Major magic in May
LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY | Allow us a momentary diversion from the drip, drip, drip of discussion about all that is ailing professional golf these days to offer a word of praise.
Six years into the modern major-championship rotation – the one that transformed the PGA Championship from what could sometimes feel like a sweaty August afterthought into a majorly meaningful week in May – leaves only one question to be asked:
What took them so long?
It was not as easy as simply moving the PGA Championship to an earlier date on the pro golf calendar – it required the Players Championship moving from May back to March in what has been an equally brilliant shift – but it has created a true major-championship season.
One a month for four months starting at Augusta. Let’s be generous and call it five in a row, adding the Players Championship because it’s too good not to include.
Under the old scheduling model, this year would have been further complicated by the Olympic Games, scheduled for late summer. Instead, the quest for a gold medal can share the stage with the opening of NFL training camps.
Tournament golf has a cadence, and sliding the PGA Championship between the Masters and the U.S. Open made the schedule better. We won’t count the 2020 PGA Championship, which moved back to August because of the COVID pandemic.
“I think it's been amazing. I think it's amazing for the pattern of golf,” said Seth Waugh, the PGA of America’s CEO.
There are some who complain that waiting nine months between the end of the Open Championship and the first pimento cheese sandwich of the springtime at Augusta is too long, but it's worth the extra-month tradeoff that comes with giving August over to the FedEx Cup playoffs.
Concerns about the lack of PGA Championship venues in the Northern climes when the leaves are still popping have been alleviated to a degree by advances in agronomy. If they can play one in Rochester, New York, as happened last year, then the PGA Championship can go most places in May even if it insists on raining as it did here in Louisville.
“From our perspective – and I think from golf's perspective, which is the lens that we look at everything through, quite frankly – we are better in May than we were in August,” Waugh said.
No argument here.
Ron Green Jr.
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