2018 100th PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

The PGA Championship has all the trappings of one big party this year. This is the 100th edition of the only major championship restricted only to professionals. This is the last time it is held in the muggy heat of summer before moving next year to May.

Jordan Spieth gets another crack at the career Grand Slam, a feat never completed at the PGA Championship. And the biggest buzz belongs to a guy who hasn’t won a major in 10 years.

Just the sight of Tiger Woods’ name atop the leaderboard in the British Open turned cynics into cheerleaders. Three weeks later, Woods takes his momentum to a course he has never played. Bellerive Country Club last hosted the world’s best players in 1992, when Nick Price won the first of his three majors. Only 13 players in the 156-man field were at Bellerive in 2008 for the BMW Championship. Woods was not among them. He missed the second half of that season recovering from knee surgery.

The usual suspects are likely to contend _ Dustin Johnson, who won the Canadian Open for his third title this year; defending champion Justin Thomas, trying to join Woods as the only back-to-back winners of the PGA Championship in stroke play; Rory McIlroy, Jason

Day, Justin Rose all would love to win the last major to turn a very good year into a great one. Spieth hasn’t won at all this year, and one week could carve out a slice of history.

Still, no one casts a shadow over everything like Woods in a red shirt on Sunday contending for a major. Disappointment from not winning the British Open _ he tied for sixth, four shots behind _ was tempered by progress. “It felt great to be a part of the mix and build my way into the championship,” he said.

GRAND SLAM, TAKE TWO

Bellerive already has been the scene of one career Grand Slam. That was 53 years ago, when Gary Player of South Africa won the 1965 U.S. Open to capture the final leg of golf ’s four professional majors. Jordan Spieth gets his second crack at it in the final major of the season.

This will be the third major of the year that a player can try to join golf ’s most elite fraternity.

Rory McIlroy played in the final group at the Masters and faded. Phil Mickelson lost his cool at the U.S. Open by purposely violating a rule when his putt was rolling off the 13th green. Spieth is not having a great year by his standards, but he was bullish about the direction of his game coming out of the British Open. He has achieved many great things at an early age, and this very well could be another one.

RYDER CUP

Ryder Cup captain Jim Furyk was staring at multiple possibilities for his U.S. team during the weekend of the British Open. Xander Schauffele, Kevin Kisner, Kevin Chappell, Zach Johnson, Matt Kuchar and yes, even Tiger Woods, all were poised for a big finish that would have moved them into the top eight automatic qualifiers for the Sept. 28-30 matches in France. The PGA Championship is the final qualifying event, and then Furyk will have four captain’s picks spread over the next month. But given the depth of American golf, players will not want a spot on the team left to chance.

LAST SHOT AT GLORY’S LAST SHOT

The Masters has Augusta National. The U.S. Open is the toughest test in golf. The British Open is links golf. The identity of the PGA Championship? “The other one,” Geoff Ogilvy once said. This should help. After nearly 50 years of being in the heat of August, the PGA Championship moves to May next year. That puts it five weeks after the Masters, and a month before the U.S. Open. It also shuts out northern sections of the country, such as Whistling Straits and Hazeltine. However, Bethpage on Long Island (2019) and Oak Hill in upstate New York (2023) already were on the schedule when the change was announced. It could be brisk, but it’s nothing players haven’t experienced before, either in Scotland in July or San Francisco in June.

BELLERIVE’S BAD LUCK

Golf at the highest level has been held at Bellerive twice during Woods’ career, yet his only time playing the course was a practice round with Mark Calcavecchia for the American Express Championship. That was on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, and the World Golf Championship was canceled the next day. A couple of years later, Bellerive was awarded the 2008 BMW Championship, the third FedEx Cup playoff event. That was the year Woods won the U.S. Open and had season-ending surgery on his left knee a week later. Maybe the third time is a charm for Woods in St. Louis.