The Monster gets a makeover

Hazardous design: water to the fore at 17 Philip Reid looks at the changes made to the course since 1999 that will present new challenges

One US golf writer who last week paid a reconnaissance visit here to the revamped Course No 3 at Medinah left mumbling that it was nothing more than "a joyless grin". Which is typical of how this course, all 7,561 yards of it, promotes quite contrasting opinions among those who play it. To some, it is golfing paradise on earth; to others, it is a torture chamber.

Since the US PGA was last played on this old course in the northwestern suburbs of Chicago, seven years ago, it has been lengthened by some 200 yards. To be honest, though, adding yards to a course is no longer intimidating to tour players who regularly thrash the ball over 300 yards off the tee. Length, these days, is no great hindrance.

No, the big difference players will face this week since Tiger Woods won the US GA in 1999 is a substantially changed 17th hole, seven new greens and more strategic bunkering that will lead to more thinking off the tee.

The course was originally designed by Tom Bendelow, a Scot who emigrated to the States in the 1890s to work as a Linotype operator in a New York newspaper, before branching out into golf course architecture. Much of Bendelow's early design work was considered fairly simple; he preferred to use the land's natural setting to create holes at the least expense.

This often meant doing without extensive earth-moving, water hazards or heavy bunkering, and resulted in small, flat greens. He described his courses as "sporty", suggesting they were enjoyable tests for the golfing masses regardless of their skills.

He wanted golf to be affordable to everyone.

He also earned a reputation for dropping off layout designs and then leaving town before course construction was completed.

Not so at Medinah, however. Bendelow stayed around to finish the job. He completed Course No 1 in 1925 and Course No 2 in 1926. The PGA Championship is being played over Course No 3, which Bendelow completed in 1928, having persuaded the club's membership that the idea of a women-only, nine-hole course wasn't suitable for the terrain, or for the membership.

Bendelow's argument for a third full-sized course was simple. The Medinah membership was 1,500, and the club was building an audacious clubhouse (the price tag in 1920 was $822,975 and today has a replacement figure of over $20 million) in a facility that would also have swimming pools, a polo field and a gun club - not to mention a toboggan run and ski jump to entertain members in winter.

Plans for a windmill imported from Holland, a baseball field and an 11,000-seat outdoor amphitheatre were shelved when money began to run tight, but Bendelow's proposal for a third course, adjacent to the 56-acre Lake Kadijah, named after the wife of the prophet Mohammed, got through. The No 3 course was to prove to be the jewel in Medinah's crown.

Today, though, it is much changed from the one Bendelow created in the rolling woodland to the south of the clubhouse.

When Rees Jones was given the job of revamping the course in 2002 (although it had already undergone substantial changes over the years, mainly by Bendelow in the 1930s and by Roger Packard in the 1980s), he tried to recreate what Bendelow originally had in mind.

"We restored seven greens to the old style," explained Jones, who never saw the original blueprint, "but I don't really know if that was Bendelow or not. We really re-bunkered the whole course and gave the bunkers a sculptured look that had been lost through the aging process."

The original course laid out by Bendelow measured just 6,261 yards with a par of 70.

When he redesigned it in 1932, it was named "The Monster" because it was now considered a genuine championship course. It staged two US Opens and three Western Opens.

It became famous as one of the golf's greatest tests, not only for its length - 7,032 yards for the 1975 US Open - but also for the considerable slope in the greens which, ironically, nowadays are considered modest.

It was also infamous for the dogleg 18th hole that left the driver in a player's bag. At the 1975 US Open, Jack Nicklaus remarked of the then 415-yard hole, "It's the only way you can get from the 17th to the clubhouse."

In 1984, the members decided to follow Packard's plan of building a new 18th hole, a new 17th and rerouting the last seven holes, which led to the club playing host to the 1990 US Open.

Afterwards, it was felt the 17th was too like the 13th, and so the penultimate hole was rebuilt for the 1999 US PGA, after which it was termed "dull". The green was set in the hill, surrounded by four bunkers, and the water in front was largely there for aesthetic reasons and wasn't in play. Time for more change, this time a more drastic restructuring.

The solution to the post-1999 comments about the hole was to get Jones in to build a new 17th, and to lengthen the 18th. This was a similar finish to what Bendelow had in mind eight decades before, only to be blocked by a ski jump.

Unquestionably, Jones's most significant and successful renovation has been to move the par three 17th to the water's edge, making for a dramatic short-hole coming in when the championship is on the line. The green was moved closer to Lake Kadijah and the tee was moved back.

There are also fewer trees around than in 1999, though Tom Lively, the grounds manager, estimates there are more than 12,000 trees on the 64-acre property.

Some are over 300 years old, and almost exclusively oak. And one produced one of the more famous images of recent times when Sergio Garcia closed his eyes when hitting a six-iron approach to the 16th from its base.

The sheer number of trees on the site had, however, led to agronomy problems, from shade on the greens to restricted air movement. In his first year at Medinah (in 2001), Lively took a shot at solving the tree problem. Armed with a report which suggested the removal of 275 trees, the backing of architect Rees Jones and the support of the USGA, he presented his request to the club's board of directors.

Although the numbers involved were less than three per cent of the trees at Medinah, it came "as a complete shock to the membership". But his proposal was passed, with the exception of 15 trees the members considered "key" to the course.

Lively and his team went to work removing the trees on the hit list, and trimming scores of others from the ground up to give them "better elevation".

The improvement to the turf was almost instantaneous, and players in this week's US PGA will reap the benefits.

In 1999, when a stifling summer lit the powder keg of agronomic obstacles that included drainage issues and the trees blocking out sunlight and air movement, dead spots appeared on the greens.

The improvements to the course will mean a pristine venue this time. Seven greens were rebuilt (numbers 1, 2, 13, 15, 16, 17 and 18), and the speed for this week's championship will see the ball rolling at between 12 and 12½ on the Stimpmetre.

It is just one of the challenges players in this season's final major will encounter.