It is the mangiest of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. It is the drummer in Spinal Tap. It is the character “Mike” – the not very funny one – in The Young Ones. It is a fifth wheel in a four-event swing. It is, of course, the United States PGA Championship, known as a “major” championship. And its time should be up, reckons Matt Cleary.
Of course, the time is not up for the U.S PGA Championship. Might not ever be if the powers-that-be remain in thrall to self-interest governed by the almighty greenback, as has long been their wont. So, maybe not for a while, anyway.
But its time should be up, and soon, as one of golf's four major championships.
Because, as the world of golf grows and the greater world shrinks, and it’s like we’re all a swipe-right from dating or arguing with one another, or both, holding three of the four major championships in one country is, at best, to understate it, a tad myopic.
The U.S PGA Championship, held this year at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina, is a bare knuckle up from any given PGA Tour event, albeit with most of the best players in it.
It’s played on generic golf courses and is cast from a template which looks and feels the same as most other PGA Tour tournaments, elevated or otherwise, in these vexed, transitory times.
It’s like that American thing where they franchise success. It’s why McDonald’s, Hertz and Holiday Inns look the same. It’s a cookie-cutter approach, the (admittedly very successful) theory being that if it works on one property, it’ll work again and again and again.
And in terms of the PGA Tour, that is true, after a fashion. But do it often enough, long enough, and your Tour, and your flagship PGA Championship, can fade to beige and not be that interesting that often.
Well, last year was interesting. Because Bryson DeChambeau is. That guy could eat a bowl of Corn Flakes and make it interesting. Hmm-mmm, how my muscular jawbones masticate this concoction of corn, sugar and barley malt extract. Winning! [Muscle emoji].
DeChambeau’s battle royale with Xander Schauffele at Valhalla last year, even if they weren’t in the same group, was compelling sports action which evoked from Schauffele a brilliant and ropey long-iron, a deft chip to the back-centre pin, and a 10-footer for the championship … and that after DeChambeau had made his own brilliant birdie on his 72nd hole.
Top stuff, big dogs.
But let’s look to the guardians of our golf galaxy – and we’re casting eyes over you Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and our own statesman, Adam Scott – and the good burghers of golf’s alphabet soup of R&A, USGA, PGA of America, PGA Tour, DP World Tour, Asian Tour, LIV Golf – and the font of PGA Tour Enterprises’ wealth, Fenway Sports Group, and the genuine, unholy-mother-of-god-money inside the Saudi Public Investment Fund, and let’s throw in philanthropic Japanese man, Dr Haruhisa Handa.
For if these rulers, these thought leaders, these influencers were fair dinkum about “growing the game”, they would agree that the three of golf's four showcase, legacy championships should not be played solely in one country.
Granted, it is very hard to envisage an American organisation such as the PGA of America doing something outside the perceived self-interest of America. When these guys talk about “growing the game”, they mean the one in America. Anywhere else, you’re camping out, right?
To get this idea (some would suggest “demented fever dream”) up – something I know you, discerning reader, are nodding along to because it just makes sense – it would mean the PGA of America agreeing that its flagship tournament, its baby, its tournament which has been running since 1916, should no longer hold major status.
And that the next major championship should instead be hosted by a different PGA or governing body in a different country each year. And that the decision on the country be made a bit like how they decide who hosts the Olympics, just without heaps of corruption.
Again, it just makes sense, right? Granted, again, not to those who hold the money and the power, and run the tournament each year. Those people will grip onto the mighty silver boughs of the Wanamaker Trophy like a tribe of ferocious Gollums clinging to The Precious.
But even those guys would have to agree, that for a game played upon every continent upon the earth, which is growing exponentially in Asia, the Middle East and South America, and which can be a force for progress, prosperity, even peace, that the USA hosting three of the four major golf tournaments of the year, for all their money, is not a fair weighting, nor indicative of the game’s popularity around the world.
What’s that? It cannot change? Friend, it can change. Because it has changed.
And in PART TWO of this feature piece which appears in the June issue of Golf Australia magazine, on shelves Thursday, see about a Subscription here, we detail how it’s already changed. And why it can again.
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