If I asked you to rank the four major championships in golf from your favorite to your least favorite, your first three would most likely look similar.
It would be some sort of combination of the Masters, the U.S. Open and the British Open, with the PGA Championship looming fourth despite the fact that the final major of the year usually brings us the most excitement.
The Masters has Augusta National, the U.S. Open has high rough and incredibly tough conditions and the British Open has history and St. Andrews, but the PGA Championship has long searched for an identity to set it apart from the other three.
That might just happen as soon as 2020, with the PGA of America batting around the idea of hosting their major championship overseas a few times a decade, and I for one am all for it.
Golf Digest and Golf World’s Ron Sirak had the exclusive, quoting PGA of America CEO Pete Bevacqua as one of the men who is all for a move if it eventually worked out.
“This is an exercise we are going through, an analysis. It is far from a fait accompli that we are going to take the PGA Championship international,” Bevacqua said to Golf World. “When we sat down to map our strategic plan to service our members and grow the game the question arose as to what impact it would have to take the PGA Championship to an international location once or twice a decade.”
I really don’t see many negatives coming from a move to an international destination a couple of times a decade, mostly because this is the major that could use the boost the most.
Before 1958, the PGA Championship was a match play event, and I’ve mentioned multiple times that despite the potential for dropped viewers if we had two duds in the finals, it would still give the PGA Championship an identity.
This move does the same thing, taking it to Asia or Australia or South Africa in hopes of not only bringing more fans to the game, but simply saying thanks to those parts of the world that do so much for the game of golf that helps American fans enjoy golf even more.
Tennis hosts three of their four majors outside the United States, and as the game of golf continues to grow globally, giving others a chance to host a major championship seems like a win-win for just about everyone (can you imagine turning on your TV at 7 PM on a Sunday to watch the start of the final round at Royal Melbourne? How great would that be live?!).
Of course, this move won’t happen until a lot of people sign off on it and even then it wouldn’t begin until ’20 (Tiger Woods will be 44-years-old when that happens), but the idea is a creative one and one that I think will help the PGA Championship grow in just about every way possible.
The game of golf expands far beyond the borders of the United States and I give credit to the PGA of America for understanding that and at least bringing up the idea of doing something different to further globalize the game of golf.
Devil Ball Golf – Golf – Yahoo Sports
Other Related Posts:
Have you ever wondered how Arnold Palmer, in the prime of his career, of c...
If you haven't looked at the Players Championship leaderboard after two ro...
We tend to associate Tiger Woods and major championships together above ev...
If you had to rank the best Tiger Woods commercials of all-time, the champi...
Your browser does not support iframes. The Valspar Championship was the yea...
