THIS COLUMN WAS NAMED THE WINNER OF THE 2025 INTERNATIONAL NETWORK OF GOLF MEDIA AWARDS IN THE FEATURE WRITING CATEGORY. IT APPEARED IN THE JUNE ISSUE OF THE CHICAGO DISTRICT GOLFER IN 2025.
This month marks the 50th anniversary of Medinah Country Club’s second U.S. Open. The first was in 1949 when Cary Middlecoff won the title. The last was in 1990, when Hale Irwin was the champion.
The ’49 tourney was most notable for who didn’t win and who wasn’t there. Middlecoff won by a stroke over Clayton Heafner and Sam Snead. It was one of four runner-up finishes in the Open for Snead in the only major championship he didn’t win. Ben Hogan was recovering from a serious auto accident and didn’t play, and it was the last Open for two-time winner Ralph Guldahl, a legendary player in those days.
Then Chicago went 26 years before hosting another U.S. Open.
In 1975 the winner was Lou Graham, who took the title in a playoff with John Mahaffey. It was my third U.S. Open as golf writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, and I eventually covered 27 of them, but, I’ll never forget my first one at Medinah. It’s etched in my memory book for lots of things besides who won. I’ve been covering golf for nearly 60 yards, but I doubt it would have been nearly that long had the U.S. Open not been brought back to Medinah 50 years ago.
Back then the U.S. Golf Association didn’t schedule U.S. Open sites 10 or 20 years in advance, as it does today. Medinah was announced as the ’75 site in 1972, and that changed a lot of things in the way golf was covered by the Chicago media.
Golf didn’t get nearly the attention it received once the word was out that Medinah had landed the big one. In that long dryspell Chicago beat writers covered only local events plus the Western Open.
In anticipation of the interest the Open at Medinah would stir I was suddenly sent to the Opens at Oakmont in 1973 (where little-known Johnny Miller shot a final-round 63 to win the title) and Winged Foot in 1974 (where Irwin survived on a course so difficult the tourney was dubbed the “Massacre at Winged Foot’’).
Things were a lot different at Medinah. The young hotshot, Tom Watson had won his first PGA Tour event in the 1974 Western Open at Butler National and started the Medinah Open 67-68 , a tournament record for 36 holes. He fizzled after that, shooting 78-77 on the weekend.
Frank Beard was the 54-hole leader, but he shot 78 on Sunday and tied for third CHECK. The ensuing playoff featured a PGA Tour journeyman, Graham, against a young star who would wind up a journeyman as well in Mahaffey. The leaderboard had star power, though.
Jack Nicklaus, bidding for his fourth U.S. Open win, had a chance to tie for the lead with a birdie putt on the 15th hole in the final round, but he missed that one and then finished with three bogeys and wound up tied for seventh with Peter Oosterhuis.
Irwin tied for third with Beard; Ben Crenshaw, then a 23-year old hotshot who would go on to win two Masters titles and a Western Open; and Bob Murphy. At 288 they were just a shot out of the playoff.
Arnold Palmer tied for ninth – his last top-10 in a U.S. Open — with Watson and Pat Fitzsimons. Future U.S. Open winners Ray Floyd and Andy North were in a tie for 12th.
With Graham failing to get up-and-down from a bunker on the 72nd hole, he and Mahaffey finished regulation play at 3-over-par 287 and headed to a Monday playoff. Graham opened a three-stroke lead as 12 holes and went on to capture his only major championship, though he did win six times on the PGA Tour.
Interviewing was more casual back then than it is now. I approached Mahaffey while he was having breakfast before the Monday playoff, asked how he was feeling and he replied “Not so good. I have an allergy to grass.’’
I didn’t think he was kidding, and Mahaffey did go on to win the PGA Championship in 1978.
Anyway, Graham shot 71 to Mahaffey’s 73. The winner’s check was only $40,000. U.S. Open winners didn’t hit the $1 million mark until 2002. Graham was 11 strokes behind Watson at the halfway point, and that led to him making the biggest comeback by a champion.
Though golf’s bigger names didn’t match up to Graham and Mahaffey that week, there were no regrets about the drama the tournament provided and Medinah’s course proved a worthy challenge to the world’s best players. The Chicago golf crowd was just happy to have a U.S. Open on home soil, and that soil at Medinah would get tested again and again – but on much altered courses.
Medinah members called for renovations of the No. 3 layout for the 1990 U.S. Open and then again for the 1999 and 2006 PGA Championships. An even bigger redo was just completed in preparation for the 2026 President’s Cup coming to the club.
Some footnotes from ‘75:
The low amateur was 22-year old Jerry Pate, who would win his first tournament as a professional at the U.S. Open in Atlanta the following year.
Chicago’s own Lance Ten Broeck, then 19 and headed for the University of Texas, was the only other amateur to survive the 36-hole cut. Pate was six strokes behind Graham and Mahaffey and six ahead of Ten Broeck.
Gary Groh, who won the Hawaiian Open on the PGA Tour before having a long run as the head professional at Bob `O Link, matched Pate’s 293 for the 72 holes.
Hale Irwin won the Western Open at Butler National the following year and captured his third U.S. Open at Medinah in 1990 in an epic playoff. Irwin and Mike Donald battled through 18 holes before Irwin won on the first extra hole – in effect the first sudden death playoff in U.S. Open history.
Graham, now 87, won his last PGA Tour event in 1979. He made 450 cuts in 623 starts on the PGA Tour and played on three Ryder Cup teams. After turning 50 he played on PGA Tour Champions through 2001 but never won on the 50-and-over circuit in 239 starts.