PGA Championship to get proper respect with move to May
What’s bad for the Midwest is good for golf. Make that great for golf.
The announcement Tuesday that the PGA Championship will be moved to May beginning in 2019 is long overdue. With very rare exception, the year’s last major has struggled for relevance, an afterthought on both sides of the Atlantic as the sports calendar is being consumed by football and soccer.
By moving the PGA to May, it gives the tournament its proper due as a major, making it a centerpiece in the schedule. And by bumping The Players Championship to March, it gives the PGA Tour a strong, six- month stretch without any lulls— for players and fans alike.
“It’s great for the golf schedule,” Rory McIlroy said Tuesday. “To now have one really big tournament every month from March — The Players, to the Masters to the PGA Championship to the U. S. Open to the ( British) Open, and to have the FedExCup most likely at end of August or start of September — it just has a better flow to it, I think.”
Playing the PGA Championship in August has been an awkward fit for years. Aside from years when the career Grand Slam was in play or one of the hot young stars was gunning for his firstmajor, what should be one of golf’s biggest deals had less buzz than some pro- ams.
The return of golf to the Olympics might have wreaked havoc on the schedule last year, when the PGA had to be played at the end of the July, but it also gave PGA of America and Tour officials a gift. If the PGA could be moved one year, it could be moved any year.
“We come back to the unavoidable reality that the landscape in August is changing,” said Pete Bevacqua, chief executive officer of the PGA of America, which hosts the PGA Championship.
But improvements don’t come without a price, and this is no different.
The PGA Championship is a frequent visitor to the Midwest and Northeast, with 13 of the last 21 played in New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin or Minnesota. If you’ve spent any time in the Midwest or Northeast in May and in August, you know why. August is generally gorgeous.
May is another story altogether. It could be warm and breezy. It could also snow or feel like the North Pole. Last year, Chicago matched its record low for May 15 at 35 degrees.
Those are freak occurrences, sure, and Bevacqua said the PGA Championship will be played later in the month. But the weather is fickle enough in the spring that getting a course in shape to host a major championship will be an even tougher test than the tournament itself.
While Bevacqua said “nothing is off the table” in terms of geography, it doesn’t take a meteorologist to know the move will end the days of the PGA being in the Midwest and possibly the Northeast.
But it’s a change that needed to happen. The PGA Championship has become a major in name only, and that’s no good for anyone, anywhere.