I took a look at Medinah's original routing and I think it was a better routing, at least on paper. I had forgotten how it went exactly so I pulled out my old World Atlas of Golf.
There used to be a waterless par-3 (old 14th) that played from the (current) 16th green to somewhere near the beginning of the (current) 14th fairway. Then the (old) 15th was a short par-four basically covering the last 320 yards of the current 14th.
Looking at this makes me wonder if they couldn't have put the new 17th sort of the in the general area of that abandoned par-three, possibly putting it right on Lake Kadijah and making it a lateral hazard all the way down the left side. You would have had to move the 18th tee a bit or make the walk longer, though. Or perhaps put it on the other side of the lake and make the water on the right. It'd still be a water hole, but you'd have it running the length of the hole instead of having another forced carry.
Of course, they could have just left the original routing alone too. A par 71 with two water par-3s, two waterless par-3s, and a (possibly?) driveable par four.
Was the only way to "fix" 18 to move it into a completely different spot?
Interesting Rees Jones Jr. work here! It seems to me that there are two central reasons why Medinah didn't measure up by the standards of many. First, long ago, it fell into the architectural camp that believes that length, length and more length would make the golf course tough, tough and tougher still for the pro tour. There is a long line of clubs who have been in that camp and they are all now the victims of technological changes in the ball and in equipment, combined with the fitness of the modern player.
Length is almost irrelevant to these beasts. Let's look at two holes: #12 is a montrously long dogleg to the right with a dramatically tilted fairway to the right and a pond on the right. The pros average score? 4.05, making it the sixth hardest hole. I'm betting that the sixth hardest hole at the Bethpage Open was harder than that. The 14th hole is 605 yards long and the pros just destroyed it, with an average score of 4.8, making it the third easiest hole on the course. To us mere mortals, those two holes would probably rank first and second in terms of toughness, but they were a piece of cake to the touring pros.
Why were they so damned easy this week? The answer is simple: the golf course was rendered defenseless by its soft conditions. Just ask any Chicago area superintendant about the weather this August. They'll tell you that August features the most large rainstorms and that there were a number of soaking rains in late July and in early August. Good golfers kill golf courses if they are soft. In fact, I played Medinah a couple weeks before they closed the course with Ryan Potts. It rained 1 1/2 inches the night before and I was stopping three-woods on the greens. I shot 40 on the front from the back (not pro) tees.
As the championship neared, we kept getting more rain. I checked in with my pals and was not surprised to learn that the course was still soft and sticky. This is because of natural conditions, not the superintendant soaking the golf course. I'm sure in the aftermath of this tournament, the greens committee will be poring (pardon the pun) over the logs of the superintendent and I'm sure that they will find that he was not using that much water, except for a two week barrage of heat and humidity in mid-July.
Sorry to sound like an amateur meteorologist, but the truth is that Mother Nature and Father Technology combined in a Perfect Storm that allowed par to take a beating.