Medinah Country Club, home of the 2012 Ryder Cup.
During my employment at Thomas & Thomas, I had the incredible opportunity to complete construction documents for a prominent social area of Medinah Country Club in Chicago, Illinois. This project was a dream project for someone interested in golf and with the desires to design golf courses. In my college years at Kansas State University, it was golf course design that made me make switch my career focus to landscape architecture rather than architecture.
Medinah Country Club is one of the best and most notable golf courses in the United States, and is also the home of the 2012 Ryder Cup. T&T was selected as the landscape architect for this prominent course due to the company’s past experience at the Denver Country Club, where Medinah general manager Dan Miles was previously employed.
My involvement with Medinah was as the lead landscape architect and designer for the improvements and construction documentation. The following are some of the improvements planned for Medinah’s “backyard”:
- Redesign of the large “backyard” putting green into two putting greens with gentler slopes. The current putting green in the backyard includes incredible slopes on one side, where golfers seldomly practice.
- Victory Plaza is to be the prominent award plaza where trophys and celebrations are to occur. This is the area where the Ryder Cup trophy will be presented to the winning team (hopefully USA) in 2012.
- Cart path improvements and the seperation of cart users and pedestrians.
- Outdoor dining facility for golfers making the turn to the 10th hole on course 2.
- Celebratory fountain round-a-bout between the newly improved putting greens.
This was a great project that thoroughly enjoyed being a part of. The following is a link to an article about the improvements: Medinah