Length against irons at Medinah.

The Presidents Cup started today, and it asks the question I built our studio to answer: who has the edge on Medinah's long par 4s, and how would your own driver and irons do there? I built this week's chart by hand; it's just below. The studio opened tonight, so next time you can sign in and ask it yourself.

Friday at Medinah comes down to the even holes

Friday is foursomes, better known as alternate shot: one ball per side, partners taking turns. One player tees off on every odd hole and the other on every even hole, and each pair has to choose before the match starts. At Medinah, that choice is lopsided.

It works the other way too. On the even holes, the odd-hole player hits the approach, often from 200 yards on those long par 4s. So Medinah's ideal foursomes pair is a long driver on the evens with a great iron player behind him.

Friday's five matches, with our pick for who takes the even tee: the longer driver.

Five pairs split the jobs cleanly, a longer driver with a sharper iron player: Burns and Scheffler, Im and Matsuyama, Clark and Morikawa, Schauffele and Cantlay, and the Kims. Match 5 is Thursday's rematch, with Schauffele in for Gotterup. In four others, one player is both longer and better with his irons: Conners, Bridgeman, Young and Scott.

Thursday went 3–2 to the US, but the two matches with the biggest gaps off the tee both went to the shorter pair. The Kims beat Gotterup and Cantlay 3 and 2. Matsuyama and Hisatsune beat Young and Schauffele 3 and 1.

The takeaway: watch who tees off on the 2nd. That's each pair telling you its plan.

Stats: PGA TOUR, 2026 season through Sept 20. Jackson Koivun hasn't played enough rounds to be ranked.

Longer than 99% of US courses, until you add altitude

From the members' back tees, Medinah No. 3 is 7,564 yards. Of the 7,048 US courses we hold a complete scorecard for, only 45 are longer.

The twist: 19 of those 45 sit above 4,000 feet, where only one course in twenty does. Thin air carries a ball about 1.2% farther per 1,000 feet, by Titleist's rule of thumb. So Castle Pines in Colorado, 8,054 yards at 6,294 feet, plays about as long as Medinah does at 701.

The takeaway: when a mountain course's card looks brutal, take off 1% per 1,000 feet before you pick your tees.

Srixon kept the shape and moved the weight

Srixon's new ZXi RKT woods reach shops October 16, with the drivers at $649.99. The press release talks about ball speed. The spec sheets tell a quieter story: every loft, lie and length matches last year's ZXi. What changed is how heavy they swing.

The MAX driver jumped from a D0 swingweight to D3, where last year's standard driver sat. The three drivers now step down in even half-points:

Two more things stand out. The 3+ wood, at 13.5°, is one of only six fairway lines we track that strong; TaylorMade, Callaway, PING and Mizuno all start at 15°. And Srixon lists a finished club weight for every flex, which we haven't found on any other big brand's spec pages.

The takeaway: if last year's MAX felt light at the top, this one swings heavier on purpose.

The number on a hybrid is not a loft

Every 2-hybrid from the last two years is 17°: all 16 of them, from eight brands. After that, the numbers drift apart.

The 5-hybrid alone spans 5°, more than the usual 3° between two numbers. XXIO's 6-hybrid, at 25°, is stronger than Callaway's Elyte Max Fast 5-hybrid at 27°.

None of it is wrong. Each brand builds its set to fit its own irons. The takeaway: if you mix brands, gap your hybrids by loft and ignore the number on the sole.

Men's models, 43 hybrid lines from 13 brands, from the manufacturers' own spec pages.

Teaching an AI to sharpen our course photos

Zoom into one of our course maps and you hit the limit of the photo underneath. In some states one pixel covers two feet of ground, so up close a bunker turns into a few squares.

We tested 24 AI models that redraw a photo at twice the detail. The winner scored worse than plain enlarging on a pixel-for-pixel test. It won because it looks right to a person.

That decides how we'll use it: for looking, never for measuring. When it reaches the site it gets an “AI enhanced” label and a switch back to the real photo. So far it's running on seven test courses.

• New tonight: the studio. Sign in, ask a question in plain words, and it builds the view, with every number pulled from our data. →
• Plans that play it safe. Ask for the conservative plan and it picks the club least likely to cost you a double, then tells you what that trade costs. →
• Aims that work wherever the flag is. We don't know where today's hole is cut, so the plan tests every spot it could be and aims you relative to the flag. It also says where a miss usually ends up, and your next shot. →
• Putting at your handicap. Long putts and chips are now priced for your game, not a tour pro's. →

• 01 / Medinah No. 3, hole by hole The full card, every tee. →
• 02 / Every Srixon ZXi RKT spec Lofts, lengths and weights, straight from Srixon. →
• 03 / Ask Zomma Golf A course, a club or a question in your own words. →

See you next week,
Blake