Adrenaline, caffeine and 52,600 square metres of scaffolding
Medinah has been here before. Fourteen years after hosting the 2012 Ryder Cup, the club outside Chicago is back in the spotlight, and the last details were being fixed on Tuesday as both Presidents Cup teams went out for their first practice rounds.
Joie Chitwood III has lived with this project for three and a half years. The event’s executive director admits his crew is running “on adrenaline and caffeine” at this point, which is understandable once you see what has gone up around Course No. 3 since April. Roughly 52,600 square metres of temporary structures. Six months to build, six days of golf, then three months to take it all down again.
Crowds of more than 30,000 a day are expected from Thursday through Sunday. Practice days are quieter.
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Why the famous 18th is now the 14th
Members will barely recognise the routing. Medinah’s signature closing hole has been moved up to play as the 14th, and the reasoning is pure match play logic. Plenty of matches never make it to the last. Chitwood didn’t want thousands of fans to miss the club’s best-known hole, so it now sits earlier in the round, lined with hospitality pavilions.
The first tee gets the stadium treatment. A 3,000-seat grandstand wraps around it on three sides, and every match will go off from there each morning. Fan zones carry Chicago neighbourhood names: North Side, Southside, Lakeview, The Loop.
1,800 volunteers and a possible presidential visit
Getting everyone in is its own logistics puzzle. About 1,800 volunteers will be shuttled by bus from the Woodfield mall in Schaumburg. Lake Park High School is shutting both campuses for the week, just as it did for the 2012 Ryder Cup and the 2019 BMW Championship.
Donald Trump is the honorary chairman and might show up. Nobody has pinned down a day yet, though talks with the Secret Service are ongoing.
Then there’s the golf. Brandt Snedeker’s Americans arrive with a near-total grip on this event, and Hideki Matsuyama’s Internationals are running out of ways to break it. Five foursomes matches open proceedings on Thursday, first tee time 11:35 local.
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