Medinah Before the Matches: The PGA Professionals Who Make a Presidents Cup Possible

Long before a captain sends out the first pairing, somebody at Medinah Country Club has to remove the roofs from more than 200 golf carts.

PGA Tour officials need the carts. Golf bag racks that normally serve Medinah members must be moved from the bag room to a secure compound outside the spectator areas. Range balls have to be ready when 24 of the best players in the world want them, while members still need a place to gather and a reason to feel connected to their club.

This is Presidents Cup week from the working side of the ropes. Much of it lands with Casey Brozek, PGA, Medinah's PGA Director of Golf, and a professional staff whose jobs have temporarily expanded far beyond the golf shop.

Brozek already knew what international team golf could do to this corner of Chicagoland. He was president of the Illinois PGA Section in 2012, when Europe produced its Sunday comeback in the Ryder Cup on Medinah's Course No. 3. Fourteen years later, he is inside the host club, helping prepare a different version of the same course for a different team event.

The connection is unusual. Brozek did not simply return to a familiar tournament site. He came back with responsibility for the golf operation at a club that will become the only one in the world to have hosted a U.S. Open, PGA Championship, Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup.

The scale has been visible for months. Construction of roughly 540,000 square feet of hospitality space began in April. Course No. 3 closed to member play Sept. 8. Courses No. 1 and No. 2 followed about a week later, creating a rare week in which Medinah's entire golf footprint belonged to competition and its supporting work.

Brozek's preparation even reached the PGA Show in January. He brought seven staff members and divided vendor appointments as they searched for products connected to the Presidents Cup. That shopping trip offered a useful glimpse of the job. A global event is also a retail deadline, a staffing exercise and a long list of decisions that must be settled before the first spectator reaches the gate.

Medinah's PGA leadership reaches beyond Brozek. Dave Schneider, PGA, CCM, serves as general manager and chief operating officer, with responsibility across a club that still has dining, hospitality, security and member needs during tournament week. Sean McLeod, PGA, is listed by the PGA of America as a golf instructor at Medinah. Together with the club's wider professional and operations staff, they represent the range of jobs hidden inside a modern PGA career.

This week asks more of Medinah than hosting the main matches on Course No. 3. The Junior Presidents Cup opened the schedule on a composite routing of Courses No. 1 and No. 2, placing 24 elite junior players on the same property before the U.S. and International teams begin play Thursday.

That compressed calendar left the golf staff with no quiet corner of the club. Practice facilities, carts, bag storage and traffic patterns all had to be reassigned. The work also affected members who had surrendered access to three courses during one of the best stretches of the Chicago golf season.

Brozek's team arranged reciprocal rounds at other area clubs and created short trips to Wisconsin destinations. Members also received brief videos explaining what had been built, what changed that day and where regular routines might be disrupted. Those updates were called Presidents Cup in a Minute, an appropriately compact answer to a sprawling operation.

The communication matters because a host club cannot spend months treating its members like an inconvenience. Medinah's championship history belongs to them, too. A PGA Professional has to enjoy the chance to host the event while recognizing what it costs a member who loses a Saturday tee time.

That balance continues during the matches. Brozek told PGA Magazine that member services would be almost as important as supplying range balls to the players. His staff will manage the practice grounds, team golf cars and a member hospitality area overlooking The Sahara, Medinah's 18-hole putting course. Daily putting contests will give members their own scoreboard during the week.

The PGA Professionals are one part of a much larger Medinah team. Ben McGargill, the club's director of golf course operations, leads a grounds department that has grown to roughly 100 people. His crew's morning setup affects when Brozek can release the practice ground. Security dictates how bags and golf cars move. Hospitality changes where members enter and gather.

Brozek's group has to translate a PGA Tour request into Medinah's daily reality. That requires knowledge of the property and of the routines members expect. It also means recognizing when a temporary tournament solution could leave a problem after the grandstands come down.

That last part is easy to miss. A host PGA Professional is planning for Thursday morning and the Monday after the trophy presentation. The practice tee must function under championship demand. Member bags still need to be accounted for. The putting course has to serve as hospitality space, then become part of the club again. Every temporary route, storage area and golf car eventually returns to ordinary use.

Television will show Course No. 3, the pairings and a first tee built to hold thousands of voices. If the week runs properly, viewers will hear very little about Brozek, Schneider or the professional staff.

They will notice only that Medinah feels ready. After the final match, the golf operation turns back toward the people who surrendered their courses for the week. The same staffers who removed more than 200 golf car roofs will start putting them back.