Geoff Shackelford

Outside The Dogleg
August 16, 2006

Mundanah. . . err, Medinah will be showcasing plenty of classically inspired architecture this week.

Unfortunately, there isn't much on the golf course.

The Richard Gustav Schmid-designed Masonic clubhouse, with its jaw dropping entry foyer, is a site to behold--for those lucky enough to get inside.

It's just too bad the same attention to detail has never translated to the No. 3 course's various incarnations. Which over the years includes design input from Tom Bendelow, Bob Lohmann, Ken Killian, Dick Nugent, Roger Packard, Roger Rulewich and most recently, Rees Jones.

The 7,561 yard No. 3 course is longer and narrower than it was for the 1999 PGA. But thanks to significant tree pruning, superintendent Thomas Lively at least stands a chance to create better turf growing conditions, something that plagued the course in the past.

Photo: © PGA of America/Getty Images The Richard Gustav Schmid-designed Masonic clubhouse at Medinah.

While Medinah features the same routing this time around, it will be showcasing several rebuilt green complexes, all-new bunkering and the removal of blind shot-inducing ridges.

As with Jones's other re-dos of major championship courses, Medinah displays his style of bunkering green complexes in military fashion (left-right, left-right).

Also prevalent is Jones's love for the hazard placed on the outside of the dogleg.

No feature contradicts the spirit of classically inspired strategic design more than the bunker hugging the outside of a bending fairway.

While some architects proudly locate bunkers on the outside of doglegs for "framing" purposes (as if this takes great ingenuity!), at Medinah, these bunkers serve to entrap drives avoiding the overhanging trees guarding the inside corners.

The Tillinghast's, MacKenzie's, Ross's and Thomas's of the world always placed the emphasis on rewarding the shot that turns the corner. Unlike Jones, they chose a more subtle method of penalizing those who were unable to shape it around the bend: they made the angle for next shot to the green more difficult.

At Medinah, the trees and bunkering leaving the player with little desire for risk taking. Which may be the point.

On the No. 3 course's 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th, 11th, 15th and 18th holes, Jones placed large bunkers on the exterior bend of the fairway. Since these spots are where most solid drives would end up due to the trees, many of the tee shots feel contrived.

Photo: © PGA of America/Getty Images This picture of the 5th hole gives the example of the way fairway bunkers are at the bend.

Options don't really exist. Obedience is the order of the day.

Some would rejoice at the ingeniousness of this style of design because Jones is forcing players to hit longer, more difficult approaches in a day and age when players rarely hit more than 8 iron into a par-4.

A case could also be made that Jones has introduced decision-making for the player by asking them to lay back or steer driver through the narrow opening.

But encouraging individuality and risk taking--the key tenet of timeless design and shoot, America-is sadly missing at Medinah.

With greenside bunkering consistently failing to offer a reward for placement on either side of the fairway, the only conclusion one can draw is that the Jones style is designed to force longer approach shots.

This is why he's the preferred architect of the USGA. Jones is a master of making architecture take up the slack for regulatory complacency. But for fans and players, his anti-democratic style leaves us wanting more.

Why? Because his designs rarely encourage the interesting decisions that make the majors about the players, instead of the course and the people who set it up.

And while taking the players out of their comfort zone can be a good thing, Hoylake proved that awkwardness only maintains the democratic spirit of the game when an alternative route to the hole is offered.

Photo: © PGA of America/Getty Images The 18th hole is another of those holes with a tight fairway at the dogleg and a small green fronted by large bunkers

Nowhere is the lack of an alternative more painfully obvious than at the rebuilt 18th hole, where Jones contemplated constructing a new tee on the other side of Lake Kadijah to offset all of the PGA Tour's Jack LaLanne's.

Jones instead closed off the slim landing area with two large fairway bunkers and built a new, significantly elevated green with an out-of-place chipping area guarding the rear right.

The relatively small green is one of the few angled surfaces fronted by large bunkers, theoretically rewarding a drive down the right side with more green to hit into (and assuming the putting surface is firm).

But instead of rewarding the placement of a tee shot right and perhaps suckering a few players to drive around a fairway bunker down the left (like one of the old architects might have tried), Jones clogged the tiny landing area with so much sand that most players will be forced into a 275-yards-or-less-lay-up.

Though some might call that strategic design, without an appropriate incentive and reward for a more heroic play, the 18th hole lacks the kind of intelligent purpose that is the hallmark of classic design.

It's a shame too, because Medinah's beautifully rolling terrain and stately trees should conspire to create strategic golf that we all love to watch.

Well, there's always the next renovation.