Conference

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A few highlights from Geoff Ogilvy's sit down with the press:

I think it would be unfortunate if course setups kept getting longer and longer and longer. I think there would be better ways, I think, to combat how far had we hit it. The longer you make a golf course, the more you encourage guys to hit driver and hit it a long way.

Hoylake was a pretty stellar example of that. You've got guys scared to hit driver on fairways that were really quite wide and the rough was not a big deal. You've got the best golfer in history not wanting to hit driver. I think a lesson needs to be learned from Hoylake, and there's definitely ways to test the best golfers in the world in how far we hit it and discourage hitting it a long way, as opposed to a long golf course you encourage people to hit driver and hit it as long as they can. Hopefully lessons are learned from places like Hoylake and St. Andrews and they start looking at other ways, as opposed to tacking on another 30 yards to every par 4 and every par 5 on a golf course.

There's a par 3 out here over water that's a 2 iron. I mean, yesterday, 13, Tim Clark hit a wood and I hit a 2 iron, and I hit a 2 iron quite a long way, and that's to a front pin. That's a par 3. It's not fun to have a tee on a golf course that the members can't play. I mean, I'm sure there's 30 members at Medinah who can play that tee, but they probably don't want to because they'll probably just be dropping balls in the water all the time. It would be nice if 244 is the limit to a par 3 length, anyway.

And...

Hoylake was, keep it out of the bunkers; anything you could do to keep it out of the bunkers. The rough was actually not a bad spot to be. It was almost better than the fairways in a lot of situations because you had an angle, but you just had to keep it out of fairways bunkers. So that was the whole goal there.

Here it's probably keep it out of the rough. Fairway bunkers are probably a good spot to be in a lot of situations. There's a lot of overhanging trees, a lot of holes where you can be on the fairways like you can hit the left hand side of 16 and be on the fairway and have no shot. You want to just work out what sides of what fairways to be on and go from there because there's a lot of spots off the tee that you get up there and they're not very good, and there's a lot of spots that appear bad that are actually pretty good spots. That's what I look for, just to make the second shot as easy as possible, and that generally makes the rest of the hole play easier. Sometimes that's a long drive; sometimes that's a short one.


Poulter: "It sets up quite well to my eye"

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The Chicago Sun-Times' Len Ziehm took criticism by Brad Klein (read here) and yours truly (someone actually listened to the Golfdom podcast!), and called on one of the game's heavyweights to defend Medinah.

''That's crap,'' Ian Poulter said. ''It's a great golf course. It has a lot of definition. It sets up quite well to my eye.''

Ah yes, the man who dresses in ways only Marty Hackel could love, wheels out the most self-important of architectural evaluations: it sets up quite well to my eye.

And if it didn't set up well to his eye, would that make it less of a course?

Seriously, it's time to talk about this definition nonsense, which was also touted by Rees Jones.

ANYONE can design a course with definition that "fits the eye" of PGA Tour players. That is not a huge compliment.

The trick is to create something that seems to fit their eye, but actually has becomes a little less defined the more one gets to know the course.

You know, like the Old Course, Augusta (well, before Fazio and Hootie did their thing), Riviera, Royal Melbourne, etc...

Creating definition is nothing more than a dumbing down process that eliminates uncertainty. However, elite tests of golf present more grey and less certainty, which is why they often have a way of separating the merely great from the elite.

Medinah is too black and white to be considered with the elite designs of the world. That doesn't mean the membership is bad, the conditioning is poor or Chicago is a bad town, or that Tiger Woods will not be rewarded for hitting great shots.

It just means that the No. 3 course could be more interesting. 

Pelz: Phil "has more imagination and a few more shots around the green"

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Ed Sherman offers some quotes that should make Thursday's Tiger-Phil pairing that much chillier:
"When Phil's at his best, I'm thinking nobody can beat him," Pelz said.

Does Pelz's bold pronouncement include a certain player who has won 50 PGA Tour titles and 11 majors?

"You bet it does," Pelz said. "If Phil's long swing is good, his short game, I believe, is the best in the world. He doesn't have a serious weakness inside 150 yards.

"I'm not saying Tiger's short game is bad. He has a great short game. But I think Phil putts more consistently than Tiger does. He has more imagination and a few more shots around the green."

Pelz adds one caveat.

"The question is, how often is Phil on his best game?" he said.

PGA Clippings, Tuesday Edition

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2006pgachamplogo.gifYou can read a general preview story touting, "Glory's Last Shot," which the PGA of America slogan committee picked over "Golf's Fourth Major" and "It's A Major, Unlike The Players."

Golf World's Tim Rosaforte says the PGA is better than ever, citing the media's embrace of it as one of his key points. It clearly is the best major that won't budge on tee times just to give a 60 Minutes re-run a strong lead-in.

Ron Whitten looks at the various incarnations of Medinah's 17th, none of which were lousy enough to keep the course out of Golf Digest' s Top 25 in America.

Whitten also writes about the club's early history and the shady fellows who founded it, with help from Medinah club history author Tim Cronin. And best of all, Whitten gets out of having to review the course in detail.

Mark Garrod considers what it'll take for Tom Lehman to play on the Ryder Cup team (a win this week).

Chris Starkjohann has withdrawn for personal reasonsm, messing up pool picks across the land. Actually, it's to play in the Champions Tour event in Seattle(!?). Harrison Frazer Frazar gets his spot, reducing the field by one club pro.

SI's Alan Shipnuck returns to his online roots and answers reader hate mail about his Ryder Cup picks, Tiger and his Hoylake coverage.

Doug Ferguson examines Medinah's record length and asks players if it's really playing that long.

Arron Oberholser, who has average length off the tee, played the back nine and it was about all he could handle.

"It felt like 4,000 yards," Oberholser said.

He was close - the back nine measures only 3,822 yards.

"I wonder if they're trying to do that?" he continued, alluding to the PGA Championship having the longest major championship course three times since 1999. "If they are trying, they have accomplished it quite magnificently."

And this from Furyk...

"It's kind of like moving to a new neighborhood where everybody wants to build a bigger house than the last guy who built one," Jim Furyk said. "Eight thousand? It will happen someday. I'll be long gone and retired. I have a feeling they will probably tone things back probably quicker than we'll get to 8,000 yards. But I would never rule it out."

Golf World's John Hawkins profiles Geoff Ogilvy, but doesn't let Ogilvy do enough talking.

And finally, Golfonline is offering the chance to mail in questions to Ogilvy. I think you can do better than the first three samplers they provided, which hopefully won't be asked:

-Do you feel indebted to Phil Mickelson?

-Have you paid for a meal since June?
-How do you keep your pants so clean?

"We weren't out to make it just dog-long"

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Stan Awtrey looks at the latest renovation at Atlanta Athletic Club's Highlands Course, which is hoping to give Medinah a run for most pre-major redos. The Highlands hosts the PGA in 2011, and I know you just can't wait to see it again.

"We wanted to make the course more spectacular," director of golf Rick Anderson said. "We wanted to make the holes more challenging, with some strategy to them. We weren't out to make it just dog-long."

With Highlands in need of major irrigation work, the Athletic Club opted for a major facelift. There's different grass, more bunkers and more water. And, of course, it's longer.

"We wanted to see how many things we could fix at one time," said Anderson, who was only half-kidding.

Superintendent Ken Mangum, the director of golf courses and grounds, was in charge of the project, which began in March. He had an operating budget of more than $4 million.

Can we add that $4 million to the class action suit that the world's golf courses should file against the USGA and R&A to recover expenses?

New championship tees were built on 11 holes. Among the most dramatic is at No. 15, a par 3 which played 227 yards when Toms made a hole-in-one there five years ago. The hole can now be pulled back to play 260 yards.

That's a big yes.

Many fairway bunkers were moved, and others were constructed, to catch up with the pros' ability to fly the ball 300 yards. At No. 6, for example, fairway bunkers have been extended all the way down the right side to the green.

Bet that looks pretty.

Water is more evident, too. A pond was added to the left of the green at No. 6; it draws short shots to it like a magnet. A new back tee at No. 8 requires a 290-yard drive to fly the pond, for those brave enough to take the risk option.

You can now see the water from the 18th tee, which wasn't possible until the alterations pulled the pond 10 yards farther to the right and 10-to-12 yards closer to the tee box.

"I know when I can see the water, it bothers me more," Mangum said.

The 18th, already one of the most famous finishing holes in golf, can now play 528 yards. It will probably play as a par 4 in 2011.

Only 528?

Anderson and Mangum stressed that the changes were needed and would have been made regardless of whether the PGA was returning in 2011. They said the Riverside course, which was redone with zoysia fairways in 2003, had grown to be a favorite with members, and it was drawing more play than Highlands.

Can't imagine why.

"It was more 'Back to the Future'"

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The Hartford Courant's Bruce Berlet talks to Rees Jones about his rees-design of Medinah.

"There were substantial changes, and Tiger and Phil [Mickelson] noticed them when they played practice rounds since it's only seven years since the last major was there," Jones said. "They said they liked them because they can visualize shots better and probably execute them a little more efficiently with the blindness taken out and the bunkers in play in the right spots on the fairway and closer to the greens."
Did they now? 
Jones first viewed the course in 1999, and the project was approved in 2001 and renovations made in '02. He likened the overhaul to what he did at The Country Club in Brookline, Mass., for the 1988 U.S. Open. He might do more to Medinah before the 2012 Ryder Cup.

"The club is very proud of its heritage and was just trying to keep up with the times," Jones said. "They had a combination of different architects and wanted to consolidate the design style. We took out everything that had been built in the last 20 years and rebuilt the greens as they looked 50 years ago.

"It was already a pretty long course, so we didn't want to stretch it too much. It was more `back to the future,' and now it looks older and more classic."

Oh yeah, those bunkers just scream Wadsworth...errr...MacKenzie. 

"Will Golf's Integrity Stand Test?"

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Damon Hack in the New York Times looks at the possibility of steroids or beta blockers in golf and offers some interesting perspectives.

“Up until this point in time, I would have said it is a fairly laughable question,” Joey Sindelar, a seven-time PGA Tour winner, said in a recent interview. “The guys in my era weren’t workout guys. It didn’t used to be such a brute strength thing. But we’re getting some serious 6-1 baseball-player-type guys. There’s probably going to be a time when you’re going to look at guys and say, ‘Well, sooner or later somebody is going to cross that line.’ ”
And why love him, Joe Ogilvie:
“We market the long ball,” said Joe Ogilvie, a PGA Tour professional and member of its policy board. “We market the guys who hit it 300 yards. If that’s your message, and people see that beginning at the high school level, I think as a tour it is very naïve to think that somebody down the line won’t cheat.

“As it gets more popular and the zeroes continue to grow to the left of the decimal point, I don’t think there is any doubt that there will be cheaters,” Ogilvie added. “Golf is all about length, and the U.S.G.A., the P.G.A. of America and, to a certain extent, the PGA Tour are perpetuating it by blindly lengthening every golf course. It doesn’t seem like they have a whole lot of rhyme or reason.”
Now Joe, we know there's plenty of rhyme and reason: because it's so much easier than altering the ball! And the side effects are wonderful too. Possible drug usage, adding misery to the game, inflating costs. It's all good!
“Maybe I’m naïve, because I have a hard time believing that anyone would cheat, I really do,” said Tom Lehman, the 1996 British Open champion and the 2006 United States Ryder Cup captain. “The culture of golf is such that you play by the rules.

“If you read in the paper that Tom Lehman just won the U.S. Open and he just took a drug test and he’s been using the clear for the last two years, the guys out here would vilify me,” he added, referring to the steroid tetrahydragestrinone. “It’d be over. For that reason alone, almost, it would keep guys clean.”
But there is no drug test, so you don't have to worry about being villified...

Commissioner, care to dance?
“We are monitoring the situation very carefully and we are making sure that players understand that steroids and other illegal substances are in violation of the rules of golf,” Finchem said. “It’s no different taking a steroid to prepare for a golf tournament than it is kicking your ball in the rough.”
Oh, good one! Though I like David Fay's baseball metaphors much better. Of course, they don't work too well on this subject.
“We don’t think it’s prudent to test just because somebody someplace thinks all sports should test,” Finchem said. “Having said that, if some pattern emerged or, candidly, let’s say that didn’t happen, but it just got to the point that no sport was considered clean, then we would have to take aggressive action.

“If we did test, we would not fool around. We would test aggressively and effectively. We would convince people that we are what people think we are in 2006. If we did it, there would be no hesitation on the part of the players. I would predict 100 percent participation.”

Hack offers this:

While there is no evidence suggesting steroid use on the PGA Tour, two players — Jay Delsing and Joe Durant — said they have heard of competitors taking beta blockers, which are often prescribed for heart ailments but can also be used to combat anxiety.

The extent of beta blocker use — and its effectiveness — has been debated for years on the PGA Tour. In 2000, Craig Parry of Australia said that three players, whom he did not identify, had won major championships during the 1990’s while using beta blockers.

His comment prompted Nick Price, a three-time major champion who took beta blockers during the 1980’s because of a family history of high blood pressure, to say that the drugs hurt his golf game by making him sluggish. (Price has said he won his three major titles after he stopped taking beta blockers.)

Durant, also a member of the PGA Tour policy board, said the anecdotes he had heard about beta blockers are similar. “I have heard of guys taking them and saying that they didn’t help them at all,” he said.

Delsing added: “As an athlete, you want your senses. It would be like, ‘I’m calm, but I don’t know where I am.’ ”

These folks really need to read up on the latest anti-depressants!

Dr. Linn Goldberg, a professor of medicine at the Oregon Health and Science University and a spokesman for the Endocrine Society, said beta blockers could affect people differently, but that they are often used to combat a person’s adrenaline flow.

“You can see that happen with someone putting, or shooting archery, or a doctor using it if before giving a talk,” Goldberg said in a telephone interview. “It does steady your nerves because it combats adrenaline when you get nervous or your palms get sweaty and you have a crowd of people around. It mellows you out.”

When Finchem was asked if he was concerned about players using beta blockers on the PGA Tour, he said the Tour’s research found that beta blockers did not help golfers. He said the Tour had anecdotal evidence from three or four players.

“At least two of those players were on prescription, Nick Price being one,” Finchem said. “They had such a negative impact that they saw a dilapidation that made it very difficult to play the game.

“We have never had much of an indication by players that there is use, and in the isolated incidents we’ve seen, it has been as much as a negative as anything.”

Haven't we worn out this Nick Price anecdote enough? How about a study? You know, after the ball study wraps up sometime this decade?

When Woods was asked for his opinion on testing, he answered the question with his own set of questions. “I think we should study it a little bit more before we get into something like that,” he said. “Where does it start? Who does it? Who is in control of it? What are the substances that you are looking for?”

Sindelar, too, said he recognized the complexity, but he also acknowledged the time for testing may be near.

“It’s at the Olympics, it’s everywhere,” Sindelar said of steroid use. “That’s what goes through my mind. If you said you needed a name, I couldn’t say, yes, it’s that guy. But if it’s everywhere, what that says to me is, why do we think golf is insulated?”

Because it is Joey. Isn't that good enough, because we say so?

Scouting Medinah

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For those wondering why more players do not scout out courses like Tiger and Phil have, this quote from Medinah head pro Mike Scully in Len Ziehm's story on Medinah might surprise:

'Since the Western, about half the field has been here,'' Scully said. ''Tiger took his [first] peek early. Phil [Mickelson] put in his extensive time, and Luke Donald played a bunch. There were three that I was surprised weren't here before championship week. We never saw Ernie [Els], we never saw Retief [Goosen] and we never saw Sergio [Garcia].''

Huggan On Sergio

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John Huggan kicks off the inevitalbe series of stories on Sergio returning the site of his near-PGA win in 1999, with a column on the 26-year-old's career.

Perhaps understandably in one so young - and so spoiled - Garcia has not always reacted well to adversity. Like all leading golfers, he is a convenient excuse-maker and rarely accepts responsibility for anything, a trait that is enhanced by the fact that he surrounds himself with people whose sole purpose seems to be massaging his sizeable ego. Then there is his selective memory when he talks about not getting good breaks: at times, this less-than-attractive characteristic has slipped into something not far short of paranoia.

Take the aforementioned US Open four years ago. After completing his second-round 74 in almost constant heavy rain, Garcia launched into an astonishing tirade against the organisers and, significantly, his biggest rival. But it is no secret in golfing circles that Woods and Garcia are unlikely to be seen going out for dinner any time soon. Friends they are not.

"If Tiger had been out there, I think it would have been called [off]," Garcia said bitterly. "There was a moment when not even the squeegees were going to help. I really felt like we should have taken a 45-minute break. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't easy this morning, but it was almost impossible this afternoon.

"If you get the luck of getting the good side of the draw, like somebody seems to do in these tournaments, and you're the best player in the world and you make lots of putts, everything works. It's tough to beat a guy when things are going like that."

All of which sounds more than a little sad, never mind defeatist, from one so naturally gifted. Then again, to his credit, Garcia is apparently unafraid of hard work. While the putts have continued to slide by, he has done much to improve his distinctive swing, and today he is perhaps the best driver of a ball among the elite players.

And perhaps just as significantly, the multiple re-gripping saga that used to precede every shot has mercifully been eliminated.

This perspective from Peter Kostis may get the Titleist Golf Products Design Consultant back on non-speaking terms with Tiger:

"Tee to green Sergio compares more than adequately with Tiger," Kostis observes. "He is a very solid ball-striker. He's not better than Tiger, but he doesn't have to play away from his driver. In fact, he is a beautiful driver of the ball.

"I don't see any weaknesses in his full swing. That's his greatest strength. He could certainly get a little better around the greens. And he could certainly get a little better on the greens.

"His temperament is interesting. Let's face it: he is Spanish, and he has a Spanish temperament. He fits the stereotype. His frustrations with the putter cause him some emotional stress, but if he gets that under control, there isn't anything he can't do."

Klein On Medinah

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Golfweek's Bradley Klein on this week's PGA Championship host:

For those who think narrow, tree-lined fairways are the paradigm of good course design, Medinah No. 3 stands out like an icon. For others who are keen on strategic variety and a nuanced aesthetic of vistas and playing textures, there is no more boring example of architecture in America than this very long parkland layout in suburban Chicago.
And...
Medinah has length. What it doesn’t have is a lot of trouble around (or on) the greens. The modestly sloped greens don’t unduly punish approaches that are short-sided. With the par-5s vulnerable and little trouble elsewhere, expect lots of low rounds and a tight bunching of the field.

And from his  "America’s Best” ballot...            

3. Natural setting and overall land plan: 5
            The 106,000 square foot Byzantine clubhouse gets a 10, and Lake Kadijah helps situate the golfer. But the course is otherwise devoid of vistas or any external sense of place, other than all of those towering hardwoods, and that gets repetitive real fast.
 
4. Interest of greens and surrounding chipping contours: 7
            The newly rebuilt/regrassed greens, average size 4.200 square feet, are modestly sloped, flawlessly manicured, and without a lot of trouble left and right in terms of short-game recovery.
 
5. Variety and memorability of par 3s: 7
            These are like latte breaks during a valium drip. There’s just enough variance among the trio of over-the-water par-3s (2nd, 13th, 17th) to make them interesting. But the shaping is so odd. Rees Jones’ handiwork is evident in the flat horizon line 2nd green with symmetrical, linear outslopes -- it looks like an upside down pie plate. No. 13 is set above and apart from the lake by surrounding bunkers, but the vinyl support wall there that also creates the diagonal effect of the 17th green (much improved over the old green, by the way!) has a hard-edged look out of character with the grounds.   
 
6. Variety and memorability of par 4s: 5
            All of the strategy is along the tree lines; none of it involves bunkering on the inside of a dogleg. At Medinah, the fairway bunkering on par-4s squeezes landing areas laterally or contains the outside of a dogleg. Only the 12th and 16th holes offer dramatic falloffs for slightly wayward shots
 
7. Variety and memorability of par 5s: 5
            Trees are the primary defense here, which gets repetitive. Play here will likely be decisive for the outcome of the PGA, with birdies abundant and little threat to anyone playing boldly given the lack of interesting bunker positioning on second shots or the element of water in play. The relatively short par-5 fifth is very narrow; the tenth offers the one interesting option of a bold play right in order to get home in two; and the long fourteenth hole requires loft on the approach to hold a tightly bunkered green.
 
8. Basic conditioning: 10
            For a (still) heavily shaded parkland site, Medinah No. 3 thrives. Tom Lively, CGCS, like so many other Chicago-area superintendents, deserves credit for working well under demanding conditions.
 
9. Landscape and tree management: 7
            Thousands of mature hardwoods frame the holes and define the place. They’ve done a good job of clearing out heavily shaded greenside areas, removed nuisance conifers and trimmed up the canopies so golfers and visitors can see under the trees. For a densely wooded course, this is the start of wise tree management. The curtain has at least been lifted.
 
10. “Walk in the park” test: 7
            An enjoyable walk, one that’s strong on ambiance and tradition but a little short in aesthetics and variety.
 
Overall: 6.5
            Medinah No. 3 is ranked No. 57 on the Golfweek Classic Top-100 List, with an average score of 7.14. That’s marginally over-rated in my view. The course is a joyless grind.


Ziehm Talks To Jones

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Len Ziehm talks to Rees Jones about Medinah.
In general, what had to be done to Medinah in comparison with what you did at other major championship courses.

I liken this redesign project to what we did at The Country Club at Brookline [Mass.], where we took a very old, storied layout that had a lot of history. I liken it to the Sacred Ground of Golf. Medinah was already ahead of the curve. It had the length, it had the green contours, it had great holes. We didn't have to add that much length, but we did take out about 300 trees.

Trees are organic, and they tend to grow in where the sunlight is, so that was another restoration project, to bring the golf course back to the way it had been in the past. The players will notice a different course from '99 to 2006.

What will they see that will be different?

They'll see a course that has more definition because we took some of the blindness out on No. 1 and No. 8. We took out the bunker on No. 16. We brought the 17th green down to the water, and we took the tee back. Then on 18, we made a major change. We elevated the green and took the tee back. It'll probably be a short iron [approach] with the way these guys are hitting it, but it's going to be a much more precise shot.

The par-3 17th hole has become controversial because it has been changed so much. It has been a completely different hole for each of the last four majors played at Medinah. What went into the design of the current hole?

We put [the green] back on the hazard. We only have three holes that bring the water into play. We were able to bring the green back down to the water, regrade the hill [where the tee complex is located] and make the hole as long as it was [with a new tee]. We accomplished both goals -- we got the water into play, the ultimate hazard, as well as maintained the yardage.