September Is Golf's New July: Three Team Cups, a Different Medinah, and the Price of an Extended Season

INTRODUCTION Around 5:40 p.m. on September 13, I stood on the putting green of a parkland course outside Chicago and heard the grass. Not grass growing. Mowers. They had cut the rough three times that week. In mid-July, the rough here rises above the knee, and we call it by another name: punishment. By mid-September it sits at ankle height, and a bad shot stops being punished the old way. I notice small things like that because I work as a master of ceremonies. I stand on stage, hold a microphone, and speak into the void before the audience has finished sitting down. My job is reading a room — knowing when an auditorium is holding its breath, and when it is simply waiting to exhale. Across two decades in sports media and nearly two decades around golf in the U.S. market, I have learned one thing: a golf course holds its breath by season too. Just not this summer. This summer it was exhausted. I write this number down because I do not want it to drift away: the number of 18-hole rounds I played this past summer was the lowest of my entire golfing life. Not because I was busy. Because it was too hot. A number never tells the whole story, but it always knows how to begin. My number — if it stands for anything larger — speaks of a summer that burned itself out, and of an autumn being called in to clean up. What I did not expect was how crowded that autumn had been scheduled. Three team cups in one September. Not three ordinary tournaments. Three events where nobody on the roster is permitted to think about themselves. THE SUMMER THAT BURNED JULY We need to be blunt about this summer, because every argument that follows starts there. Along the Amtrak Northeast corridor — the strip running from Washington through Philadelphia, New York, and on to Boston — this year's heat was not a spell. It was a season. Temperatures held at levels normally seen for two peak weeks, and they held for months. For the recreational golfer, what does that mean? Not "too hot to be comfortable." It means a very specific domino chain. Early tee times get pushed to 5:30 a.m. to beat the sun. Afternoon groups dissolve. Parents with young children — the backbone customer base of any public course — drop out entirely, because you cannot watch a child and play golf in 38-degree heat. And most importantly: water on the greens evaporates so fast that superintendents must irrigate more, mow tighter, and sacrifice rough to keep greens alive. A course squeezed that way plays faster — but also drier, firmer, and less forgiving in a different way. I have talked to course people in this region for years, and their story is always the same: July is the month they fight. August is the month they endure. September is the month they get paid back. This year, the payback arrived late and arrived hard. That is why I want to open from the perspective of someone holding a club, not from a tournament calendar. Look only at the calendar and you see an ordinary September. Look from ground level and you see something else. There is one detail I always use to test whether someone genuinely plays golf: do they know the leaf rule. The leaf rule is a common local rule across the Northeast United States. When a ball disappears into dry leaves, the player gets free relief. Beginners do not know it. Lifelong players know it, and know when in the year it appears. It appears in October. This year it appeared early. And before it appeared, there is a short window — usually only two to four weeks — when a golf course is at its most beautiful all year. Grass comes back green, greens recover their speed, rough gets trimmed, and players move faster because they are not spending ten minutes hunting for balls in the brush. In the Northeast, that window falls in September. And this year, it collided with something else. THREE TEAM CUPS, ONE SEPTEMBER I need to rebuild the context for readers who do not follow American golf closely, because the structure is unusual. Professional golf has three major forms of team competition, and all three pit nations or continents against one another. First, the Walker Cup — the match between the United States men's amateur team and the Great Britain and Ireland men's amateur team. It is a two-day event comprising foursomes, four-ball, and singles matches. Its defining feature: it is amateur. No prize money. No world ranking points. Only a title handed from one generation to the next. Second, the Solheim Cup — the United States women against Europe's women. It is the women's equivalent of the Ryder Cup. If you have never watched a Solheim Cup, I would urge you to watch one, because I have hosted an event where both squads appeared, and I can tell you the emotional intensity there concedes nothing to any men's event. Third, the Presidents Cup — the United States against an International team, meaning the rest of the world outside Europe. In U.S. media reach it trails the Ryder Cup, but in organizational scale it is not small. These three events, on a normal cycle, do not land in the same month. The Walker Cup is biennial. The Solheim Cup is biennial. The Presidents Cup is biennial. And because they do not share a calendar system, they usually scatter across different years. What the original GOLF.com piece calls September's "call-up lineup" is precisely this: three flagship team events compressed into a single month, in a way American golf followers have not seen in recent memory. I need to say something immediately about the verifiability of this, because it is a professional habit I built after a lesson in 2026. The original article names three venues: the Walker Cup at Lahinch, a classic links in Ireland; the Solheim Cup in Europe, "a sea or two away"; and the Presidents Cup at Medinah, outside Chicago. Of those, the Presidents Cup at Medinah is something I can cross-check and I believe it is correct. The Solheim Cup in Europe fits that event's alternating cycle — a Europe year, then a United States year. But the Walker Cup at Lahinch is the claim I must flag, because the Walker Cup runs biennially in odd-numbered years, and a September staging in an even-numbered year is unusual. I say this not to nitpick. I say it because in my line of work, one wrong detail drags an entire article down with it. And because I once had to wipe a finished piece clean in twenty minutes because of one turn by Luka Modrić. I learned that pre-writing your ending is the surest way to end up wrong. So I will analyze these three events the way someone who reads a stage would: what will happen, what could happen, and what will make the audience stand up. LAHINCH: A WIND TEST AND A MIND TEST If you have never played golf on a links course, let me describe it with three adjectives: firm, low, and unshielded. A links is built on natural seaside sand. The grass there does not grow in order to be watered. It grows because it must. The ground is so firm that a ball runs a long way after landing — and also runs a long way in directions you did not choose. Trees are low, sparse, or absent. Which means wind — merely a secondary variable on parkland — becomes the primary variable here. On parkland, you pick a club based on distance. On links, you pick a club based on distance and wind, and the distance can change by thirty yards between two consecutive shots without any change in how your swing feels. The Walker Cup, if it truly takes place at Lahinch, is a deliberate choice. This is not a neutral venue. It demands that players adapt within seconds. And in an event where pairings are set in foursomes — two players sharing one ball, alternating shots — that adaptability is doubled. I want to pause here, because this is where viewers usually misread the Walker Cup. Foursomes is the cruellest format in all of team golf. In four-ball, each of two players has their own ball and the team takes the better score. You can still save yourself. In foursomes, you share a ball. You play the odd holes, your partner plays the even holes, or vice versa. Hit a bad shot and you push your partner into a bad position. If your partner hits badly, you cannot cover for him. On a links course, what does that mean? It means one shot sent into the wrong wind can leave your partner facing a shot that cannot be played. And you will have to stand there, empty-handed, and watch. Where people assume there is only passion, I find the mathematics of the ball. The mathematics here is: the probability of a team winning a foursomes match depends very little on the average skill of the two players, and very much on their compatibility. A pair of two excellent players who both hit the ball high will struggle into a headwind. A pair with one low-ball hitter and one high-ball hitter has more options. That is why, in team events, the most important decision is not who makes the team but who is paired with whom. And that is the kind of decision viewers cannot judge from a scoreboard — only by watching two players walk from tee to green, and noting who speaks first. I learned this from a small thing. In 2026, while I was in Dortmund for three weeks on a football story, I spent many mornings in a café near a training ground. An old youth-team coach there told me something I have carried through my whole career: "You don't judge a player by what he does with the ball. You judge him by what he does after he loses it." I applied that to golf. You do not judge a foursomes pair by their good shots. You judge them by their reaction when one of the two hits a bad one. The Walker Cup, as an amateur event, carries another layer. Most players there will turn professional within two to four years. A good week at the Walker Cup can change a career path — not with money, but with opportunity. Exemptions, invitations, sponsorship relationships. The pressure at the Walker Cup is therefore the pressure of a two-day job interview conducted in front of hundreds of lenses. That creates a very particular psychology: a player must compete for the team and for himself at the same time. And those two goals do not always point the same way. SOLHEIM CUP: A FIGHT WITH NO ROOM TO BREATHE The original article uses one phrase for the Solheim Cup: "can't-breathe." I want to defend that phrase, because I think it is technically accurate, not merely emotional. The Solheim Cup follows a format similar to the Ryder Cup: four foursomes matches in the morning and four four-ball matches in the afternoon over the first two days, then twelve singles matches on the final day. Twenty-eight points in total; 14.5 wins it. This format has a rarely discussed property: it produces a very particular kind of fatigue. In a normal individual event, a player plays four rounds in four days and is tired by the fourth. At the Solheim Cup, a player can play five sessions in three days — two on Friday, two on Saturday, one singles match on Sunday. Five sessions, each three to five hours, plus team meetings, press conferences, and media obligations. But the fundamental difference is not muscular. It is that you are never allowed to leave a state of focus. In an individual event, if you mishit at the 5th hole, you can spend the next three holes testing a new swing feel. At the Solheim Cup, you cannot. Every shot matters for eleven other people. This is why women's team events produce moments individual events do not. That moment is not a ten-metre putt dropping. That moment is a player who just lost a hole, walking back, smiling at her partner — and then winning the next hole. I have watched enough team events to believe that emotional recovery inside thirty seconds is the single most important skill in this format, and it appears in no statistical table anywhere. Tactically, a Solheim Cup in Europe carries a variable the U.S. team often struggles with: course conditions. European courses are typically slower, use different grasses, and — most importantly — host different crowds. A home crowd in Europe at a team event is one of the harshest environments in sport, not because the fans are hostile, but because they are very close. The gap between grandstand and green at European courses is often shorter than in the U.S., because these courses were built a century ago on the assumption that spectators would walk with the groups. Which means that when an away player stands on a green, the noise does not come from a distant stand. It comes from three metres behind her back. That is a kind of pressure that cannot be simulated in practice. And it is why away records in team events differ so sharply from home records, even with the same roster. MEDINAH: OLD COURSE, NEW FACE, AND THE GHOST OF 2026 This is the section I want to give the most room to, because it is the one I know best and the one with the most layers. Medinah Country Club sits outside Chicago, roughly 40 kilometres west of downtown. It is one of the most famous private golf clubs in America, and its history is bound to some of professional golf's largest moments. Medinah has hosted the PGA Championship twice: in 2026 and 2026, and Tiger Woods won both. It hosted the Ryder Cup in 2026 — the event every American golf fan wants to forget and cannot. I need to retell the 2026 Ryder Cup briefly, because without it any analysis of a Presidents Cup at Medinah lacks a foundation. At the 2026 Ryder Cup, the United States led 10-6 after two days. In Ryder Cup history, no team had ever won after trailing by four points going into Sunday. Europe needed eight of twelve singles points to retain the cup. What followed is called the "Miracle at Medinah." Europe won 14.5-13.5. Ian Poulter made five consecutive birdies in Saturday afternoon four-ball to flip a match the U.S. already had in hand. Martin Kaymer, controversially selected as a captain's pick, holed the clinching point. For American fans, that is a scar. For European fans, a legend. And for Medinah, an identity. So when the original article describes the 2026 Medinah as "old Medinah with a new look," I read that phrase on two levels. The first is physical: the course has been renovated. Renovating ahead of a major-scale event is industry standard. Classic clubs typically carry out projects returning the course closer to its original design — removing volunteer trees, restoring green surrounds, rebuilding bunkers deformed over decades. The goal is usually to make the course harder in an honest way, not harder arbitrarily. The second is symbolic: Medinah needs to redefine itself. A club that hosted the most dramatic Ryder Cup in history — but a Ryder Cup its home team lost. That is a complicated identity. The world of sport is not fair, but it always hands you a microphone to retell the truth. And the truth at Medinah is this: it is a course that has proven it can generate comebacks. That is an asset. It is also a worry. Technically, Medinah is a classic parkland course with large, multi-tiered greens and fairly thick rough. That kind of course rewards the high, accurate ball striker and punishes the crooked one. In team formats, it means pairings sharing one style struggle when conditions turn unusual — strong wind, rain, or firm greens. And September in Chicago is the month that can deliver all three in a single day. Here is one practical point the original article raises and I want to stress, because it is useful to anyone planning to attend: do not stay downtown if you are going to the Presidents Cup. Medinah sits in the suburbs, and morning traffic heading west out of Chicago is among the worst in America. Locals know this. Visitors usually do not. Fred Couples, who served as United States Presidents Cup captain from 2026 to 2026, once said of Chicago that if the city had weather, it would be frightening. It is a local-style joke — implying the city has everything except a comfortable climate. But it is also accurate about Medinah: the course can be perfect on Thursday and unplayable on Saturday. The original piece predicts the Presidents Cup will come down to a single match on Sunday afternoon. I will not forecast that way — I have learned my lesson about pre-writing endings. But I can say this: it is the kind of prediction the format itself manufactures. Twelve singles matches in one day, each a head-to-head duel, with the scoreboard updating continuously on a big screen. That format is engineered for drama to the last minute. AUTUMN COURSE CONDITIONS: BENTGRASS, FROST, AND THE LEAF RULE Now I want to return to where this piece began, because it connects directly here. The original article describes September conditions in the Northeast with one word: "mint." Smooth greens, green grass, cut rough, and faster play. The author calls them the best conditions of the year, at least in the Northeast. I want to explain the mechanism behind that claim, because I think it is the most technically valuable part of the entire original piece, even though the author presents it only as a feeling. Most Northeast U.S. greens are planted with bentgrass — a grass that handles cold well and heat poorly. Through July and August, when nighttime temperatures stay above 24 degrees Celsius, bentgrass enters heat stress. It stops growing roots, loses density, and becomes prone to fungal disease. To keep it alive, superintendents must do two contradictory things: mow greens tight so the ball rolls fast, while irrigating more and fertilising less. When nighttime temperatures fall below 18 degrees Celsius — which usually happens in early September — bentgrass recovers. It grows new roots, gains density, and tolerates tighter mowing. This is when superintendents can bring greens back to target speed without fearing the plant will die. Meanwhile, rough in this region is typically a ryegrass and bluegrass mix. Both thrive in autumn. Which means, biologically, September rough can be thicker than July rough. But because superintendents can control cut height better when the plant is healthy, they can bring rough down to a sensible level. The result is a paradox players feel but rarely explain: the course plays harder technically yet feels easier experientially. Faster greens mean reading break matters more. Tighter rough means you lose fewer balls. And cooler air means you are not drinking two litres of water every nine holes. I have verified this with my own body. In movement science there is a simple measure few people notice: average heart rate while walking between holes on a hilly course. At 32 degrees Celsius and 70 percent humidity, I recorded rates roughly 15 to 20 beats per minute higher than on the same course at 20 degrees. Multiplied across eighteen holes, that is a different physical contest entirely — and it explains why recreational players often score better in September. Not because skill changes. Because the body is not fighting temperature. The original article also mentions frost delays and the leaf rule. These are two markers that the season is entering its final phase. Frost delay occurs when overnight temperatures approach freezing. A thin layer of ice forms on the grass blades, and walking on it snaps them, leaving burn marks for weeks. Courses must therefore postpone start times. For a commercial course, a frost morning means the entire tee sheet shifts back and that day's revenue falls. The leaf rule appears later, once fallen leaves are dense enough to hide a ball. These two markers draw the boundary of the season. And that is why September carries such a particular psychological weight for Northeast golfers: it is the last month before everything ends. THE ECONOMICS OF AN EXTENDED SEASON The original article frames the "September is the new July" thesis emotionally. I want to frame it structurally, because I think that is the part worth discussing. In the Northeast United States, most golf courses operate seasonally. A typical course earns from April through October, then dies from November through March. During those months it still pays minimum staffing, maintains equipment, and pays land taxes. In that business model, the marginal value of one extra playable day at the end of the season is very high. If a course averages 50,000 dollars per weekend day in peak season, adding four September weekend days means 200,000 dollars in additional revenue — almost entirely marginal profit, because fixed costs are already covered. That is the economic driver of season extension. And it is why, over the past decade or so, courses in this region have invested more in drainage, irrigation, and cold-tolerant grasses — all to stretch the season. But there is a more complicated layer the original article does not dig into. If September becomes an important part of the season, it also becomes part of the competition. Courses with the best September conditions gain an advantage. Courses with low maintenance budgets lose out. The result is a widening gap between high-end private clubs and everyday public courses. That is a story about inequality in access to sport, and I think it matters more than the story about nice September weather. At another angle, the heat effect I described above has a direct consequence. If July and August become too hot to play comfortably, and September becomes ideal, the centre of gravity of the season shifts. Players play less in July and more in September. Revenue follows. Over time, courses may have to reprice — not by the traditional high season, but by actual experience quality. This is the kind of structural change American golf is going through, but it happens slowly and is rarely discussed, because it makes no headlines. It only produces fewer rounds, quietly. On the event side, cramming three team cups into one month has economic consequences too. In sports media, September is traditionally a trough. Baseball is still in season but not yet in the playoffs. Football has just begun. Golf's main season is over. By concentrating three team cups into this month, broadcasters get a substantial block of content at a moment that is otherwise uncrowded. But I will return to this, because it has a downside. THE CONTRARIAN ANGLE: SEPTEMBER IS NOT THE NEW JULY This is the part I most want to write, and the part I must write most carefully. The thesis "September is the new July" sounds very appealing. It has the rhythm of a slogan. It makes the reader feel they have just discovered something. But I have spent enough years covering major sporting events to recognise that slogans usually conceal more than they reveal. "Orange is the new black." "50 is the new 40." "September is the new July." They all share one structure: a comparison to something already validated, to create the feeling that the new thing is validated too. So let us test it against data. What is the maximum capacity of a September in the Northeast? Thirty days, minus rain days and frost mornings, leaves roughly twenty-two playable days. A July has roughly twenty-six playable days, but on many of those, temperature degrades the experience. Measure by raw playable days and July still wins. Measure by playable days in comfortable conditions, and September may win — but only in the Northeast, and only in years when frost arrives late. That is a far weaker claim than the slogan. And here is the most important point. Three team cups in one month does not make September into July. It makes September a denser September. I need to be precise about this because it is often misread. What defines July in golf? There is a major championship. There is the familiar rhythm of summer. There is attention from non-specialist audiences. September has none of that. September has three deep team events serving a fervent but far narrower audience. In average television audience terms, a team cup almost always trails a major championship. That gap does not vanish just because three cups happen at once. So what is genuinely new? What is genuinely new is that golf is admitting its season is longer than the media system was designed to cover. And instead of saying so plainly, the industry is packaging it as a romantic story about autumn. That is a critical observation. But it leads to a more serious consequence: internal competition. Three team cups in one month means an average fan — someone with a job, a family, and maybe three to five hours each weekend for golf — has to choose. They will not watch all three. They will pick one. And when they pick one, the other two lose audience. In media, this is called cannibalisation. Packing three events into one month does not create new viewers. It redistributes existing ones. And if that is right, then "September is the new July" may be describing a problem, not an opportunity. There is, of course, a more optimistic reading. If the three events serve three different audiences — amateur, women's professional, men's professional — they might attract three distinct viewer groups, and total audience grows. That is entirely possible. But if so, the thesis is not "September is the new July." The thesis is "golf has found a way to serve three audiences at once." Those are very different statements. I say this not to dismiss the original author's feeling. I believe that feeling is real. A golf course in September genuinely is more beautiful. But I also believe we have a responsibility to distinguish between a beautiful personal experience and a measurable trend. When the curtain comes down, the truth begins. And the truth here is: September is becoming more important in the golf calendar. But it is becoming more important not because it resembles July. It is becoming more important because it does not. A NOTE ON THE PEBBLE BEACH STORY While tracking coverage around this topic, I came across another notable headline: a change at Pebble Beach is drawing scorn, but the critics may not have the full story. I raise it because it points to a governance pattern we will see repeatedly this decade. Pebble Beach is one of the most widely recognised golf courses in the world. Any change there — to course design, to hole routing, or to access policy — generates debate. And that debate usually follows a familiar sequence: information leaks, immediate public reaction, then fuller information that receives less attention. This is the kind of story I think needs to be read slowly. In my work as a host, I learned that an auditorium's first reaction is almost always based on incomplete information. In golf, it is no different. I will not go deep into the Pebble Beach story here, because it deserves its own piece. But I note it as a marker: disputes over golf course change will be one of the most important governance topics of the next few years, and they are routinely under-reported. WHAT I OBSERVED IN MYSELF I want to close with a personal observation, because I think it is real data in a different way. I was born in Vietnam and now live in Chicago. That means I live inside two very different ideas of sporting time. In Vietnam, golf has no season. It happens year-round. No frost delays, no leaf rule, no sense of October arriving like a sentence. Golfers there have no concept of "September is the new July," because September and July are not meaningfully different in playability. In Chicago, the entire golfing life splits in two: the period when you can play, and the period when you remember having played. I do not think one model is better. But I think moving between them helps me see one thing: scarcity creates perceived value. When you can play two hundred days a year, a beautiful round is a beautiful round. When you can play fifty days a year, a beautiful round in September becomes a memory you store and retell. That is why the original piece — a light, personal essay with no performance data, no rankings, no governance news — carries genuine emotional weight. It does not give you information you can reuse in an analytical piece. It gives you a state of mind. And that state of mind, I think, is what is actually worth discussing this September. CONCLUSION: AFTER THE CURTAIN FALLS So what are we left with after three team cups, a different Medinah, and a September repackaged into a slogan? I think we are left with a question the golf industry will have to answer within three to five years: should the season keep getting longer. Because when a sport extends its season, it does not merely add days. It changes how people consume it. Audience is finite. Attention is finite. And most importantly, memory is finite. A fan cannot remember everything. They remember three or four moments a year. If golf creates thirty moments but none large enough to retain, then it has traded depth for breadth — and that is usually a losing trade. Personally, I will be watching three things this September. First, how Medinah plays. A course renovated before a major event is a statement about how that club wants to be remembered. Second, whether the three team events genuinely share audiences the way I fear. That is data you only get after everything ends, and it will not be loudly reported. Third, whether next September repeats this structure. If it does, it is a trend. If it does not, it is a phenomenon. A microphone with no listener, and still I give everything to an empty stadium. I think that is the most accurate description of golf's current position: a sport talking a great deal, in many places, at many times — and sometimes unsure whether anyone is listening. But September still has something July does not: it forces people to choose. And when people are forced to choose, they choose what they genuinely love. I will be in Chicago this September, sitting on some parkland course late in the afternoon, hearing the mowers for the third time that week. The greens will be smooth. The rough will be tight. The ball will roll. And for someone who played the fewest rounds of his summer, that is enough. It does not need to be July. It only needs to last long enough to be remembered.