Feature

Medinah's minaret clubhouse turns 100 during the Presidents Cup

By Features Desk Edited by PetePublished · 6 min read
The domed clubhouse at Medinah Country Club, with the practice putting green in front
Medinah's clubhouse (2008). Photo: Dan Perry / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

A hundred years ago today, Chicago's Shriners opened a domed palace in the prairie. The story of how their club, ski jump and all, became one of golf's great stages.

On 26 September 1926, more than 1,500 guests filed into a brand-new building on the prairie west of Chicago. It had domes, minarets, a 60-foot rotunda and floors inlaid with the image of a fez. It was the formal opening of the Medinah Country Club clubhouse, according to the club’s own history.

A hundred years later to the day, the same building looks down on the Presidents Cup, where the International team went into Saturday leading 7-3.

A club born in a temple

Medinah was founded in 1924 by Shriners from Chicago’s Medinah Temple. The Shriners, formally the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, are a fraternal organisation known for their fezzes, their parades and their children’s hospitals. Their Chicago temple took its name from the city of Medina, and, as GOLF.com notes, that Middle Eastern connection is why the clubhouse looks the way it does.

The aim was to build the best country club in North America, according to the PGA TOUR. The club says 15,000 people watched the cornerstone being laid in November 1924.

The Moorish Revival Medinah Temple on Wabash Avenue in Chicago, built for the Medinah Shriners in 1912 The Medinah Temple in Chicago (2022). Photo: w_lemay / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

A palace built by a member

The clubhouse was designed by Richard G. Schmid, himself a Shriner and a charter member of the club. He blended Byzantine, Oriental, Louis XIV and Italian influences into roughly 120,000 square feet, topped with the domes and minarets that now appear on every television broadcast from the course.

Inside, the artist Gustav A. Brand painted the rotunda and murals. The building reportedly cost $1 million in the 1920s, which the PGA TOUR puts at about $14 million at current prices. It was fully restored in 1997.

The historian Nick Novelli told GOLF.com that the arrival sequence of gate, drive and clubhouse is “unparalleled in golf”.

Golf, polo and a 50-foot ski jump

The first shots on Course No. 1 were played on 5 September 1925. Course No. 2 followed in 1926 and Course No. 3, the championship course, in 1928, all laid out by the Scottish-born architect Tom Bendelow.

Around them the Shriners built a year-round playground. The club’s history lists a gun club from 1925 (still its oldest continuous activity), a 150-foot flagpole in 1928 that it believes was the tallest at any golf club in the world at the time, and by 1929 riding, polo, tennis, tobogganing and a 50-foot ski jump. There was a lake, named Kadijah, and the local railway station was moved from nearby Meacham so members could step off the train at Medinah.

In the Depression, 94 members each paid $3,500 for a “forever” membership to keep the place going. The club also brought in A.W. Tillinghast in the 1930s to sharpen No. 3, partly in the hope that big tournaments would help it survive.

The champions who came

Harry “Lighthorse” Cooper won the first Medinah Open in 1930. Tommy Armour and Ralph Guldahl, both major champions, served as club professionals in the 1930s and 1940s.

Then the majors:

  • 1949 US Open: Cary Middlecoff, who had qualified as a dentist before turning professional, won his first major by a stroke from Sam Snead and Clayton Heafner.
  • 1975 US Open: Lou Graham won the title.
  • 1990 US Open: Hale Irwin, aged 45, holed a long putt on the 72nd green to reach a playoff with Mike Donald and won his third US Open in sudden death.
  • 1999 PGA Championship: a 19-year-old Sergio García chased Tiger Woods all the way. His eyes-closed escape from the roots of a tree on the 16th is still marked by a plaque, GOLF.com reports, even though the tree is long gone.
  • 2006 PGA Championship: Woods won at Medinah again.

At the 2012 Ryder Cup, Davis Love III’s American team led 10-6 going into Sunday. Europe, captained by José María Olazábal and wearing navy and white in memory of Seve Ballesteros, won the singles and the Cup 14½-13½. Martin Kaymer holed the five-footer that retained the trophy. The comeback has been called the Miracle at Medinah ever since.

Both of this week’s captains have their own link to the course. Brandt Snedeker played on that beaten 2012 US side. Geoff Ogilvy, the International captain, reshaped No. 3 through his firm OCM in a redesign unveiled in 2024 that pushes the course back towards its 1920s character. GOLF.com counts 117 bunkers, up from 70.

According to Golf Monthly, Medinah is now the first club to have hosted the US Open, the PGA Championship, the Ryder Cup and the Presidents Cup.

Sources

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