By Stephen Hennessey
Geoff Ogilvy has quietly built an impressive portfolio of course design work across Australia and Asia. Now he and his firm of Ogilvy, Cocking and Mead have secured a large-scale project at one of golf’s well-known tournament courses to preserve its status as a sought-out venue for major championships.

Medinah Country Club announced on Tuesday its members had approved a master plan by Ogilvy’s team to perform a full-scale renovation of its No. 3 course. The project, which includes the creation of three new holes in addition to work on the entire routing, is budgeted at $23.5 million, the club said. Construction will begin at the end of 2022, and the No. 3 course will reopen in 2024. The news was first reported by The Fried Egg’s Andy Johnson on Monday.

Ogilvy, the 2006 U.S. Open champion, first got into golf course design in 2010 with fellow Australian Michael Clayton and later partnered with Michael Cocking and Ashley Mead to form OCM. Previously, the bulk of the firm’s work had been in Australia and New Zealand, but OCM completed a full-scale renovation of Texas’ Shady Oaks in Fort Worth last year. Golf Digest recognized their work in 2021, ranking Shady Oaks as a top-10 renovation.

Approval of the master plan at Medinah No. 3 gives Ogilvy, Cocking and Mead its first high-profile project in the U.S., as Medinah looks to remain a viable venue to host future major championships. No. 3 has held four majors (the 1949 and 1975 U.S. Opens and the 1999 and 2005 PGA Championships) as well as the 2012 Ryder Cup. It is scheduled to host the 2026 Presidents Cup.

“We feel incredibly humbled and honoured that the Medinah Country Club membership voted in favour of our plan,” Ogilvy said. “It’s a huge sign of confidence that the members are as excited with our concept as we are, and we can’t wait to get planning started in 2022.”

Medinah No. 3 has slowly slipped in Golf Digest’s America’s 100 Greatest rankings each year since 2007-2008, when it ranked 11th in the U.S. The Chicagoland design ranked 60th in our last ranking. The club and OCM agreed to a design partnership in December 2020, resulting in the approval of the plan by members on Saturday.

The plan includes the reimagining of Medinah’s closing stretch, aiming to reduce the repetition of par-3 shots across Lake Kadijah (currently three one-shotters occupy the proximity to the water). The OCM redesign calls for a rerouting of the final six holes, including a short par 4 that would have four of the final six holes playing along the water. A putting course is also included in the plans.

“It is with great excitement that I can announce that the members voted with overwhelming approval of the Course No. 3 Master Plan,” said club president William R. Kuehn. “This renovation encapsulates a continuing vision to provide compelling tournament play and a world-class golf experience for members, guests, and the professional tournament player.”

Here’s a look at some renderings of OCM’s plans, courtesy of Medinah Country Club:

The proposed new look of the 13th hole and up the 14th.

A straighter view of the proposed new 13th hole.

A rendering of the renovated 17th hole.

Looking down at the new 18th.

The proposed new 18th green.

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By Joel Beall
The PGA Tour announced Friday that the 2026 Presidents Cup will be held at Medinah Country Club.

It is a move that has been expected. TPC Harding Park was the original tournament site but relinquished its rights to the biennial match this summer in order to host a PGA Tour event helmed by NBA star Steph Curry. With Harding Park out of the mix, Medinah’s No. 3 course became a leading candidate, and in October the Fried Egg reported that the Chicago venue had secured the Cup.

“As the significance of the Presidents Cup continues to grow, we look forward to showcasing the 2026 event from one of the world’s great sporting and cosmopolitan cities in Chicago and a storied venue in Medinah Country Club,” said PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan.

Medinah is the fifth different venue in the United States to host the Presidents Cup. Ranked No. 53 on Golf Digest’s America’s 100 Greatest courses, Medinah has hosted three U.S. Opens, two PGA Championships (both won by Tiger Woods) and the 2012 Ryder Cup. Most recently, the tour held the 2019 BMW Championship at the venue. Earlier in the week, Medinah announced OCM Golf, led by former U.S. champ Geoff Ogilvy, has been tapped to lead a reimagination of the course.

The Presidents Cup returned to an even-year cadence following this year’s Ryder Cup postponement due to COVID-19. The 2022 Presidents Cup will be held at Quail Hollow in Charlotte, with the 2024 event visiting Royal Montreal G.C. in Canada.

Friday’s announcement came on the one-year anniversary of the 2019 Presidents Cup at Royal Melbourne Golf Club in Australia. The United States, captained by Woods, defeated the Internationals, 16-14, in one of the more competitive matches in Presidents Cup history.

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By Dave Shedloski
As soon as he exited the scoring trailer Sunday afternoon, Lucas Glover shared a manly back-slapping hug with his caddie Don Cooper. He wasn’t just relieved and he wasn’t just happy.

“I felt some real satisfaction, not like winning, but, still, like I won a long battle,” said the 2009 U.S. Open champion.

That’s what getting to the Tour Championship takes. It is a long battle—season long—and Glover had come up short in each of the last nine years since his only major victory carried him to East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta. One year after finishing 135th in the FedEx Cup standings, which forced him to regain his card in the Korn Ferry Finals, Glover sewed up a berth in all four major championships in 2020 by virtue of finishing among the top 30 on the points list.

He squeaked in at 29th, surviving a bogey-double bogey spill coming home to shoot a three-under 69 at Medinah Country Club, good for a T-7 finish, his sixth top-10 and 15th top-25 in 24 starts this season.

“I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t make it interesting,” he said.

RELATED: Justin Thomas wins the BMW Championship by three and, yes, leads the Tour Championship by two

Glover was one of three men to play their way into the Tour Championship, and he came from the farthest back, improving 12 spots from 41st in the standings. The others were Hideki Matsuyama and Jason Kokrak. Beginning the week 33rd overall, Matsuyama made the biggest move, rising to 15th after he closed with his second nine-under 63 in three days for outright third place. Kokrak had to make birdie on the 72nd hole and hope for help. He got both, sinking a four-foot birdie putt and then watching Rory Sabbatini struggle when it looked like the Slovakian golfer might make the year’s final event for the first time since 2007.

An eight-year veteran, Kokrak will be one of four newcomers to compete at East Lake. The others are Corey Conners of Canada—who won the Valero Texas Open as a Monday qualifier—Mexico’s Abraham Ancer, and Sungjae Im of South Korea, the only rookie to make the finale.

“I knew I needed to make it, and I took care of business,” Kokrak, 34, of Cleveland, Ohio, said of his putt on the 72nd green. “Being eight years on tour, that [means] the world. To not win and make the top 30 is a pretty solid year. I never played the Masters. That would definitely mean I’m in all the big events. Go through the year a little bit different than I normally do.”

Of course, with three men ascending the final FedEx Cup standings, three others got elbowed aside.

Ireland’s Shane Lowry dropped from 25th to 33rd, but he probably is still celebrating his Open Championship victory at Royal Portrush and might not care. Harold Varner III, who finished joint third at the Northern Trust last week, lost his 29th position by falling all the way to second to last at Medinah at one-over 289, one of only two players in the 69-man field to finish over par. Finally, Andrew Putnam came in clinging to 30th, finished T-43, and fell to 34th.

The nearly man was Kevin Tway, who won the season-opening Safeway Open last fall. Starting the week 40th in the standings, Tway birdied five of his final nine holes for a three-under 69 and T-11 finish. Not good enough. He ended up in the dreaded 31st spot.

Dustin Johnson, despite finishing T-57 at Medinah, will make his 11th appearance in the Tour Championship, the most in the FedEx Cup era.

Glover, one of seven men who advanced to the finale without a win this season—Kokrak, Ancer, Im, Adam Scott, Brandt Snedeker and Tommy Fleetwood were the others—nearly played his way out after fighting his way in. He was six-under through 15 holes, climbing all the way to T-4 before missing greens at the next two holes and chopping them up rather thoroughly. His par at the last was good enough to sew up one more tournament start.

“I worked my ass off,” Glover said, his shirt soaked with sweat to illustrate the point.

“This means a lot,” added the 39-year-old veteran from South Carolina. “Obviously, the goal each week is to win. I didn’t do that this year. As far as that goes, I still got some motivation to work. As far as the year-end goal, this is pretty good. So, pretty excited and, from what I understand, I get to go to Augusta next year. Hadn’t been there in a long time. Pretty excited about that. And yeah, I’m proud of my season.”

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By Dave Shedloski
Rickie Fowler is well aware of all that is on the line for him Sunday in the final round of the BMW Championship, but he also is cognizant of all the things that can go wrong if he thinks about it.

“How could I possibly execute from shot to shot,” he began, “if I’m thinking, ‘Yeah, I’m trying to win a golf tournament and I’m playing for wherever I’ll be seeded next week, and I’m playing for the Presidents Cup and the World Ranking, and whatever else we can throw on top of that?’ I mean, screw it. The better I take care of my game plan and execution, the better I am for this week, next week, everything.”

One thing Fowler probably doesn’t need to worry about is winning, but he’s got plenty of company. One day after Hideki Matsuyama broke the 18-hole record with a nine-under 63 at Medinah Country Club’s No. 3 Course, Justin Thomas torched it Saturday with a 61. Seeking his first win of the season, Thomas will begin Sunday’s final round with a six-stroke lead over Tony Finau and Patrick Cantlay after surging to 21-under 195.

Only two players, Rory Sabbatini at 202 and Jon Rahm at 203, are fewer than nine strokes behind Thomas, the 2017 PGA Tour Player of the Year. Fowler, by the way, is in a group 10 shots back.

But even if a handsome final round can’t earn a win this week, perhaps it can set up a win in the season finale, the Tour Championship.

After Sunday’s conclusion here, the top 30 players in the FedEx Cup standings will advance to the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta. But in a first in PGA Tour history—and almost certain a first in the history of tournament golf—the entire field will not start at even par but rather will be awarded strokes based on each player’s position.

Should Thomas win Sunday at Medinah, he’d enter the Tour Championship as the FedEx Cup points leader and would begin the tournament at 10 under par, two strokes ahead of the second-place player in the standings, which currently is World No. 1 Brooks Koepka. Thomas’ lead would increase over players farther down the list with a maximum of 10 shots over the last five qualifiers.

A player’s prospects for winning the $15 million bonus in Atlanta could hinge on how they perform Sunday.

“I’ll focus on next week when this week is over,” said Rahm, who at the time was only five shots behind Thomas and hoped he wouldn’t pull away. Then Thomas holed out from 180 yards for eagle at the par-4 16th and added a birdie at 17 to, well … pull away.

So maybe next week is going to hit him a little earlier. Like prior to his 12:09 p.m. (CDT) tee time.

Brandt Snedeker wasn’t going to wait that long. His third-round 67, which included two chip-in birdies, was fueled by the notion that playing safe this weekend was kind of dangerous if he wanted to add a second FedEx Cup title to the one he captured in 2012.

“There’s no real benefit for me to finish 15th [this week],” he reasoned. “The benefit is for me to finish top-three and move up the FedEx Cup points list. There’s no point to shoot away from pins. Tenth doesn’t do any good this week. In years past, it might have helped me a little bit more, the old format with the points the way they were. Now it doesn’t. Top-three if you want to move anywhere; that’s my thought for tomorrow. I’ve got to try to finish top 2-3 to be up there as high as I can.”

Some players don’t have the luxury of trying to position themselves. They’re just trying to extend their seasons—like Jason Kokrak, who began the week 32nd in FedEx Cup points and remains 32nd after a third-round 70 left him T-24. He’s never played in the Masters and a berth at the Tour Championship ensures a berth at Augusta National in April. Kind of a big deal.

Then there’s Tiger Woods, who needs to move up 10 spots in the final round to return to East Lake and defend his Tour Championship title. He figured a 60 might put him safely inside the red zone.

Seems like a good target score.

The problem is that no one is going to be holding back.

“Obviously, you’ve got to go out and play aggressive and hopefully make a lot of birdies,” said U.S. Open champion Gary Woodland, who hung a bogey-free 64 on the board early Saturday and was fixing to try to do the same in the final round.

And that goes for next week, too, he said. “No matter how far you’re behind you’re going to have to play more aggressive than you would normally. Going in there I’m trying to get the game in a good place. I’ll definitely be five, six shots back, however, it is going into Thursday. You’ll play more aggressive than normal.”

Woodland is further motivated by making a last-ditch attempt to get in the top eight on the U.S. Presidents Cup standings and earn one of eight automatic berths on the team Woods will captain in Australia in December. The qualifying process ends Sunday. Woodland is ninth on the points list, followed, respectively, by Finau, Fowler and Patrick Reed. Any of the four could mathematically jump into the top eight, though Cantlay, sitting eighth, presents a sturdy roadblock with his T-2 standing on the leader board.

“I’m just trying to show form,” Woodland said. “The goal is to not be in that predicament.”

Multiple races. Myriad possibilities. Big and small wins on the line. No pressure. And no doubts about what needs to be done.

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By Dave Shedloski
Apparently, Tiger Woods will not go gentle into that good offseason.

The reigning Masters champion, trying to claw his way to one of the 30 berths in next week’s Tour Championship in Atlanta, gave himself a chance to defend his title at East Lake Golf Club by carding a bogey-free five-under-par 67 Saturday in the third round of the BMW Championship at Medinah Country Club.

The clean card was his first of the year, and, coincidentally, his first since a four-under 66 in the third round of last year’s BMW Championship at Aronimink Golf Club outside Philadelphia.

“Basically, the only difference between today and the last couple of days, I was able to clean up the card. I didn’t have any stupid mistakes where I made bogey from bad spots or from easy spots,” said Woods, who was six for six in scrambling to complement another solid day off the tee. “I converted a nice up and down on five. I did the little things that were able to keep the momentum going and made a couple of putts here and there.”

Woods, 43, not only played his best round of the tournament, but he appeared to be feeling the best he has all week. Yes, they’re related. He perhaps is finding the form and the path of his swing that proved so reliable at Augusta National Golf Club when he won his fifth Masters title. That swing also allowed him to play with more mobility and less pain earlier in the season.

The first two rounds this week, when he shot a pair of 71s on Medinah’s No. 3 Course, were tantamount to practice rounds considering he hadn’t made a full swing between the time he withdrew last Friday from the Northern Trust with an oblique strain and Wednesday’s pro-am here.

“Things I’m working on in my game definitely make me feel a little bit better,” he said. “But it’s just one of those things where some days I feel better than others, but also, then again, it’s what I do with the golf club, too. Able to swing the club properly. Body feels better.”

Correlation confirmed.

For a second straight day, Woods took care of the par-5 holes, scoring birdies on three of the four. They were sandwiched between an eight-foot birdie putt at the long par-4 fourth hole and a 27-footer that found the cup for his final birdie at another brute, the 476-yard par-4 16th.

He hit 10 of 14 fairways and needed just 27 putts. Good numbers.

Likely he’ll need a better number on Sunday than 67 to climb into the top 30 in the FedEx Cup standings and advance to the season finale. He entered the week 38th. He stood 41st after Saturday’s confidence builder. He knew what he needed to do, and he made that first step.

“I figured I [was] going to have to do something in mid-60s for two straight days there. Left myself pretty far behind after the first two rounds,” he said. “At least, I’ve got a shot at it.”

Did he have a number in mind? Why, yes, he did.

“I shoot 60, it should be right,” he said, grinning.

He’s right.

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