Medinah Country Club (Wikipedia photo)

Historic DuPage club to hosts Ryder Cup next month

One of golf’s most prestigious events lands in DuPage County next month.

The 39th Ryder Cup Gala will celebrate this year’s competition at Medinah Country Club with a star-studded affair that will include appearances from U.S. Ryder Cup Captain Davis Love III and European Ryder Cup Captain Jose Maria Olazabal.

Among leading U.S. golfers set to appear are No. 1 point-getter Tiger Woods and at No. 8, snagging the final position, new U.S. Ryder Cup appearance record holder Phil Mickelson.

The Ryder Cup is a competition held every two years between teams from the United States and Europe, with host club alternating between the U.S. and Europe.
This time, the historic Medinah facility — with it’s iconic clubhouse — is host as the event visits the Chicago area for the first time.
Medinah has hosted 13 professional tournaments, including five majors and is a significant and important club in the world of golf. The club has crowned golf champions from Byron Nelson to Tiger Woods and Lou Graham to Hale Irwin.
According to an account on the club’s web site, Medinah the early 1920’s a group of Shriners from Chicago’s Medinah Temple had a dream to create a country retreat.
Their goal was to build the best country club in North America with a 54-hole golf complex and a variety of other recreational activities. They selected several parcels of land in an area then known as Meacham, in northern DuPage County, which was once owned by the Meacham, Lawrence and Rosenwinkel families. 
Tom Bendelow, a world-renowned golf course architect from Scotland, was retained to design the golf courses. In September of 1925, the Shriners enjoyed their first round of golf at Medinah on Course #1.
Construction on Course #2 was completed a year later. Both of these courses have hosted a variety of amateur, professional, and Chicago District Golf Association events. Course #3, originally designed for Medinah’s ladies, was completed in 1928. That original Bendelow layout only lasted for three years. A major redesign took place in the early 1930’s.
While the golf courses were being constructed, Richard G. Schmid was hired to plan and design the clubhouse. Schmid had a flair for blending the classic lines of Byzantine, Oriental, Louis XIV, and Italian architecture characteristic of many Masonic structures. 

His design gave Medinah’s clubhouse the taste, style, and elegance still evident today. Schmid’s plans were carefully executed with Schmidt Brothers Construction Company as general contractor.
The Schmidt Brothers (Otto, August, and Ernest) were Shriners and charter members of Medinah. The rotunda and murals were the work of another club member, Gustav A. Brand, a German-born artist. Shriners were familiar with Brand’s work on the Chicago Medinah Temple and other historic sites.
In the late 1920’s, Medinah had approximately 1,500 members. The onset of the Great Depression created great financial hardship. As many members withdrew, the club waived initiation fees, lowered dues, instituted fundraising events, launched golf tournaments, and soon thereafter eliminated the requirement that only Shriners could join Medinah.
World War II brought more economic misfortune and the club’s membership dropped far below capacity. Course #2 was closed, and for a time members helped maintain the other two courses.
The end of the war brought slow but stable economic recovery, new hope, and gradual growth in the club’s membership.
Late in the 1940’s, Medinah resumed hosting important regional, national and major golf tournaments. Since then, these national and major events have included three Western Opens, two U.S. Opens, a Senior U.S. Open, and two PGA Championships.
A complete restoration and re-modeling of the clubhouse was completed in 1997, and at the same time, fine art conservators cleaned and restored all the interior frescos, murals and decorative stenciling. A new golf shop, and shooting lodge were built.
Over the years, there were changes made to the three golf courses. A re-design of the championship Course #3 by renowned golf architect, Rees Jones, was completed in 2002. When the 2012 Ryder Cup competition is held at Medinah, eighty-eight years after the club’s founding, it will mark another crowning achievement in Medinah history.
The club’s heritage is on display throughout the facility.
Medinah’s Heritage Collection contains a large variety of items; including historic records, documents, photographs, films, publications and artifacts dating back to the club’s founding in 1924.
Gathering and organizing materials from Medinah’s past, and forming the Heritage Committee was the brainchild of the late Wally Hund, who was Chairman of that committee for 15 years.
Hund believed that the history of the club should not only be preserved, but also shared, and he advocated the creation of Medinah’s Golf Lobby in order to house a changing exhibition of unique and important objects and photographs from the collection that not only portray Medinah’s history, but also that of golf.
In addition to items representing all the major tournaments hosted by Medinah, there are golf clubs designed by Bendelow, the club’s initial golf architect, and his original plans for Course No.3.
Tim Cronin, author of “The Spirit of Medinah” published in 2001, used information from the collection as source material to chronicle the club’s history.
Many of the items in the collection are gifts of Medinah members, past and present; and also from golf professionals and tournament winners in recognition of their participation in Medinah history.

Photographs from the collection, including those portraying the winners of the major tournaments are on display throughout the clubhouse and golf shop.