PGA Championship, Preview of the Last Major of the Year

August 5th, 2013

Thursday marks the first day of this years’ final major.

Glory’s last shot, the PGA Championship.

The event will be held at historic Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, New York. Oak Hill is a par 70 and will be played at 7,163 yards. The PGA Championship was last played at Oak Hill in 2003 when unheralded Shaun Micheel took the Wanamaker Trophy.

This will be the 95th edition of the PGA Championship and should provide plenty of drama. What makes the PGA Championship unique is that the field includes 20 certified PGA teaching pros, as the top 20 from the PGA Professional National Championship book their ticket to the PGA Championship. This allows the hard working instructors to show the world their game.

Here are the criteria to qualify (since 2010 – from wiki):

– All former PGA Champions.
– Winners of the last five U.S. Opens.
– Winners of the last five Masters.
– Winners of the last five Open Championships.
– The last Senior PGA Champion.
– The low 15 scorers and ties in the previous PGA Championship.
– The 20 low scorers in the last PGA Professional National Championship.
– The 70 leaders in official money standings on the PGA Tour (starting one week prior to the previous year’s PGA Championship and ending two weeks prior to the current year’s PGA Championship).
– Members of the most recent United States and European Ryder Cup Teams, provided they are in the top 100 of the Official – World Golf Ranking as of one week before the start of the tournament.
– Winners of tournaments co-sponsored or approved by the PGA Tour since the previous PGA Championship (does not include pro-am and team competitions, but does include alternate events).
– The PGA of America reserves the right to invite additional players not included in the categories listed above.

The total field is a maximum of 156 players. Vacancies are filled by the first available player from the list of alternates (those below 70th place in official money standings).

The heavy favorite is red hot Tiger Woods, who won the WGC Bridgestone Invitational by a 7-stroke margin. Tiger will be seeking his 15th major, first of the season and the first since the US Open at Torrey Pines in the 2008 classic.

TNT and CBS Sports will be combining to air the tournament from Thursday’s opening round to the Sunday Finale. Go set your DVRs and reminders now.