16 PGA Championship courses to add to your bucket list!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
The PGA Championship is always played on spectacular golf courses chosen by the PGA of America to provide the best test for the top players in the world. But you can also experience these great courses. Tim Gavrich of golfvacationinsider gives you a list of all the golf courses used by the PGA to conduct their Championship that is accessible to you, the everyday golfer!
Wannamaker Trophy
There are plenty of PGA Championship courses you can play on golf vacations.
This year’s PGA Championship at Baltusrol Golf Club in New Jersey is off to a great start.
I’m particularly fascinated by the course’s routing – how strange it must be for the pros not to encounter a par five until the 649-yard 17th, and then finish on another (more reachable) three-shotter.
That should make for quite the finish come Sunday afternoon.
One slight bummer about Baltusrol, though, is that unlike last year’s PGA venue – Whistling Straits – very few of us will have the opportunity to play the course, given the private nature of the club.
That said, there are a number of past and future PGA Championship venues that you and I can (and should) visit and play.
And guess what? There are more of these courses than you might think…and you probably live or will soon travel near one of them.
Check out the list here:
As you can see, the PGA Championship has been (and will continue to be) played on plenty of public courses in some of the best golf vacation destinations in America, making it easy to add a major championship to your own personal record book.
California
Course: Pebble Beach Golf Links
Location: Pebble Beach, CA
Hosted the PGA Championship in: 1977
Architect: Jack Neville and Douglas Grant
Green Fee: $495
Course: TPC Harding Park
Location: San Francisco, CA
Will Host the PGA Championship in: 2020
Architect: Willie Watson and Sam Whiting
Green Fee: $177
Florida
Course: PGA National Resort & Spa (The Champion Course)
Location: Palm Beach Gardens, FL
Hosted the PGA Championship in: 1987
Architect: Jack Nicklaus
Green Fee: $347
Indiana
Course: French Lick Resort (Donald Ross Course)
Location: French Lick, IN
Hosted the PGA Championship in: 1924
Architect: Donald Ross
Green Fee: $120
Minnesota
Keller Course.
Course: Keller Golf Course
Location: Maplewood, MN
Hosted the PGA Championship in: 1932 and 1954
Architect: Paul Coates; renovation by Richard Mandell
Green Fee: $43
Hank Haney gives us the Key move in Jimmy Walker’s Golf Swing!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Jimmy Walker has a free-flowing golf swing that seems devoid of any surplus movement. Smooth on the backswing, great transition into the downswing, and a full follow-through. But the key component of this swing is the ability to keep the club moving from the inside. This produces a consistent draw. The move that helps him produce this swing is explained by Hank Haney for Golf Digest! Enjoy!
Get to know the real Jimmy Walker – 14 interesting facts!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Jimmy Walker is an interesting man, but very few people can tell you much about him other than the fact that he is a 5-time winner on the PGA Tour and has a propensity for playing well from the front! And now he is also a Major Championship winner! But there are many more interesting facts about Jimmy Walker – as Joel Beall of Golf Digest points out. 14 of them!
1. He was a LONG shot to win the 2016 PGA Championship.
As of July 25, the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook had Walker at 125-1 odds. And for a good reason: Walker had missed the cuts at the last two majors, and his last top 10 came in March.
PGA Championship Fist Pump!
2. He played collegiate golf at Baylor.
Walker was an All-Big 12 performer in Waco and never missed a tournament with the Bears. He graduated in 2001.
Baylor Campus.
3. Before Baltusrol, his biggest golf thrill was playing in the 2001 US Open.
That year’s event at Southern Hills was his first tournament as a professional. Although we are guessing winning the Wanamaker has usurped this memory as his favorite moment.
Southern Hills
4. He met his wife at a Nationwide Tour event.
Erin Stiegemeier was a volunteer at a 2004 tournament, and as Walker said, “the rest is history.” They have two children.
The family!
5. He was the 2004 Nationwide Player of the Year.
Walker grabbed this honor, as well as topping the tour’s money list, thanks to wins at the BellSouth Panama Championship and Chitimacha Louisiana Open.
Brian Gaffney follows the old adage “Teacher heal thyself!”
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
One of the very first things I teach a student who takes a three-day school with me is a pre-shot routine. It is so critical to understand that a pre-shot routine is like the dress rehearsal before the play. If the dress rehearsal goes badly, opening night is going to be a disaster! Brian Gaffney, PGA Professional at Quaker Ridge Golf Club, is one of the club professionals qualified to play in the PGA Championship at Baltusrol this week. He is doing exactly what he tells his students to do – breath and follow your pre-shot routine. Good luck, Brian! Thanks to Keely Levins of Golf Digest for this interesting article!
One of the coolest things about the field at the PGA Championship is that your local PGA pro could be in it.
That is, if he happens to be ridiculously good and makes it through qualifying. The 20 PGA pros in the field this year at Baltusrol aren’t just great players, they’re great teachers, too. Each day this week, we’re asking them what advice they give their students that they’re going to use themselves while taking on the best in the world.
One of the more notable PGA pros in the field this year is Brian Gaffney. Last year, Gaffney of Quaker Ridge Golf Club became the first club pro in four years to make the cut at the PGA Championship. After that performance, it’d be easy to feel the pressure this year.
Brian Gaffney
Getty Images
“Something I tell my students is when you’re nervous, make sure you breathe. You want to slow your heart rate down and get rid of the tension. This is important because tension messes with your tempo and the timing of your swing. Tension is the last thing I want this week.”
Baltusrol is ready for the World’s Best at the 2005 PGA Championship.
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Baltustrol is one of the iconic Championship Golf Courses in the USA.
It has hosted 7 US Opens, 4 US Amateurs, 2 US Women’s Opens, and 2 US Women’s Amateurs. Quite a resume. This year, the PGA and longtime greenkeeper Mark Kuhns set the course up for a grandstand finish. With the rough over 4″ high and the greens running at 14 on the stimpmeter, the winner here will have to have all the shots! Thanks go to Ron Whitten, writing for GolfWorld on all the details!
(Photo by Fred Vuich/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
It’s a different Baltusrol for this year’s PGA Championship, with different dates and a different finish. Yet the Lower Course at Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, N.J., is ready to deliver the most exciting and entertaining competition, year in and year out, of any of the four majors.
Let’s start with the different dates. The PGA has been bumped from its traditional hot-and-humid mid-August slot by the Olympic golf competition. So this year it will be contested July 28-31, just 11 days after the Open Championship wrapped up in thrilling fashion at Troon. That could bode well for the winner of the claret jug, Henrik Stenson, if one believes in momentum. Or it could spell trouble, if jetlag and fatigue are factored in.
The weather is always a factor in summer!
How the date change impacts the tournament from a weather standpoint is similarly uncertain. The earlier dates don’t guarantee there won’t be dog-day afternoons at Baltusrol; as the current forecast would suggest. “During our PGA Championship here in August 2005,” says Mark Kuhns, the club’s veteran course superintendent, “the temperature hit 100 degrees every day. July can’t be any worse. It’s a crapshoot. There are some Julys where the temperature never exceeds 80. But some years, we’ve seen it hit 100.”
It can also be stormy in New Jersey in July, but indeed no worse than it was at Baltusrol’s last PGA in 2005, when an early Sunday evening lightning storm put a delay on the tournament conclusion until Monday morning. 12 players had to return to finish their final rounds.
Tiger Woods leaves early.
One of the lucky ones to finish before the storm was Tiger Woods, he posts a two-under 278 late Sunday afternoon to trail leader Phil Mickelson, then on the 13th hole, by two shots. Unbeknownst to tournament officials, Woods flew home to Orlando that evening rather than stay over for a possible playoff. His reasoning was that there were five players between him and a win and it was unlikely all five would collapse with less than half a dozen holes remaining. In retrospect, that stands as perhaps Woods’ first acknowledgement that his intimidation factor was starting to wane. It conjures up the amazing possibility that Mickelson, or one of the other four, could have been declared a playoff winner by default, merely over the price of a hotel room.
Check out the Best 15 PGA Championship Venues Ever!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
The PGA Championship does not have a rota of courses where the Championship is played like the British Open or the US Open. But some perennial favorites tend to host this tournament over and over again. Joel Beall of Golf Digest has done a good job of choosing the Top 15 courses used for this prestigious Championship.
No. 15: Trump Bedminster
This ranking is not reflective of its layout, championship merit (set to host the 2017 Women’s Open and the 2022 PGA Championship) or its controversial owner. Rather, it’s correlated to its age or lack thereof. Opened in 2004, Bedminster remains a relative unknown to the scene. However, the early reviews have been positive. Don’t be surprised if it quickly becomes a favorite.
No. 14: Bellerive
You would think a venue hosting the 100th PGA Championship would be a tradition-laden course. Not quite. Although opened in 1897, the Missouri club has seen just two major championships (1965 US Open, 1992 PGA Championship). A Robert Trent Jones design, Bellerive is renowned for its condition, which should make for an aesthetically pleasing watch for the 2018 PGA Championship TV audience.
No. 13: Quail Hollow
A George Cobb creation — who designed the par-3 course at Augusta National — Quail Hollow will host the 2017 PGA Championship and the 2021 Presidents Cup. The course has produced its share of strong winners at its Wells Fargo Championship, including Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Vijay Singh and Rickie Fowler.
No. 12: TPC Harding Park
A scenic piece of land in San Francisco, TPC Harding Park is more known as the stomping grounds for a young Johnny Miller and Ken Venturi rather than its championship pedigree. Harding Park has hosted a Presidents Cup and recently acquired a spot in the WGC-Match Play rotation. It’s not the hardest of tests, but overall, the course gets a thumbs-up from its competitors.
No. 11: Hazeltine National
Two common complaints arose in our sample for the Chaska, Minn., course: 1. A lack of memorable holes 2. The winners. The latter is no fault of the club. Conversely, having Rich Beem and Y.E. Yang as its past two PGA Championship victors is not doing the place any favor
Some of the Greatest Moments in PGA Championship History!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
There have been some spectacular moments in the history of the PGA Championship. They are indelibly etched into our brains, and we watched with awe as these amazing moments transpired. T.J. Auclair of PGA.com describes these moments with the aid of some great video footage!
Major championships provide the best drama we see all year in golf.
Sadly next week’s PGA Championship at Baltusrol marks the last major of the season in men’s golf. Without question, there will be shots hit, and stories told that will become a part of golf lore.
It always happens that way. And with that, here are five great moments in PGA Championship history.
5. Sergio Garcia’s shot from behind the tree on No. 16 at Medinah in 1999.
Then, just 19 years old, Garcia pulled off one of the most memorable shots in PGA Championship history with this masterful shot from behind a tree.
On the 452-yard par 4, Garcia faced an approach shot of 189 yards from the green in the exposed roots behind a large tree. Garcia elected to hit the ball instead of chipping safely back into the fairway. He opened the face of a 6-iron and, as he swung, closed his eyes at impact. The ball soared into a high left-to-right trajectory, landing on the green some 60 feet from the hole. Garcia sprinted up the fairway and did a scissors kick leap to see the green.
He two-putted for par, but no one will forget that remarkable shot.
4. Shaun Micheel’s 72nd hole 7-iron at Oak Hill in 2003.
Not many were familiar with Micheel before the start of the 2003 PGA Championship. But, by the time it was over, he left a mark on his lone major victory with a shot for the ages.
Micheel, showing incredible composure in a situation he’d never been in before, closed out his magical week with this magical 7-iron on the final hole. The ball soared in the air and settled within inches of the hole after Micheel ordered it to, “Be right!”
A tap-in birdie and the PGA Championship was Micheel’s. And let’s be honest, the fact that the ball stayed out of the hole is almost better than going in. It would have been a fantastic shot either way, but since it stopped just inches from the cup, you can’t call it luck. It was an exclamation point on the best golf week of Micheel’s life.
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
His insight into Jason Day’s mental techniques that helped him to victory in the PGA Championship and what it took for this young man to breakthrough can help your game as well! Read on and learn these tips for preparing yourself mentally for your best game ever!
“A lot of people would be saying that I couldn’t finish. You get to a breaking point in your golf game where it can go either way. You go, ‘OK, I’ve had enough, and I just need to sit down and chill out.’ Or you go, ‘no, stuff that, I’m going to push through it, and I’m not going to quit until I win.’”– Jason Day, 2015 PGA Champion
For anyone who’s been following professional golf for the past few years, Sunday’s major championship win for Jason Day feels like a huge relief. During most of the final round, I heard my inner voice saying, “Surely it’s not going to be another top 5 in a major without a win?!”
Before sinking that final putt on the 18th green at Whistling Straits, Jason had the second-highest number of top-10s in a major without a win (9 to be exact).
So after being in so many final pairings on a major championship Sunday, the question of whether he had the mental game to handle the pressure and get the job done was being asked. Jason was even beginning to doubt himself, and if he hadn’t sealed the win, he wasn’t sure he would have recovered:
“Not being able to finish, it would have been tough for me mentally to really kind of come back from that. Even though I feel like I’m a positive person, I think that in the back of my mind, something would have triggered, and I would have gone, `Maybe I can’t really finish it off.’”
But Jason Day is a fighter. He’s overcome many adversities throughout his life – from losing his dad at the age of 12 and being a poor, teenage tearaway, to more recently, suffering several injuries and illnesses.
Undeterred by these various setbacks, he said before the PGA at Whistling Straits: “Look, if I keep doing what I’m doing, I’m going to win one of these.”
And he was right.
Working on his mental game.
Since joining the PGA Tour in 2006, he’s developed one of the best all-round technical games out there, but, as anyone who’s played the game of golf knows, it’s only half the equation of success. Jason knew it was his mental game that needed just as much work to get him to major-winner status.
“The game of golf is so mental, and if you don’t have everything in the right order, it’s challenging to win golf tournaments.”
So how does Jason Day prepare and manage his mental game?
Visualization for golf
You probably saw Jason closing his eyes during his pre-shot routine. What he was doing there was visualizing himself hitting the perfect shot. It’s like seeing a color movie of what he desires, right before it actually happens for real. It only takes a couple of seconds, but it can have a big effect on how well you play a shot.
Not only does he visualize individual shots, but he also visualizes the future attainment of his goals. As a 14-year-old, he wrote his goals down on a sheet of paper and read them aloud before he went to bed every night. These included becoming the World No. 1 and winning major championships. Most of those who listened thought he was kidding himself.
More recently, after his PGA Tour win at the Farmers Insurance this year, he said:
“I visualized myself winning and holding the trophy before the week. I tried to visualize it over and over…That’s what I did in the match play, and that is what I did this week, so obviously, that tells me that I need to do that a lot more.”
Goal setting and visualizing future success might not mean that you will achieve it, but it’s proven to increase your self-image. This is a big factor in whether you do or not. In fact, the great Jack Nicklaus said that he attributes 50% of his success in golf to imagining it happening before it actually did.
5 Great Shots from the PGA Championship – Check out #1!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Last week’s PGA Championship at Whistling Straits was such an exciting tournament.
Everybody forgot that Tiger was even playing! The amount of excitement generates the possible win by Jason Day captures everyone’s attention! Men’s golf is in a great place right now, and with Jordan, Jason, Dustin, Brandon, and the rest of the young guns, I look forward to many, many years of exciting golf. PGA TOUR brings you the 5 best shots from last week. #1 will absolutely blow your mind! Check it out!
Bubba knocks a shot next to the hole, from a par-4 tee box!
Rory shows his skills from the pond…
And Jason Day sinks a 50-foot birdie putt.
Check out these incredible shots from the PGA Championship this weekend at Whistling Straits.
Who will be the first to shoot 62 in a Major Championship?
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Hiroshi Iwata of Japan shot a 63 on day two of the PGA Championship last week at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin.
24 other players have scored a 63 in a Major Championship, including the most famous one by Johnny Miller. Miller’s was the first, in 1973 at the U.S. Open at Oakmont. No one has yet posted a score lower than 63 in a Major golf tournament. While we wait for that epic feat, read here what Gary Van Sickle for golf.com considers to be the best of the 63 score rounds. We will wait in anticipation for the elusive 62 in a Major!
Johnny Miller did it first, winning the 1973 U.S. Open at Oakmont with his 63. Forty-two years later, it remains a record that has been matched but never broken. And of the 26 63s posted since then (Greg Norman and Vijay Singh have done it twice), only Miller did it in the final round and went on to win.
Only five other players who shot 63s went on to win that event—Jack Nicklaus at the 1980 U.S. Open at Baltusrol; Raymond Floyd, 1982 PGA, Southern Hills; Greg Norman, 1986 British Open, Turnberry; Tiger Woods, 2007 PGA, Southern Hills; and Jason Dufner, 2013 PGA, Oak Hill.
Hiroshi Iwata of Japan speaks with the media after shooting a nine-under-par 63 during the second round of the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits on Aug. 14, 2015, in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
After Miller’s record breakthrough round at Oakmont, by 1986 a 63 had been posted in each of the other majors.
Bruce Crampton was first to do it in the PGA Championship, in 1975; Mark Hayes was first in 1977 at Turnberry, and he bogeyed the 18th for his 63; and Nick Price did it at the Masters in 1986, breaking Lloyd Mangrum’s course record of 64 that had lasted 46 years,
Who will be the first to shoot 62 in a Major Championship?
Iwata, 34, is ranked second on the Japan Golf Tour’s money list. He has already had one victory this year, his second on the Tour, and he posted a 62 in the Thailand Open earlier this year.
Asked to compare Friday’s 63 to that Thailand 62, he joked, “Just one shot difference. Nothing else.
Iwata eagled the par-5 11th hole, then birdied five of the next six holes and shot 29 on the back nine. “After No. 13, I was thinking I’m going to shoot 27,” Iwata said.
The club of 63-shooters in majors is incredibly exclusive but does include some surprising names such as Jodie Mudd, Thomas Bjorn, Brad Faxon, Michael Bradley and Paul Broadhurst. We’ll add Iwata to that list. The club also includes many of golf’s greatest, including Woods, Nicklaus, Norman, Singh, Gary Player and Rory McIlroy.
When Price shot his 63 at the Masters, he predicted his marker wouldn’t last long because so many big hitters were coming into the game. Nearly three decades later, he laughed about his off-the-mark comments.
“Well, Augusta National adjusted their course for the modern equipment.
And most of the other majors have done the same,” he said. “There does seem to be some kind of mental barrier at 63. It’s amazing that all four majors have 63 as the low score. That defies logic.”
Miller said his round was a relatively easy 63 and could have been lower as he missed some makeable putts. “It’s just hard to get to 62 under the pressure of a major,” Miller said. “Guys get close, then they sort of drop anchor.”
But it was 63. And it still stands. Bradley, who posted his 8-under 63 in the opening 1995 PGA round at Riviera, said, “It’s not like trying to shoot 59 in a regular Tour event. They’re majors and you’re gunning for history. Mentally, that makes a big difference.”
Miller believes the mental barrier is the hardest part.
“Every guy on Tour knows about 63s,” Miller said. “There is a historical barrier there. The more you think about it, the harder it is to do. I think the Holy Grail is really the U.S. Open because that’s always the hardest test.”
Dufner was the last man before Iwata to shoot 63 in a major.
Who will be the first to shoot 62 in a Major Championship?
The five best 63s in majors
1. Johnny Miller, 1973 U.S. Open.
Miller remains the only player who shot 63 in the final round and won the championship. To be the first and to do it at Oakmont, probably the most difficult Open site, was remarkable.
2. Nick Price, 1986 Masters.
When Jack Nicklaus improbably won the Masters the next day at 46, Price’s amazing round was overshadowed. It shouldn’t be. He lipped out a putt for 62 on the final hole and he broke a Masters record set by Lloyd Mangrum that had stood since 1940.
3. Gary Player, 1984 PGA.
Striking yet another blow for fitness, Player fired his 9-under 63 at age 48 in the second round at Shoal Creek. The bermuda rough was brutal and the next best score to Player’s that day was 68.
4. Jack Nicklaus, 1980 U.S. Open.
Nicklaus fired his shocking 7-under 63 in the opening round at Baltusrol and at 40, it propelled him to his fourth—and final—Open title.
5. Tiger Woods, 2007 PGA.
It was sizzling in Tulsa and so was Tiger, whose birdie putt for 62 at the last hole dived halfway into the cup and then miraculously spun back out. Woods had to survive a final-round battle with Woody Austin to earn his fourth PGA Championship.
