The PGA Championship

Lore & Background

The PGA Championship was first held in October 1916 at Siwanoy Country Club in Bronxville, New York. The winner, Jim Barnes, received $500 and a diamond-studded gold medal donated by Rodman Wanamaker. The trophy, named the Wanamaker Trophy, stands nearly 2.5 feet tall and weighs 27 pounds. It was lost briefly in the cellar of L.A. Young and Company after being entrusted to a taxi driver by Walter Hagen, but was recovered in 1930.

In Their Own Story

The Saturday morning air at the back nine is thick with cut-grass smell and the low hum of a crowd that has been building since Thursday. A caddie unzips his bag, pulls out the 7-iron, and taps the sole against the practice mat three times—his own little ritual, one he's done at every PGA Championship for eleven years. The gallery behind the 18th green is a wall of sunburned faces, cooler boxes, and the particular silence that falls when a player steps up to a 12-foot putt. Somewhere down the fairway, a kid in a too-big cap is holding a sign that reads 'GO TIGER' from a year he can't remember. The flagstick is pulled. The ball rolls. The Saturday finish means there is no tomorrow, no second chance, no Sunday to recover. Just this putt, this green, this one shot that could be a legend or a footnote. The crowd holds its breath. The ball stops two inches from the cup. The caddie exhales. The kid in the cap starts screaming before the ball even drops.

Reader's Guide

The PGA Championship was originally a match play event but changed to stroke play in 1958, with the standard 72-hole format of 18 holes per day for four days, Thursday to Sunday. It is an official money event on the PGA Tour, European Tour, and Japan Golf Tour. The purse was $11 million for the 100th edition in 2018. Winning the PGA grants a five-year exemption on the PGA Tour and a seven-year membership on the DP World Tour, plus automatic invitations to the other three majors and The Players Championship for five years, and a lifetime exemption to the PGA Championship.

Did You Know?

• The PGA Championship is the only major that does not explicitly invite leading amateurs to compete.
• The tournament reserves 20 of 156 places for club professionals, determined by the PGA Professional Championship.
• The Wanamaker Trophy was lost for a few years until it was found in 1930 in the cellar of L.A. Young and Company.
• The 2016 winner, Jimmy Walker, earned $1.8 million, compared to the $500 won by the first champion Jim Barnes in 1916.