Once 'Glory’s Last Shot' the PGA Championship benefits from move to May

The tournament has a renewed impetus as the second major of the year, though not everyone agrees with the change

STAR ATTRACTION: Fans wait for player autographs during a practice round prior to the PGA Championship at Oak Hill Country Club. Picture: Andy Lyons/Getty Images

For years, the PGA Championship branded itself as “Glory’s Last Shot” – a marketing effort to elevate its baked-in reputation as the afterthought or forgotten stepchild at the tail end of golf’s major championship season.

Staged in the typically intense summer heat of August on often forgettable courses disproportionally located in Ohio during golf’s growing era of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, the PGA came by its reputation as the “fourth major” fairly naturally. The only grand-slam event with an entirely professional field, its perceived strength of depth was often its biggest enemy as it opened the doors for too many Bob Tways, Mark Brookses, Rich Beems and Shaun Micheels to step up and steel the “glory” from the marquee talents golf fans prefer to see hoisting major trophies.

The venues got better and the champion stock largely improved in recent decades, but the PGA Championship generally remained stuck in a rut behind the aura and stately traditions of the Masters, US Open and Open Championship. The heat of August always persisted.

Then came 2019, when the PGA Tour finally decided it could not reasonably compete anymore with the television ratings juggernaut of American football in autumn and opted to shift its season-ending series of playoff events a month forward on the calendar culminating in the Tour Championship at the end of August. That meant that “Glory’s Last Shot” – a slogan which had been dumped in favor of the simple tagline “The Season’s Last Major” in 2013 – was going to need to find a new month and a new marketing campaign. To make room for it, the tour moved its “fifth major” Players Championship back to its original March time slot and offered the PGA the month of May (thus forcing the European circuit’s flagship event at Wentworth to vacate its May date and move to September in the domino fallout).

The schedule shift created a consistent cadence of monthly major events from March through the Ryder Cup in September. But it has benefitted the PGA Championship in most ways.

“The move to May was really good; I think it really elevated the PGA,” said Andy North, a two-time US Open champion now a television analyst. “I think it got lost being the fourth major quite frequently.” 

Not everyone agrees. Count Rory McIlroy, who won his pair of PGAs in August, among them.

“I always liked in August that this was ‘glory's last shot’ and there was a real identity there,” McIlroy said. “Not saying that it's lost any of that identity in terms of its still a major championship, but I feel like having it be the last major of the year maybe just gave it a little bit of something that it doesn't quite have right now.” 

In four of the last five years, the PGA Championship has attracted a larger television audience than the US Open. It helps that it had Tiger Woods trying to chase down Brooks Koepka in 2018 (the last time the Wanamaker Trophy was presented in August) and Phil Mickelson delivering an historic victory at age 50 in 2021. But it has produced a pretty consistent show of strength under the new schedule cadence with top players a little fresher in the middle of the season.

The weather has been the biggest improvement from both a comfort and optimal course conditioning factor. Last year in Tulsa, Oklahoma, players enjoyed competing in ideal spring temperatures on a pristine course compared to the previous two mid-summer majors staged at Southern Hills in melting conditions exceeding 38C on a baked-out course. The chances for thunderstorms disrupting play is dramatically reduced in May compared to August.

Of course, the PGA of America has gotten lucky on the weather front. Before the shift was made to May, PGA Championships had already been contracted to New York venues Bethpage Black and Oak Hill – two locations where spring hasn’t always reliably awakened by mid-May. Temperatures on the eve of the Bethpage PGA in 2019 were 5C before warming up in time for the tournament days. Rochester was still dealing with high temps ranging from 5-8C last week before Mother Nature eased up in time for championship week – though there was a frost delay before Monday’s practice round. The forecast this week calls for relatively comfortable highs ranging from 18-23C during the tournament with mild winds and a moderate chance of rain showers.

The risk of disruptive late wintry weather in May is the biggest drawback to the PGA’s move from August. That fear reduces the inventory of classic northeast US venues that the PGA can choose from as future sites, running the risk of returning to the days when less-than-major-caliber courses – such as PGA National, Tanglewood, NCR, etc. – played host to an event that will define a player’s career as “major.” 

The PGA has already announced two visits to its brand new home on a completely untested course in Frisco, Texas, in 2027 and 2034. It will return next year to the modestly regarded Valhalla – where Rory McIlroy won in 2014. The furthest north it dares to venture in determined future sites so far is New Jersey (Aronimink in 2026 and Baltusrol in 2029). Quail Hollow (2025), Olympic Club (2028) and the completely remodeled Congressional (2030) are also on the books.

“The only thing about May is that maybe in the future it'll start to exclude places like this in the northeast to host this championship, so that's a shame,” said McIlroy. “The northeast is sort of my favorite golf to play in this country. I love the golf courses up here and I love the tradition, and a lot of the historic golf course architects started their journeys up here and have built some amazing golf courses. It would be a shame if we weren't able to come back here.” 

The tradeoff in the date change, however, weighs heavily in the PGA Championship’s favour. Being second in the major championship batting order puts it in the meat of the season and makes it a more marketable product to sport fans. Now the Open Championship is the final chance for major glory in July, and the world’s oldest golf championship suffers no exposed reputational risk at the rear of the schedule.

“I think going to May was a home run for them,” said Curtis Strange, who won his second consecutive US Open at Oak Hill in 1989. “It's still the start of the season up north. A lot of eyes will be on the PGA. I do think that for some players back in August, it wasn't any less of a championship, it was just late in the year. People were almost getting ready for football.” 

Gone are the days when the PGA suffered from burnout from both the summer heat and the drifting attention span of golf fans. For better or worse, glory’s second shot is right where it needs to be.