--- title: "Medinah No. 3 has 40-to-50-metre fairways and fescue outside them: wide is not the same as forgiving" url: "https://ifrothgolf.com/read/presidents-cup-medinah-course-setup" type: "explainer" topic: "clubs" author: "Dan Mercer" published: "2026-09-21T14:00" publisher: "ifrothgolf" --- # Medinah No. 3 has 40-to-50-metre fairways and fescue outside them: wide is not the same as forgiving > OCM took hundreds of trees out of Medinah, pushed the fairway corridors out to 40 or 50 metres and grew long fescue where the shade used to be. Every one of those changes moves a club in the bag, and the same logic is sitting on your own course this autumn. ## In short - Medinah No. 3 hosts the 2026 Presidents Cup from 24 to 27 September at 7,564 yards, par 72, after an OCM redesign completed in 2024 that produced larger greens, bigger bunkers, wider fairways and broad areas of long fescue rough. Hundreds of trees came out, the landing zones now run roughly 40 to 50 metres across, the greens average around 400 square metres with shortgrass surrounds, and the bunkering moved into the inside of dogleg corners. Wider is not the same as more forgiving: the corridor grew but the penalty outside it became binary, which argues for the most stable tee club you own rather than the fastest, and for a fairway wood built to stop short of the corner. Bigger greens and shaved surrounds move the scoring from the wedge to the putter and to whether a long approach stops when it lands. And match play makes the aggressive line cheaper than it is in a medal — which is the single most transferable idea here, because your own Stableford works the same way. Hundreds of trees are missing from Medinah. That is the fact worth carrying into this week, because the golf course the 16th Presidents Cup starts on this Thursday — Medinah Country Club in Illinois, 24 to 27 September — is barely two years old in its current form, and what was changed about it is the kind of thing that shows up in a bag rather than on a scorecard. Course No. 3 was originally laid out by Tom Bendelow. It was redesigned by OCM — the Australian practice of Geoff Ogilvy, Michael Cocking and Ashley Mead — with the work completed in 2024. The official Presidents Cup card is 7,564 yards, par 72, and the tournament's own description of what OCM produced is worth reading literally: larger greens, bigger scale bunkers and wider fairways, combined with more open vistas and broad areas of long fescue rough. Course guides working from the club's championship card quote a slightly longer number, which is normal and not worth arguing about. Those four changes are not decoration. Each one pushes a different decision onto the player, and three of the four have a direct club-golfer translation that is more useful than anything you will hear on commentary. ## What actually changed, in numbers The tree removal ran to hundreds, reopening corridors that decades of planting had squeezed shut. The fairway landing zones now run roughly 40 to 50 metres across — call it 44 to 55 yards — which is wide by the standards of a course that used to be defined by its trees. Green complexes average something in the region of 400 square metres, with shortgrass surrounds borrowed from the Melbourne sandbelt rather than a collar of thick rough, and the bunkering moved out of the middle of fairways and into the inside of dogleg corners, where it defends the aggressive line instead of the safe one. The closing stretch was substantially rebuilt around Lake Kadijah, with new holes in it. Beyond that, we will leave the hole-by-hole to the people walking it, because published accounts of which hole is now which do not entirely agree and there is no value in guessing. Medinah has form: three U.S. Opens, two PGA Championships, three Western Opens, the 2012 Ryder Cup and the 2019 BMW Championship. Every one of those was played on the previous version of the course. ## Wider fairways did not make the miss cheaper This is the bit that gets misread every time a course goes wide. A 44-to-55-yard corridor sounds like an invitation to swing hard, and it partly is. But the reason width was ever generous is that the alternative used to be rough you could advance a ball from, or a tree you could ricochet off. Neither applies here. Outside the corridor is long fescue, and fescue is a binary penalty: you either find it in good enough lie to move it, or you are walking back. There is no graduated version. So the course got wider and the cost of missing went up at the same time. The club-golfer version of that question is not which driver, it is how wide your own pattern actually is. Mark your last twenty tee shots against a 50-yard corridor and you will get an answer quickly, and for a lot of golfers it is that the corridor is narrower than the miss. If it is, the tee club to look at is the most stable one you can find rather than the fastest. The [PING G440 Max](https://ifrothgolf.com/product/ping-g440-max-driver) is the obvious version of that argument: it is built around consistency of tee shot rather than headline ball speed, which is exactly the trade you want when the penalty outside the short grass is a provisional. The other answer is to stop hitting driver on the holes where the bunkers now sit in the corner. When hazards move to the inside of the dogleg, the aggressive line is the defended one, and a tee club that stops short of the corner stops being a concession. A fully adjustable fairway wood such as the [PXG Lightning](https://ifrothgolf.com/product/pxg-lightning-fairway-wood) — six lofts, eight hosel settings — exists to be built into a specific distance window rather than a generic one, and the distance window you want is the one that finishes before the sand starts. ## Removing trees removes a safety net you did not know you had Trees do two things for an average golfer: they stop bad shots getting worse, and they hide the wind. Take them out and both go. Open vistas means exposure, and a course with exposure in late September in Illinois is a course where the number on the yardage book is a starting point. This has a direct autumn parallel on your own course, and it is arriving in the next fortnight. Leaves come off, corridors open, wind gets in, and the ball starts running out on fairways that are also starting to hold water. The same hole plays longer off the tee and shorter on the ground, which is a confusing combination and the reason people get their clubbing wrong all October. ## Larger greens move the problem from the wedge to the putter A green of around 400 square metres is a big target and a bad place to be on the wrong side of. Hitting it is easier; two-putting it is not. Add shortgrass surrounds and a missed green does not sit down in rough waiting for a lob — it rolls away from the putting surface and leaves a tight lie with the flag a long way off. That produces two very specific club decisions. The first is about long approaches. Into a big green from distance, the priority stops being reach and starts being whether the ball stops when it lands. A high-spin lofted wood such as the [Callaway Quantum Mini Spinner](https://ifrothgolf.com/product/callaway-quantum-mini-spinner) — available as a 7, 9 or 11-wood — is aimed at exactly that job, and it is the better answer for most club golfers who still carry a long iron out of habit. The second is the putter, and it is the one most golfers ignore. On a big green with shaved surrounds, the score is decided by speed control from 30 to 50 feet and by a putter you trust from off the surface. A high-stability mallet like the [TaylorMade Spider Tour X](https://ifrothgolf.com/product/taylormade-spider-tour-x-putter) is a distance-control tool first and an alignment aid second, and on greens this size the first job is the one that pays. When you do have to play the shot from a tight lie beside the green, the sole matters more than the loft. A wedge with real spin in wet conditions — the [TaylorMade MG5](https://ifrothgolf.com/product/taylormade-mg5-wedge) is the current pick for that — beats a higher-lofted club you cannot slide under the ball with. We covered how bounce should change as autumn turf softens in [the wedge piece from a fortnight ago](https://ifrothgolf.com/read/soft-turf-hard-bunkers-wedge-bounce), and none of it requires buying a fourth wedge. ## Match play changes the club, not just the mood The last variable is the format. This is match play, in foursomes and four-balls before the singles, and the club a player pulls in a four-ball with a partner already safely on the green is not the club they would pull in a medal. Risk becomes a shared resource. You can take the line that loses a hole outright because your partner has already banked a five. The club-golfer translation is direct and underused. In a Stableford or a match, a blow-up hole costs you one hole or one point rather than a card, which means the aggressive line is genuinely cheaper than it is in a medal. Most amateurs club identically in both formats and then wonder why their Stableford scores never reflect their good rounds. Our [autumn local rules explainer](https://ifrothgolf.com/read/autumn-local-rules-you-are-getting-wrong) covers the other half of playing this time of year to the actual conditions. ## Who should ignore all of this If your tee-shot pattern is wider than 50 yards, none of the above is your problem and no club in this article fixes it. A repeatable tee shot with a club you can find the middle of is worth more than every strategic insight in a course preview, and it is cheaper. Get that first, then come back to the corridor arithmetic. And if you play a tree-lined parkland course that has not been touched since the 1970s, the Medinah lesson applies in reverse: your misses are being caught and softened by things Medinah has deliberately removed. That is a comfort, and it is also why your game may not travel as well as you think it will. For the equipment side of this week, we counted what is in the bags arriving at Medinah in [the iron-set breakdown](https://ifrothgolf.com/read/presidents-cup-medinah-gear-preview), which is a different question from what the course is asking of them. ## The takeaway Medinah No. 3 hosts the 2026 Presidents Cup from 24 to 27 September at 7,564 yards, par 72, after an OCM redesign completed in 2024 that produced larger greens, bigger bunkers, wider fairways and broad areas of long fescue rough. Hundreds of trees came out, the landing zones now run roughly 40 to 50 metres across, the greens average around 400 square metres with shortgrass surrounds, and the bunkering moved into the inside of dogleg corners. Wider is not the same as more forgiving: the corridor grew but the penalty outside it became binary, which argues for the most stable tee club you own rather than the fastest, and for a fairway wood built to stop short of the corner. Bigger greens and shaved surrounds move the scoring from the wedge to the putter and to whether a long approach stops when it lands. And match play makes the aggressive line cheaper than it is in a medal — which is the single most transferable idea here, because your own Stableford works the same way. ## FAQ ### How long is Medinah No. 3 for the 2026 Presidents Cup? The official Presidents Cup card lists Course No. 3 at 7,564 yards and par 72. Some course guides working from the club's own championship card quote a slightly longer figure, which is a normal difference between a tournament setup and a member card. ### Who redesigned Medinah Course No. 3? The Australian firm OCM — Geoff Ogilvy, Michael Cocking and Ashley Mead — with the work completed in 2024. The course was originally laid out by Tom Bendelow. Ogilvy is also captaining the International team at this Presidents Cup. ### What changed at Medinah in the 2024 renovation? The tournament's own description is larger greens, bigger scale bunkers and wider fairways, with more open vistas and broad areas of long fescue rough. Hundreds of trees were removed to reopen the corridors, the landing zones were widened to roughly 40 to 50 metres, green complexes were expanded to average around 400 square metres with shortgrass surrounds, and the closing stretch was substantially rebuilt around Lake Kadijah. ### Do wider fairways mean you should hit more driver? Only if your dispersion fits inside them. A 40-to-50-metre corridor is about 44 to 55 yards, which sounds generous until you plot your own last twenty tee shots against it. Width also says nothing about the penalty outside it: long fescue is a binary miss, so a wider hole can be less forgiving than a narrow one lined with thin rough. ## Products mentioned - [PING G440 Max Driver](https://ifrothgolf.com/product/ping-g440-max-driver) · $450 approx — The forgiveness-first tee club for a corridor where the penalty outside it is a lost ball rather than a hack-out. **Where to buy:** [Check price at Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F6V82LDT?tag=ifrothgolf-20&ascsubtag=md_ping-g440-max-driver) (affiliate link) - [PXG Lightning Fairway Wood](https://ifrothgolf.com/product/pxg-lightning-fairway-wood) · $375 approx — Six lofts and eight hosel settings, which is what it takes to build a tee club that fits a corridor you have actually measured. **Where to buy:** [Check price at Fairway Jockey](https://fairwayjockey.com/products/pxg-lightning-custom-fairway-wood) - [Callaway Quantum Mini Spinner](https://ifrothgolf.com/product/callaway-quantum-mini-spinner) · $375 approx — A high-spin 7, 9 or 11-wood for long approaches into a large green, where holding it matters more than reaching it. **Where to buy:** [Check price at Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H4NGXCX7?tag=ifrothgolf-20&ascsubtag=md_callaway-quantum-mini-spinner) (affiliate link) · also stocked by Callaway - [TaylorMade MG5 Wedge](https://ifrothgolf.com/product/taylormade-mg5-wedge) · $225 approx — The wet-weather spin pick for autumn, when the miss beside a green is a tight lie rather than a lie sitting up in rough. **Where to buy:** [Check price at Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FLX7KBBR?tag=ifrothgolf-20&ascsubtag=md_taylormade-mg5-wedge) (affiliate link) · also stocked by TaylorMade - [TaylorMade Spider Tour X Putter](https://ifrothgolf.com/product/taylormade-spider-tour-x-putter) · $450 approx — A big green turns a good approach into a long putt, and a high-stability mallet is a distance-control tool before it is anything else. **Where to buy:** [Check price at Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D366DLTW?tag=ifrothgolf-20&ascsubtag=md_taylormade-spider-tour-x-putter) (affiliate link) --- Source: [ifrothgolf](https://ifrothgolf.com) — independent golf-gear editorial. 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