Medinah Country Club (No.3 Course) - Illinois, U.S.A.

Medinah Country Club's No.3 Course is the famed championship course of Chicago. With its massive red-bricked and minareted mock-Moorish clubhouse, Medinah was founded in 1928 by the Shriners, who are members of the Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. The club is !lamed for Islam's second holiest city. The Shriners were started by a New York City Freemason in 1871 after he returned from a trip to Europe, where lavish parties in Arabic costumes were then in vogue. Medinah is a big-shouldered and taxing course, measuring more than 7,400 yards, with nine doglegs. The central feature of the course is Lake Kadijah, named after Mohammed's wife. Medinah's signature holes, the par-three 13th and 17th, both play across the lake, with the glassy greens sloped  so that a tee shot hit with too much backspin risks rolling back into the water. In one of the more memorable U.S. Opens, Hale Irwin caught journeyman Mike Donald on the final hole of regulation in 1990 and then won the championship in the 18-hole playoff the next day. Medinah will host the PGA Championship in 2006.

Chicago Golf Club - Illinois, U.S.A.

The Chicago Golf Club was founded in 1892 by Charles Blair Macdonald, who was one of the great early pioneers of golf in America. A native of Chicago, Macdonald learned the game as a student at St. Andrews University in the 1870s. He later became a leading amateur golfer, established golf course architecture as a discipline in the United States, and wrote an interesting memoir entitled Scotland's Gift-Golf. In 1894, the original nine-hole course was replaced with an 18-hole layout designed by Macdonald in the suburb of Wheaton, making it the first 18-hole course in America. Chicago hosted three early U.S. Opens, beginning in 1897. Harry Vardon, the dominant English professional, won the Open at Chicago in 1900, while Philadelphia's Johnny McDermott became the first native-born American to win the Open in 1911. Nowadays, Chicago is a rarefied, private club, where Macdonald's design endures as a masterpiece.