Having watched quite a bit of the PGA Championship, Medinah looks to me like what I expected it to look like---eg a long, big-scale, brassy, treed, midwestern style golf course and that's cool.
It looks to offer good architectural challenges off the tees and some good challenges with its hazard features at the green-ends.
The only real problem Medinah has this week regarding offering strategic challenge to these tour pros is ultra soft and receptive greens.
This is the area of the maintenance meld, in my opinion. By now golf set-up should understand that it doesn't matter much at all how long or even how architecturally dangerous a golf course is today, if it provides this caliber of golfer with ultra soft and receptive greens a very good number of them will kill the course score-wise and we can all see that's happening. Give those guys total receptiveness and aerial approach shot predictability and they'll kill any golf course.
The most important and central component to most golf courses' ideal maintenance meld, but particularly classic ones, to prevent really low scoring for those guys is firm green surfaces of a remarkably identifiable degree.
The green surfaces must lightly dent, nothing more, and no pitch marks can be made where dirt can be pulled up on any aerial approach shots. This prevents these players from flag hunting because they just can't stick the ball directly at pins, they can't suck the ball back and that forces them to play far more defensive or strategic approaches. For God Sakes, I can see the clump of turf on my TV that they pull up on all their aerial approach shots.
Medinah looks to be a good course but the soft greens alone, nothing more, are allowing these players to kill it.
I don't know if the soft greens were a purposefully and intentional set-up by the PGA or whether it's just weather related but I have little doubt that if those Medinah greens were as firm as I just described the should ideally be the leaders going into the final round would probably be right around par.
Not just that but we would be seeing these guys play that golf course, particularly their approach shots in far more defensive and creative ways.
For whatever reason Medinah is suffering from an unideal maintenance meld in one single component----its green surface receptiveness.