“Glory’s Last Shot!” That’s what the PGA Championship was always billed as on golf’s Major calendar. That is, until it was moved to May ahead of the 2019 edition in order to ease scheduling concerns around the FedEx Cup. Now, nobody is quite sure what its identity is.
The Masters is, well, The Masters. Held at Augusta National every year, it’s the event that hooks the casual observer like no other and signifies an unofficial start to the season of golf ahead.
Then there’s the US Open, notorious for its brutality with the USGA regularly taking a giant leap over the symbolic line of fairness into the sadistic. (See Shinnecock Hills in 2004, Winged Foot in 2006, Oakmont in 2007, Chambers Bay in 2015, Shinnecock Hills again in 2018 as cases in point.) The list goes on.
Finally, we have The Open. The game’s oldest championship and the only Major of the four held in the UK, where the game originated. It’s a links spectacle that captures the imaginations of players and fans alike, no matter the conditions. It’s the truest form of the game, with luck playing almost as big a part as anything else, and the winner rightly or wrongly declared ‘The Champion Golfer of the Year’ in the third week of July.
It’s little wonder the PGA Championship has struggled to compete. Yet it’s hard to argue its appeal has increased since being punted up the chronological pecking order to May. It’s something Rory McIlroy alluded to in his press conference ahead of his bid for a third Wanamaker Trophy.
“I always liked it in August that this was glory’s last shot and there was a real identity there,” McIlroy, the 2012 and ’14 winner, said. “Not saying that it’s lost any of that identity in terms of its still a Major championship, but I feel like having it be the last Major of the year maybe just gave it a little bit of something that it doesn’t quite have right now.”
Another reason behind the May move was to enable tournament organisers to bring courses back onto the rotation that were too hot in August. Southern Hills was the venue as Justin Thomas produced a comeback for the ages last year. Before that, the Tulsa layout was last used in 2007, when play was halted because temperatures reached a sweaty 40°C (104°F).
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But is what was always likely to happen this year any better? Oak Hill is situated in Rochester, New York, an area in the north-east of America renowned for throwing up some dicey conditions. It’s that far north, you’d be forgiven for thinking…
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