Continuing a biannual tradition that began in 2012, the top senior players from around the world will once again descend upon The Golf Club at Harbor Shores in Benton Harbor, Michigan for the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship, May 23-26. The event serves as the second of five majors on the PGA Tour Champions schedule each year.
Highlighting the field is Wisconsin native and former University of Illinois golfer Steve Stricker, who will make his first trip to Harbor Shores as the event’s defending champion. Stricker finished at 18-under par a year ago to best Padraig Harrington in a playoff at Fields Ranch East in Frisco, Texas. The win was Stricker’s sixth PGA Tour Champions major title after his victory at The Tradition just a couple weeks prior. The 57-year-old also captured the Senior Players Championship last July, running his major title total up to seven.
“Very excited to be there, going in there as defending champion,” Stricker said in an exclusive interview with the CDGA last month. “I’ve never played Harbor Shores, so I look forward to getting on the land and seeing how the course plays. I hear the greens are pretty tough and you’ve got to spend some time to learn those. Excited to be going there and cross our fingers that we get some good weather in May. You know, right there on the lake.”
Joining Stricker in the field, amongst a host of others, is Steven Alker, champion of the event when it was last contested at Harbor Shores in 2022. A final-round 63 springboarded Alker to a three-shot victory, his third in five starts at the time. Alker went on to capture the season-long Charles Schwab Cup and its $1,000,000 first-place prize at the end of the 2022 campaign, a points race that Stricker nabbed this past season.
The course, designed and routed by Jack Nicklaus, is situated just 100 miles from Chicago along Lake Michigan’s southeast coast. It is projected to be played as a par 71 at just over 6,800 yards for the 156-player field. This year marks the sixth time that the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship will be contested at Harbor Shores (2012, 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2022).