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    Golf Digest Logo BEST TRANSFORMATION

    Drastic times at Medinah No. 3 called for drastic measures—a former major champ and a bold path forward

    The home of the 2026 Presidents Cup is no longer a narrow, wooded restrictive course but one that is broad, dynamic and capable of changing daily.
    January 16, 2025
    Medinah Country Club
    Medinah CC Course #3

    Through the 1970s and 80s, few courses exemplified the ideal of the “championship course” more than Medinah #3. In an era when toughness correlated with greatness, Medinah looked the part, flexing its toughness in the form of tight, tree-lined fairways, thick rough and greens that played like marble staircases. By 2019, however, when the #3 course hosted the BMW Championship, time and maintenance technology had passed it by. Justin Thomas’ 25-under score officially killed any remaining intimidation factor, and a course once positioned inside the top 10 suddenly seemed out of date and in danger of slipping off the America’s 100 Greatest Courses ranking entirely (it was No. 93 in 2023-2024).

    Drastic times call for drastic measures, and in 2020 the club hired the Australian firm of OCM (former U.S. Open champion Geoff Ogilvy, Mike Cocking and Ashley Mead) to come up with a new path forward. Their plan, which marinated through months of COVID travel restrictions, evolved into an unconventionally bold vision for a storied major championship site. It centered around altering the conception of what Medinah was—not a narrow, wooded restrictive course but one that was broad, dynamic and capable of changing daily.

    A massive number of trees were taken down to broaden playing corridors and reshape fairways. Bunkers increased and expanded, reverting to a rough and irregular style that would have been recognizable in the 1920s. Greens were enlarged and infused with meaningful internal contours. Holes five and six were shifted left to abut an out-of-bounds fence, recalling old courses from the U.K. Two of the par 3s that played directly over Lake Kadijah were eliminated. And most significantly, the last six holes were replaced and rerouted with new ones, including the drivable par-4 16th playing diagonally across the lake and the par-3 17th crossing back the opposite direction. It adds up to a head-spinning change of direction for Medinah, but one our panelists endorse. We’ll find out if the radical transformation helps reestablish #3’s reputation as a design ready to do battle with the world’s best when it hosts the 2026 Presidents Cup.

    Medinah Country Club: #3
    Medinah Country Club/Seth Jenkins
    Private
    Medinah Country Club: #3
    Medinah, IL
    4.6
    27 Panelists

    The evolution of golf course architecture—and how courses change to suit the demands of the times—can be mapped directly on top of Medinah’s #3 course. It was built in the fields west of Chicago in the 1920s on land that was part farmland and partly wooded. It became a major championship site when it hosted the 1949 U.S. Open, putting it on a track of perpetual improvements to toughen it up to keep pace with tournament demands. But when #3 was blistered to the tune of 25-under during the 2019 BMW Championship, which coincided with a plunge in the rankings from 53 to 93, the club knew it was time to adapt again. They took a swing and hired the Australian firm of Ogilvy, Cocking and Mead to overhaul the design with the notion of making the course look and play like it might have in the 1920s.

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    This is OCM's first Golf Digest award.

    SECOND PLACE
    EAST LAKE GOLF CLUB

    Like Medinah, East Lake is a course designed—or in this case retrofitted—for tournament golf, specifically the Tour Championship, which it has hosted continually since 2004. Despite its effectiveness at extracting exquisite play from professionals, the course had grown one-dimensional, particularly in relation to equipment technology and advances in distance. Most of the putting surfaces sloped back to front, so the prudent play on most holes was the same—play toward the front of the greens to avoid big, bending sidehill putts. A major focus of Andrew Green’s remodel was to expand and lower the greens to increase the variety of available hole locations.

    The architect used a 1949 aerial photo to guide the reconstruction of green shapes and bunkers. Though the course had aged since Donald Ross’ seminal redesign in 1913, it hadn’t been significantly altered and most of the design features visible in the aerial have been put back into the ground. But since no blueprints from Ross exist, Green was forced to extrapolate details and audible numerous creative elements. Most notably, greens like four, six, nine and 12 have been relocated, and the par 4s at eight, 12, 16 and 17 are dramatically altered. With the removal of hundreds of trees, the complete revamping of the green shapes and sizes and the new bunker look, everything is different at East Lake. That’s a good thing—the design fits the land of this historic property better than it has in decades, perhaps since Ross himself was still alive.

    East Lake Golf Club
    Evan Schiller
    Private
    East Lake Golf Club
    Atlanta, GA

    East Lake underwent another major restoration following the 2023 Tour Championship, this time by Andrew Green, highlighting the course's Donald Ross heritage. Green used a 1949 aerial to inform the replacement of bunkers and the shape of greens, which are much larger and possess a wider variety of hole location and slopes than before. Almost every hole was dramatically revamped, creating a course that poses driving options and requires the careful calibration of each shot rather than a mere test of straight hitting.

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    THIRD PLACE
    WOODMONT COUNTRY CLUB (SOUTH)

    Andrew Green, one of the hottest architects in the profession, who took home awards this year for remodels of East Lake and Interlachen (see previous write-ups), learned his trade while working for the Maryland-based golf course contractor McDonald & Sons. But he’s not the only McDonald alum to place a course in this year’s Best Transformation category.

    Designer Joel Weiman, who worked for the firm for 25 years, earns the bronze for his work revamping Woodmont’s South Course, historically the “other” course to the more decorated North Course. Weiman infused the South with a unique identity modeled after the Sand Belt courses of Melbourne. The bunkers were given sleek, curvilinear edges that scallop into the edges of greens, and the entire course is a playground of short, fairway-height grass. Though there are no changes to the routing, the entire look and playability of the course has been reinvented with no formal tees and the opportunity for players to move their shots along the ground and enter greens from a variety of angles.

    Woodmont Country Club: South
    Larry Lambrecht
    Private
    Woodmont Country Club: South
    Rockville, MD
    4.1
    11 Panelists

    Since it first opened as a nine hole amenity in the early 1950s, Woodmont South (it was expanded to 18 a few years later) has been the club's shorter, sportier course compared to the more robust North, ranked fifth in Maryland. That all changed following a 2023 remodel by architect Joel Weiman, who transformed the course into a Melbourne Sand Belt/American prairie hybrid by recontouring every green and surrrounding them with expanses of tight turf, building Australian-style bunkers with sharp lips that cut toward the edges of putting surfaces and introducing native grass buffers throughout the course. He also found additional length, taking the championship tees to over 7,000 yards. No longer the "other" course, the South more than holds its own in distinctiveness not just against the North but against most other designs in the region.

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    Runners-up:

    Dothan Country Club
    Private
    Dothan Country Club
    Dothan, AL
    4
    4 Panelists
    Dothan Country Club in south Alabama was built in 1960 by Hugh Moore, the construction foreman for the Walter Travis and Colt & Alison nines at Georgia’s Sea Island in the late 1920s. He stayed on at the resort as the greenkeeper and eventually went on to design a handful of courses in the southeast. The club has been the site of the Future Masters amateur tournament since 1950, an event won by Tommy Barnes, Andy Bean, Mark Brooks, Shaun Micheel, Stewart Cink and Hudson Swafford among other PGA Tour players. In 2023, architect Billy Fuller, former superintendent of Augusta National and developer of the popular Better Billy Bunker sand liners, completed a major renovation of the golf course that included the installation of new irrigation, drainage, turf, the reconstruction of all tees and greens and the development of a sharpened bunker style that evokes the courses of the 20s with strong top lines and grassed down faces.
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    The Monster Golf Course At Resorts World Catskills
    4.1
    9 Panelists

    The Monster Course at the Concord Resort in upstate New York was once considered among the strongest courses in the U.S. and was a mainstay on the America’s 100 Greatest Courses ranking between 1967 and 1992. It was largely forgotten until new ownership reinvented the property as Resorts World Catskills, and tabbed Rees Jones and associate Bryce Swanson to revive the golf.

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    Lemon Bay Golf Club
    Private
    Lemon Bay Golf Club
    Englewood, FL
    3.8
    7 Panelists
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    Terravita Golf and Country Club
    Dave Sansom
    Private
    Terravita Golf and Country Club
    Scottsdale, AZ
    3.5
    7 Panelists

    Terravita, originally designed by Billy Casper in 1994, spins out broadly through the surrounding development, but the frequently changes of direction highlight different distant desert panoramas. This is classic desert target golf with holes that jump over arroyos and washes, playing to islands of fairway. In 2022, architect Phil Smith, former design partner of the late Tom Weiskopf, performed a major remodel, enlarging greens, adding short-grass chipping areas and entirely re-bunkering the course. The work sharpened both the courses appearance and strategies, and introduced new green complexes like that of the par-4 10th where the putting surface was reshaped and angled tight to the water creating a much more interesting short approach shot.

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    UNC Finley Golf Course
    Ryan Montgomery
    Public
    UNC Finley Golf Course
    Chapel Hill, NC
    3.8
    15 Panelists
    Originally built in 1949, UNC Finley was redesigned by Tom Fazio in the late 80s and shortly after became home to the Tar Heels golf program. Host to numerous collegiate tournaments, including the 2015 NCAA Men’s Regional Championships, this challenging course has no shortage of bunkers or water. In 2023, Mark and Davis Love III, along with architect Scot Sherman, revamped the entire course, adding a new practice range and putting course for the UNC golf teams, adding five new holes, shifting bunkers and tees and giving the greens and hazards more of an old time, "Tillinghast with a twist" look.
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    Valdosta Country Club: Main Course
    Cary Brown
    Private
    Valdosta Country Club: Main Course
    Valdosta, GA
    The prolific southeastern-based architect Joe Lee, who worked with Dick Wilson until the elder architect’s death in 1965, built the first nine at Valdosta in southern Georgia in 1977. Four years later he added a second nine with the help of designer Rocky Roquemore. Bobby Weed, who was then the PGA Tour’s chief designer, added a third nine in 1988. Throughout 2023, Georgia-based architect Bill Bergin took the best portions of the original 18 along with a sliver of the Weed nine and re-combined it all into a new course that includes several newly created holes. Most of the course is routed through a core section of the club property with several coronas flaring out through the pines and the surrounding upscale neighborhood. The greens are much larger with more dynamic contour, and Bergin’s flat-bottomed bunkers bracket greens and set up ideal angles of approach. The transformation also included a six-hole short course, expanded practice area and new short game area.
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