By Len Ziehm
It’s been puzzling to me for a while: why doesn’t the Chicago area have as many competitions from the PGA Tour as it once did. Now I have inkling why.
It’s not easy to get one.
Mike Scimo was Medinah Country Club’s president in 2018 and 2019 and the club’s chairman for September’s Presidents Cup in which a 12-man team of professionals from the United States battled their International counterparts, players from around the world with the exception of Europe, in four days of matches.
By most every account the competition was a rousing success. The crowds were estimated at 30,000 on the four days of matches. The drama was outstanding. The U.S. mounted a great comeback on the final day, winning nine of 12 singles matches to run its winning streak in the Presidents Cup biennial series to 11.
But just getting the Presidents Cup to Medinah was an adventure in itself. Scimo called it an eight-tear process that had lots of moving parts. Drawn into the project in one way or another were all the Medinah members, leadership on the PGA Tour, a course architecture team from Australia, local government bodies and even the upstart LIV Golf Tour.
Scimo, a 26-year member of the club, gave me an account of how the event came to fruition.
“In 2018 I formed a tour standing committee because we hadn’t had an event since the PGA Championship (in 2006),’’ said Scimo. “We had the BMW Championship coming in 2019 on the books but nothing beyond that. We prioritized what would be an attractive tournament for Medinah. We had proactively decided what we wanted to do, then some pretty interesting things happened.’’
The committee’s first focus was bringing back another PGA Championship. The club’s No. 3 course was the site of that event in 1999 and 2006, both won by Tiger Woods.
“We had a very important meeting at the 2018 PGA Championship at Bellerive (in St. Louis) and had a talk with Kerry Haigh, the PGA of America’s chief championship officer. A couple months later the PGA announced a new tournament schedule, moving the PGA Championship from August to May.
“That created complications for us,’’ said Scimo. Getting a course ready for a major championship in May would be difficult.
So, Medinah moved on.
“We met with various organizations in golf,’’ said Scimo. The Ryder Cup was a success at Medinah in 2012, but dates for future stagings were booked well into the future. The U.S. Golf Association’s U.S. Open had been played at Medinah three times, the most recent in 1990. Since then, though, the USGA had established anchor sites for that event.
It was back to the PGA and more conversations with Haigh, this time about the Presidents Cup – a new event back then.
“We didn’t know much about it, but Kerry said it’d be a very interesting tournament for Medinah to host,’’ said Scimo. “We didn’t want a regular tour stop. That wasn’t our thing. We wanted maybe one or two tournaments per decade.’’
The Presidents Cup fit that bill, and more discussions were held in 2018 at Aronimink, Pennsylvania site of that year’s BMW Championship. As the host site the following year Medinah had representatives at that event and Medinah was invited to come to PGA headquarters in Ponte Vedra, FL., in January of 2019 to make a presentation for hosting the Presidents Cup.
“It was extremely competitive,’’ said Scimo. “There were three other major tournament venues and us plus one other unsolicited bid. We had the first and foremost venue – space, a supportive membership, the large size of our golfing market and the advantages of having local government cooperation and logistics with rail, roadways and access to O’Hare.’’
And then the pandemic hit.
“We were told we’d be selected,’’ said Scimo, “but we still had to negotiate a contract and COVID slowed things down. By October of 2020, a year after our BMW, we had a deal in principle and we executed a contract.’’
Coupled with the members approval, all seemed in place. But it wasn’t.
“A month later we informed the PGA Tour that we had a contract with OCM to do a Master Plan that might change our Course No. 3,’’ said Scimo.
OCM was the Australian course design firm of Geoff Ogilvie, Mike Cocking and Ashley Mead. The PGA wasn’t so sure about things now.
“The PGA didn’t have design rights, but they wanted participation in the process,’’ said Scimo, who didn’t expect that response.
“The reason we were selected was because we had the venue,’’ said Scimo, “and at the end of the day it would be OCM’s design.’’
The selection of OCM was a surprise to many away from the Medinah scene. It was one of five architect firms competing for the job.
“They were selected because of their enthusiasm and their vision for Medinah,’’ said Scimo. “They were hungry for business and had only one project going in the U.S. – Shady Oaks in Ft. Worth (Texas).’’
Though Shady Oaks wasn’t yet open to members, Medinah’s representatives who came for a visit liked what they saw.
“What we heard a lot was that Justin Thomas torched our course by going 25-under (in winning the 2019 BMW Championship),’’ said Scimo. “That wasn’t how it unfolded. We always did long-term planning and we knew we had to look at the drainage and irrigation on Course No. 3. We made the decision to go with OCM when we were at Shady Oaks. It was a leap of faith, but what else could we have asked their guys to do to win our trust?’’
Still there was some uneasiness.
“We could have gone in more traditional ways,’’ he said, “but their (plan) was not as radical at it turned out to be. Things evolved once they were awarded the work.’’
OCM did six holes at a time, and the final six holes were controversial.
“We had to go out to those holes and look at them,’’ said Scimo. “It was a much more involved project than our members had approved – and what about the PGA? For almost a year we were doing tours and holding town halls.’’
The members gave an 84 percent approval for the design in December of 2021, an amazingly high rate for a $27 million project. Shovels went in the ground immediately and construction continued through 2022 and 2023, then the PGA Tour came for a visit. They wanted to start the Presidents Cup matches on the fifth hole or the new design.
“We wanted them to play the same sequence as the members,’’ said Scimo, “but we approved and that was the best thing that could have happened because the last six holes would be spotlighted.’’
Still there were concerns, this time from the members who were hearing about the LIV Tour taking away such big name players as Brooks Koepka, Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau and Sergio Garcia.
“With all those good players leaving, we were wondering what kind of event this would be, but it was still four years away,’’ said Scimo.
Subsequently the PGA Tour has been restructured. Ogilvy, the architect, turned out to be Ogilvy, the International team captain. That created a strong story line for the latest playing of the Presidents Cup. Joie Chitwood, the President Cups executive director, was with the project for four years and drew special praise from Scimo for his contributions to making the event the success it was.
And the future of tournaments at Medinah doesn’t seem to be in jeopardy. The members will have the final word.
“You do these events for A—not to lose money,’’ said Scimo, “but really more for the memories and camaraderie they produce. We survey our members every year and 70 to 80 percent are in favor every year but, when the circus leaves town, you want them to feel it was worthwhile. As long as our members continue to support tournaments I suspect something else will happen.’’