Presidents Cup 2026: Is the hole at Medinah where Sergio Garcia hit his remarkable around-the-tree shot really gone?

The specifics have faded from memory, but the visual for many golf fans is still as clear as the day it happened. Sunday, Aug. 15, 1999. A 19-year-old Sergio Garcia swinging at his ball partially blocked by a tree, eyes closed, head tilted, then scampering down the fairway with the 6-iron in his hand to see where it landed. That’s when Sergio Garcia, in his coming out party as a professional, did his famed scissor-kick, his ball somehow finding the green.

The final round of the 1999 PGA Championship at Medinah No. 3 saw Tiger Woods lay claim to the second of his 15 major titles, but only after fending off runner-up Garcia, whose exuberance on the 16th hole earned him seemingly as much attention as if he’d won the Wanamaker Trophy.

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“I really just figured, what the heck. I wanted to win the tournament,” Garcia recalled for the book Medinah: The Jewel of Chicagoland, published by the club in 2025. “There was a bit of a chance of hitting the tree with the club. I wasn’t as worried of that as I was of the ball hitting the tree. Then if the ball hit me, it’s a penalty and I might make eight. I knew I could get into the ball with the club, but the problem was getting it up quick enough over that edge of the tree.”

As the golf world turns its eyes back to Medinah No. 3 this week for the 2026 Presidents Cup, many watching will be on the look out for the spot from which Garcia hit is famed escape shot.

But there’s a problem with that … actually two. First, the giant oak dubbed the “Sergio tree” was removed because of illness during preparation for the 2012 Ryder Cup.

And second? That hole now no longer exists.

Jim Gund

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As part of the recent renovation of the course by the design firm of OCM (Geoff Ogilvy, Mike Cocking and Ashley Mead), the former holes 14, 15 and 16 on the No. 3 course are gone. They were replaced by two par 4s at 14 and 15 that proceed a new par-4 16th hole that sets up with a diagonal drive over the water to a fairway and green running along the opposite side of Lake Kadijah.

How could a course with such history leave behind one of its signature moments? Chalk it up as for the greater good of the long-term health of the course as a major championship venue. As Golf Digest’s Derek Duncan wrote in an intriguing story about Medinah, “the packed holes that forced players to hit prescribed, straight shots began to be viewed as a liability.” Added to that, the fact that Justin Thomas won at Medinah when it held the 2019 BMW Championship with a stunning 25-under score, and the die was cast for an overhaul.

OCM won the bid for the work by selling a plan that physically recreate the No. 3 property as it would have looked in 1928 when the original Tom Bendelow design opened. Duncan says that “this meant exposing the landscape with enlarged and recontoured greens that could provide diverse hole locations, the addition of dozens of bunkers emphasizing strategic placement rather than punishment of missed shots and, most importantly, new holes on the second nine.”

Duncan and the Golf Digest video team have put together a great look at all the changes to Medinah right here:

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“I am reminded about it quite a bit, which is a nice thing, definitely. It’s always nice to be reminded about good shots,” Garcia said of the decision to go for it on 16. “It definitely is one of the best shots of my career under the situation.”

For Garcia fans, rest assured Golf Channel/NBC will almost certainly show a Sergio highlight from 1999 at some point during the four-day broadcast. The hole may not exist any more, but the memory certainly does.

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Medinah Country Club/Seth Jenkins

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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 No. 3 course. It was built in the 1920s within the fields west of Chicago 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. To whit, the old 17th hole, a par-3 over water, shifted and morphed several times between 1986 and 2005, and the greens and bunkers have undergone remodels ahead of each event, from Opens, to PGA Championships to Ryder Cups. But when No. 3 was blistered to the tune of 25-under during the 2019 BMW Championship, which coincided with a plunge in our rankings from 53rd to 93rd, 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. That meant removing much of the dense forest surrounding the holes, revamping the bunkers in more naturalistic forms, enlarging the greens and adding internal contour, eliminating two of the three redundant par 3s that played over Lake Kadijah and building several new holes, including the drivable 16th over the lake. The radical shift has put the fun, firmness and variety back into a design that had become one-dimensional, predictable and soft, and the result is a jump of 19 spots in the ranking. View Course