The rerouting of Medinah Country Club\u2019s No. 3 Course for this Presidents Cup was expected to create drama, especially on the first three holes.<\/p>\n
These are referred to, by some, as the fence holes because a wooden, split-rail fence runs alongside the left side of each of them, separating the course from out of bounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very nerve-racking,\u201d Justin Thomas said on Wednesday. \u201cI would just say that every single person that\u2019s playing a match and hitting shots on those holes this week is thinking about them or maybe approaching them differently than if that fence was just a fence, if it wasn\u2019t a boundary fence. So, it\u2019s there, and it will be a part of the thinking somewhat.\u201d<\/p>\n
During Thursday\u2019s opening fourball session, those fence holes immediately made themselves known, forcing three shots \u2013 and nearly four \u2013 to be hit out of play.<\/p>\n
While no shot found out of bounds and only four of the 20 competitors missed the fairway at the par-4 first hole, there were only two birdies on that opening hole, as tee balls that favored the right made it impossible to get close to the back-right pin.<\/p>\n
The par-4 second hole was a different story. In the first match, Sungjae Im\u2019s drive clanked off the fence and fortunately for Im, bounced back into the fairway. <\/p>\n
Jackson Koivun, Ryan Fox and Si Woo Kim weren\u2019t so lucky, as all three had to re-tee after sending their initial tee balls left of the fence.<\/p>\n
The boundary doesn\u2019t factor as much at the par-5 third, though of the seven players who hit their tee shot well right of the center-line bunker, only one of them carded birdie (Scottie Scheffler).<\/p>\n
For as much as the fence holes factored on Thursday, the nerves on those holes will be heightened on Friday as the format switches to foursomes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The rerouting of Medinah Country Club\u2019s No. 3 Course for this Presidents Cup was expected to create drama,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":859418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-859417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=859417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/859418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}