With this week being the fourth and final major championship of the PGA Tour season, I though I’d go look up the history of the event, just for fun, and decided to share it with you fine folks, as well.
You see, the PGA Championship has never been my favourite of the majors. In fact, it’s always been my least favourite. No idea why, but it just never really seemed to pull me in like the others. But I digress already, apparently.
The PGA Championship began alongside the formation of the PGA of America, which in itself has a great story.
Back in 1916, department store owner Rodman Wanamaker saw the merchandising possibilities in creating a professional golf league of some kind, so he invited a few folks for lunch. One of those people was the legendary Walter Hagen. Wanamaker offered to put up $2,500 and some trophies and medals for a league championship, and the PGA Championship was born.
The trophy still holds his name to this day.
The initial PGA Championship, however, would be unrecognizable by today’s fans. 36 players convened on Siwanoy Country Club in Bronxville, New York, for a single-elimination match play tournament in 1916. The event was won by a man named J.M. Barnes over Jock Hutchison by a score of 1-up.
The tournament continued as a match play event – though reduced to a 32-player field during WWII – until 1958, when Llanerch Country Club in Havertown, PA, hosted the first stroke-play event, won by Dow Finsterwald.
That’s right. It wasn’t Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Arrnold Palmer or any of the other names we all know and love. Some guy named Dow Finsterwald won the first PGA Championship played as a a stroke play event.
In fact, the great Arnold Palmer somehow never managed to win this tournament. He finished second in the event in 1964, 1968 and 1970, but never held the Wanamaker Trophy in victory.
Jack Nicklaus took the trophy every other year for six years in the early 1970s – and again in 1980 – and the historic list of winners from around that time in golf’s past contains the names of legends like Lee Trevino, Gary Player, Lanny Wadkins, Dave Stockton, Raymond Floyd and others.
A bit later on, one name started showing up over and over again.
Tiger Woods was the first player to win the PGA Championship in back-to-back years, beginning in 1998 when a then-23-year-old Woods outlasted Spain’s young up-and-comer Sergio Garcia by one stroke at Medinah Country Club. He went on to take the following year’s event over Bob May in the first ever three-hole aggregate playoff format in the tournament’s history.
Woods would repeat his back-to-back PGA Championship win performance in 2006 – again at Medinah – and 2007 at Southern Hills.
Here’s a weird piece of trivia that baffled me for quite some time while researching: in 2008, Ireland’s Padraig Harrington became the first European player to win the tournament since Scotland’s Tommy Armour won the championship all the way back in 1930.
Wow.
Then in 2009 at Hazeltine National, South Korea chased down Tiger Woods on the back nine of the final round to win the championship and become the first Asian man to win a major championship.
Since then, Rory McIlroy has won it twice (2012 and 2014), Jason Dufner, Keegan Bradley and Martin Kaymer have raised the Wanamaker, as have Jason Day and Jimmy Walker.
Who’s next?
We’ll see this Sunday.