Glory's Last Shot or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the PGA

The last major championship of the year, the self-proclaimed ‘Glory’s Last Shot’, the PGA Championship begins today. In a way, the PGA Championship is the red-headed step child of the majors. It doesn’t have the historical significance of a British Open, the national status of a US Open, or the prestige of the Masters. Simply put, it’s the least important major. But, it’s still a major, it’s still a tournament the players want to win, and it still has a very good field. So how to pick a winner?



Don't be fooled by the flags, Americans
almost always win the tourney


To begin, the PGA’s field is different than the other majors. The other three fields feature a host of amateur players taking up spots from potential winners (I have nothing against amateurs in majors, but they don’t really have a chance of winning, and they do keep a professional out of the tournament), while the PGA has twenty odd club pros, who have absolutely no chance of winning. We can shrink the field down quite a bit when looking for potential winners, but there are still a lot of golfers with a chance at the Wannamaker Trophy.

What also makes it more difficult is the PGA’s tendency to crown more ‘one and done’ major winners than the other three. In the past quarter century we’ve seen such household names as Jeff Sluman, Shaun Micheel, YE Yang, Rich Beem, Wayne Grady, Mark Brooks and Bob Tway win this tournament. Hardly world beaters, these are players who never really amounted to much other than that one hot week. So when we look at the field this weekend, these ‘no-name’ players have to be considered, even though their biggest ‘win’ might be a T22 in the Lumber 84 Classic.

Rules of the Game

Martin Kaymer was crowned the champion of the 2010 PGA Championship this afternoon at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin, beating Bubba Watson in a three hole playoff. Of course it wasn’t as easy as that, Dustin Johnson held a one stroke lead going into the 18th and final hole, but was assessed a two stroke penalty for grounding his club in a bunker, subsequently took a triple bogey seven, and missed the playoff by two strokes.


After watching the footage a couple of times, I’ve come to a couple of conclusions. First off, I can’t argue with the penalty, as Johnson clearly grounded his club before hitting his approach shot and the players had all been told there were no waste areas; all sand would be paying as regular bunkers. However, that isn’t to say I don’t have a few problems with how this all went down.