Wednesday At The 107th PGA
The rain relents, Rory talks, a fun final facts, a look at the merchandise, and one final weather report as the 2025 PGA Championship is ready to begin.
After surviving a few brief, but non-violent encounters with the Charlotte Marching and Chowder Society, it seems they’ve moved on from The Quad’s design assessment of Quail Hollow. Hunter Mahan’s comparison of the vapid architecture to a Kardashian was greeted with “ah-hahs” in the golf world, yet called “cringey” and “bizarre” by various publications looking for a Like from the Botox-friendly (allegedly!) influencers who have done so much for the betterment of society.
“It’s very modern, beautiful and well-kept. But it lacks a soul or character.”
Could have been so much worse.
It’s not like he said something to the effect of, “it was once a charming stroll in the park and now is an excessively-manipulated, brilliantly-manicured, expensive wasteland of greatest Tom Fazio hackery hits featuring too many clunky outside-the-corner-of-the-dogleg bunkers, too many catch basins to count, and other than that, seems devoid of charm.”
That would have been rude. Even I wouldn’t go that far.
Well, what’s done is done and best of all, the 107th PGA is upon us. The people of Charlotte will have plenty of pent-up good vibes following two miserable practice round days and a better Wednesday under some sun after a morning shower. The weatherman’s report (below) says Thursday play should go uninterrupted by weather and the next rain concern may come Saturday.
In the more good news department—if your golf ball is not mud-coated trying to play a 215-yard approach to the 16th green—Keith Woods and crew have apparently siphoned enough water out of the fairways that the PGA rules and setup team will likely not implement lift, clean and place. A final decision will be made in the morning if the course takes on any more rain. Expect plenty of calls to officials for casual water relief.
Here are the first and second round tee times.
The grounds were still abuzz Wednesday following the bizarro PGA press conference. Plenty in the golf industry were aghast that they are worried about a few yards of distance loss instead of calling nonsense on tariffs that may raise the price of golf goods substantially. In a strange way, it seems the PGA’s Derek Sprague and Don Rea may have created converts on the rollback cause. Well done!
They held a PGA Champions dinner at Quail Hollow Tuesday night to honor Xander Schauffele. Men in ill-fitting sports coats attended with only billionaire social media activist Phil Mickelson was unable to pry himself away from Twitter.
Let’s get to the important stuff: Rory McIlroy’s return to Quail Hollow, some pre-championship Fun Facts, a look at the Merch, and the latest Weather forecast.
McIlroy Returns To The Scene Of Many Triumphs
Rory McIlroy appeared in the Quail Hollow interview area Wednesday morning and covered a wide range of topics. His enthusiasm for the session broke slowly from the gate—perhaps Johnny Harris opened up the QH wine cellar during the previous night’s Champions Dinner—but McIlroy warmed up to deliver the goods on a number of topics.
On majors in aa post-2025 Masters triumph world. “I turn up and try to have the same attitude and the same approach to each and every tournament and try to get the best out of myself. Some weeks that results in wins, and some weeks it doesn't. As long as I approach every week that way, all I can do is go out there and try to play the golf that I know that I'm capable of. As I said, some weeks someone just plays better than you, and other weeks it's your time.”
On this week’s weather-truncated build-up to round one. “I've played over 400 events in my career. I've played a lot of major championships. I know how these things go, and you've just got to go out there and play.”
On the wet conditions. “Early in my career that these conditions favored me more. I believe that they favored me more. But I believe that Pinehurst last year favored me. I believe that firm conditions favor me. I believe that any conditions that we play in, I have the abilities and I have the skill set to excel.”
On arriving at Quail Hollow where he’s won four PGA Tour events. “I thought it was going to feel different just because it was a major championship, and I got out on the golf course yesterday, and it felt no different than last year at the Wells Fargo. The rough is maybe a little juicier. But fairways are still the same cut lines and same visuals. It doesn't feel that much different.”
On his Masters win. “I sort of burdened myself with the Career Grand Slam stuff, and I want to enjoy this. I want to enjoy what I've achieved, and I want to enjoy the last decade or whatever of my career, and I don't want to burden myself by numbers or statistics.”
On watching the Masters final round. “I've tried not to watch it a lot because I want to remember the feelings and I want to -- I've talked about this before, but I think when I rewatch a lot of things back, I then just remember of the visuals of the TV rather than what I was feeling and what I was seeing through my own eyes, so I haven't tried to watch it back too much. But anytime I have, I well up. I still feel like I want to cry.
On Bryson DeChambeau mentioning the lack of on-course chit-chat Sunday of The Masters. “We're trying to win the Masters. I'm not going to try to be his best mate out there. Look, everyone approaches the game different ways. I was focused on myself and what I needed to do. That's really all that it was. It wasn't anything against him or against -- it's just I felt that's what I needed to do to try to get the best out of myself that day.”
On expecting the course to start playing faster. “I tried to hit a lot of downhill putts yesterday just to try to feel what the speed of the greens might be like towards the tournament days.”
On lifting the Wannamaker Trophy. “It's nice for the pictures because your biceps are usually flexed. So it makes you look a bit stronger than you actually are. But it's very cool. It's a very cool trophy. And you know you've beat one of the strongest fields, if not the strongest field, of the year.”
Fun Facts
The team at Elias Sports Bureau came up with some nice appetite-whetters on championship eve.
For the 16th time in the last 17 years, at least 95 of the top 100 golfers in the world will tee it up at the PGA Championship. The lone outlier over that time was the covid-affected 2020 championship, which included 91 of the top 100 players on the Official World Golf Ranking.
Justin Thomas is in pursuit of this third Wanamaker Trophy, and the second such at Quail Hollow Club. Excluding Augusta National GC, only three players have ever won multiple major championships at one American venue: Willie Anderson (1901 and 1905 U.S. Opens at Myopia Hunt Club), Jack Nicklaus (1967 and 1980 U.S. Opens at Baltusrol GC) and Tiger Woods (1999 and 2006 PGA Championships at Medinah CC).
Players in this week’s field with the best career scoring averages at the Wells Fargo Championship in the years it was played at Quail Hollow Club (2003-2024, except for 2017 and 2022): Rory McIlroy (69.33, 46 rounds), Xander Schauffele (69.63, 16 rounds), Jason Day (70.08, 24 rounds), Keith Mitchell (70.19, 16 rounds) and Max Homa (70.29, 17 rounds). Minimum: 10 rounds
McIlroy will attempt to start 2025 by winning the first two major championships of the year. Over the last 70 years, only five golfers have been able to pull that off: Ben Hogan (1953), Arnold Palmer (1960), Jack Nicklaus (1972), Tiger Woods (2002) and Jordan Spieth (2015). Spieth winning the 2015 Masters and U.S. Open also marks the last time that a player won consecutive majors, regardless of time of year.
Over the last two Wells Fargo Championships in 2023 and 2024, the first nine holes played to a score average of 35.216 (+.216) and the second nine holes played to a scoring average of 36.213 (+.213).
Xander Schauffele has finished among the top 20 in all the 12 majors starting with the 2022 PGA Ch ampionship. It is among the longest such streaks of the last 60 years
Merch!
Last year I complimented the PGA Championship’s merchandise offerings primarily because of the huge buying variety and range of prices. The long list of participating vendors remains. The good-value prices? Not so much.
The usual array of polos, caps and nick-knacks were there but only two adult polos were priced under $100. The kids wear pricing is even worse. Not helping: the PGA appeared to give little leeway to brands for customization of logo sizing or placement, so nearly every polo features the same oversized PGA on the front left breast with the antiseptic Quail Hollow “Q”.
Let’s start with the more tasteful finds followed by the more gruesome.