Block began the first round on Thursday with a bogey on the par-4 1st hole and then made an eight-course meal of the par-4 2nd hole. He just missed the fairway off the tee and then came up short and left of the green with his approach. His third shot went over the green.
His fourth shot went into a bunker. His fifth shot also went over the green. He was finally on the dance floor with his sixth shot, but missed the 11-footer for triple bogey. Block then tapped in to put the carrot on the snowman for a quadruple bogey eight.
Respect to Michael Block from all of us who frequently take six shots to get down from just next to the green 👊🏽 pic.twitter.com/il7qRlerdJ
The head pro at Arroyo Trabuco Golf Club in Mission Viejo, California, was in the first group off Thursday morning alongside Team Europe Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald and 2003 PGA champion Shaun Micheel.
His 1991 PGA victory introduced the John Daly experience to the world.
John Daly is back at the PGA Championship, in the field on a lifetime exemption by virtue of the tournament’s rule that a champion will always get a spot.
Daly hasn’t made the cut at the PGA since he tied for 32nd in 2007. In fact, in 29 career appearances in the PGA – 10th all-time – Daly only made seven cuts.
At Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville in 2024, he’s proving once again that he’s still one of the most popular figures in pro golf. And that seems to be true among the pros, too.
“JD is the man. I’ve always loved being around him. He’s gotten close with my dad, as well. What was it, Bethpage? Him and my dad hung out for a while and my dad got to come out and watch me until probably about the back nine,” said Brooks Koepka on Wednesday after playing a practice round with him, Jake Knapp and Akshay Bhatia.
The story behind this group is that Daly walked up to Knapp on the putting green yesterday and invited him to play with him and Brooks. Knapp rearranged his schedule to play nine in the morning instead of afternoon—couldn't pass that up. I believe Akshay joined on the tee. https://t.co/cBVYtG5t8g
“He’s been great,” Koepka continued. “We text a lot. We have pretty good communication. It’s always fun. Try to play with him at least once. I think played with him at the British last year and then this year, tried to get nine holes with him.”
At Valhalla this year, fans flocked to get autographs, and Daly pulled up in his golf cart to the gallery to sign.
John Daly signs autographs for fans while driving his golf cart near the 18th green at the 2024 PGA Championship Valhalla Golf Club.
Daly, of course, was perhaps the most dramatic winner in the history of the event, driving overnight as the ninth alternate in 1991 to win at Crooked Stick in Carmel, Indiana. He was unable to play a practice round, yet won by three shots.
That victory introduced the John Daly experience to the world and fan interest has seemingly never wavered.
Check out some photos of John Daly at the 2024 PGA Championship.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Major championship fields are perennially fertile, at least when it comes to fodder for debate. The Masters is criticized for having too few competitors, and for being oversubscribed with the aged and amateurs. The two Opens get knocked for being, well, too open, as guys with respectable rankings are forced to enter qualifying to earn a berth. The PGA Championship takes its licks for having 20 club professionals among the starters. Since recent debate over field composition has focused on who is absent — some LIV players — the PGA of America has flipped the conversation by inviting a player whose presence is at best dubious.
Eligibility criteria for the PGA Championship include a provision allowing invitations to players not otherwise exempt. Traditionally that category has been used to admit players within the top 100 in the world ranking. This year, however, it is being used as a back door means to indulge the entitlement of LIV’s most vocal gripe.
Since LIV opted not to meet the standards for world ranking points — the most accessible path into majors — its players have taken to routinely denouncing the ranking as unfit for purpose, and have repeatedly suggested that majors are diminished (or even co-conspirators) by not carving out an alternative direct path for them. Sixteen LIV golfers are in the field at Valhalla, and even vehement critics would have to concede that most are justified in being invited.
About half of LIV’s contingent is covered by long-established criteria (recent wins, past glories) rather than by dint of invitation, including Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Cam Smith, Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and Martin Kaymer. Tyrrell Hatton is still No. 18 in the world ranking, Adrian Meronk 65th, Lucas Herbert 90th and Patrick Reed 93rd (close enough to the top 100 line that he might want to start plotting a litigation strategy for 2025). Some lesser-knowns are deserving if one brushes the surface of recent performances. Dean Burmester won twice on the DP World Tour late last year, including the South African Open. Joaquin Niemann won the Australian Open. Andy Ogletree and David Puig have notched wins on the Asian Tour.
That’s 15 of 16. Which leaves Talor Gooch as the asterisk.
Talor Gooch smiles on the 11th hole during a practice round prior to the 2023 PGA Championship at Oak Hill Country Club on May 15, 2023, in Rochester, New York. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
“We have the most flexibility of any of the majors,” said Seth Waugh, the PGA of America’s CEO when addressing a question about Gooch’s presence without actually mentioning Gooch’s presence. “We have the ability to kind of lean in and really pick the best field in golf, and that’s never been, frankly, more important than it is right now.”
“It’s going to be a bit more of an art form than a math problem,” he added.
Membership of the LIV tour is not a barrier to playing in a major championship. Those who compete elsewhere and demonstrate form are acknowledged. Witness Niemann receiving a Masters invitation. Playing only LIV events and making no effort to meet any championship qualification criteria should be a barrier. Yet the PGA of America chose instead to reward that.
Gooch is 668th in the world ranking. He has entered only two tournaments outside LIV since the Open last July and he withdrew from one of them. He declared that a Rory McIlroy victory at the Masters would have had an asterisk because worthy LIV guys (presumably himself) weren’t there. More recently, he said he would not enter qualifying for the U.S Open. Gooch the mooch isn’t interested in earning a spot in majors. He just thinks he’s entitled to it. And the PGA Championship gave it to him.
So why?
Always alert for an opportunity to distinguish itself from the other majors — and increasingly now from top-tier Tour events — the PGA Championship is perhaps signaling its future as being the first to create a pathway for LIV. Gooch is here because he topped that circuit’s points list in 2023. The only member of the top 5 on LIV’s ’24 list not here is Louis Oosthuizen. He was also invited but declined.
Gooch being gifted a tee time at Valhalla is also a warning shot at the PGA Tour. Having stood with the Tour through the maelstrom, the PGA of America is weary and eager to see a resolution. Waugh said the division has an economic impact and that the professional game isn’t healthy. Left unsaid was the obvious threat: if a deal doesn’t sort this out, the PGA Championship will formally admit LIV members, thereby removing a key reason why others might hesitate to jump to the Saudi league.
If LIV guys meet the criteria for majors, there’s no valid basis for excluding them. If their case is borderline, LIV status shouldn’t count as a strike against. But rewriting that criteria to accommodate players who refuse to make an effort to comply with requirements — or wordsmithing cute carveouts — is just timorous. Entitled demands for free passes should be stiff-armed, not indulged. If the decision to invite Gooch is an attempt by the PGA Championship to distinguish itself, it worked. But not in the way it was hoped.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The 2024 PGA Championship begins on Thursday morning with PGA club pro Michael Block hitting the opening tee shot at 7 a.m. ET at Valhalla Golf Club.
Before balls are in the air, let’s take a look at 15 stats you (probably) didn’t know from the stats geeks at the Elias Sports Bureau. They dug up some good ones here.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of Rory McIlroy’s 2014 PGA Championship victory at Valhalla – his most recent major championship crown. Since then, he has finished among the top 10 in a major 20 times, which is the most by any player over that span, ahead of Brooks Koepka (17), Dustin Johnson (16) and Jordan Spieth (13).
Each of the last three PGA Championship winners finished single digits under par for the championship: Phil Mickelson (6 under at Kiawah), Justin Thomas (5 under at Southern Hills) and Brooks Koepka (9 under at Oak Hill). There have not been four consecutive single-digit winning scores, relative to par, at this championship since the early 1980s.
Michael Block captivated the golf world last year, finishing T-15 at Oak Hill. It was the best finish by a club pro at the PGA Championship since Tommy Aycock finished T-11 at Tanglewood GC in 1974.
No club professional has made the cut at the PGA Championship in back-to-back years since Illinois club pro Tom Wargo did so in both 1992 and 1993.
The only club professional to post more than one career top-20 finish at the PGA Championship was Sam Snead who competed in PGA Championships as a club professional during the early 1970s. Snead, then in his early 60s, finished T-4 and T-9 at the 1972 and 1973 PGA Championships, respectively.
Block’s magical week reached a thunderous crescendo with a hole-in-one on the 15th hole on Sunday It was the first hole-in-one by a club professional at a PGA Championship since 1996, when George Bowman (a club pro from Michigan) made an ace on No. 3 at Valhalla during his first round.
Xander Schauffele is in the midst of one of the greatest streaks of consistency in recent major championship history. Dating back to the 2022 PGA Championship at Southern Hills, he has finished among the top-20 in each of the last eight majors, including an 8th-place showing at the Masters in April.
The last player to appear in eight consecutive major championships and finish among the top 20 in each was Tiger Woods, who had an eight-major streak from the 2006 Open Championship to the 2008 U.S. Open. No player has had a longer streak than Schauffele’s since Woods did that in each of 14 consecutive majors, from the 1998 Masters through the 2001 U.S. Open.
Jack Nicklaus’ record for such a streak is safe for the near future: The Golden Bear appeared in 33 consecutive majors from 1970 to 1978 and finished among the top 20 in all of them!
Scottie Scheffler has four wins in 10 starts this season (since January 1st). That is a higher winning percentage than the current records of Major League Baseball’s Rockies, White Sox, Marlins, Astros, and Angels.
Scheffler has won four of his last five starts. Over the last 70 years, only three other players had a five-start span like that: Tiger Woods (several times, most recently when he won five consecutive tournaments spanning the end of the 2007 season and the start of 2008), Vijay Singh (2004) and Arnold Palmer (1962).
Scheffler has shot par or better in each of his last 40 official PGA Tour events, which is 12 shy of Tiger Woods’ PGA Tour record of 52, set between May 2000 and January 2001. Scheffler’s stroke average during the streak is 67.53. Tiger’s stroke average during his streak was 67.65.
Starting with Jimmy Walker’s win at Baltusrol in 2016, each of the last eight PGA Championships has been won by an American (Walker, Thomas, Koepka (three times), Morikawa, Mickelson, Thomas). It is the longest such streak at this championship since a 10-year run from 1980-1989.
Englishman Jim Barnes won the first two PGA Championships, in 1916 and 1919, however no player representing Great Britain has won this championship since.
Brooks Koepka posted the outright best round on the course in both the second and third rounds (66 in both rounds) last year. It was the first time in PGA Championship history that a player shot back-to-back ‘ringer rounds.’ Over the last six PGA Championships (2018-2023), Koepka is 32-under par, which is by far the best cumulative score relative to par over that time. Next best: Justin Rose, -13.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — This week’s 2024 PGA Championship will most likely feature more LIV Golf players – 16, to be exact – than any other major championship this season as the professional game will briefly unite once again at Valhalla Golf Club.
Ahead of the 106th playing of the PGA of America’s flagship event, the organization’s President John Lindert, CEO Seth Waugh and Chief Championships Officer Kerry Haigh all gathered for a press conference and addressed the “messy” state of pro golf as the PGA Tour and LIV continue to battle for eyeballs and interest.
Waugh said he was “absolutely” worried about the game at the professional level, noting how “it seems to get messier every week.” As an optimist, however, he hopes this is the darkness before the dawn.
“I think the best thing for the game is a deal. And we’ve been very consistent on that front,” said Waugh. “What has been an unsustainable business model has put pressure on other places like the (PGA Tour) that creates some financial dynamics as well as other dynamics that are very hard, and quite frankly it puts some financial pressure on us, as well.”
“I don’t think the game is big enough for two tours like that, and I think we are diluting the game in a way that is not healthy. We’ve said that, really, from the beginning,” he continued. “I hope there’s a deal. I think both sides are not only committed to trying to find a deal but really need a deal, and in my history of deal making, when both sides kind of need something to happen, it generally does.”
Waugh wouldn’t speak on the timing and noted while he has connections to those in the discussions, he doesn’t have any information the rest of us don’t already possess. Tiger Woods, who is on the subcommittee that will negotiate with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, spoke on the status of the negotiations on Tuesday and echoed what’s been said for months: progress is being made. Jon Rahm, who made the move to LIV late last year, said he thinks a deal will be done but doesn’t want a rushed resolution.
“I hope there’s urgency because I do think it’s doing damage to the Tour, to the game,” added Waugh. “As I said earlier, I hope it’s short-term damage, as opposed to permanent damage, and so I hope there’s some urgency in the timing around it because I just don’t think it’s a healthy situation right now.”
When it comes to players in the field, the PGA of America will invite those in the top 100 of the Official World Golf Ranking who aren’t already exempt. Of the 16 LIV players on site this week, seven received special invites from the PGA of America. Four were inside the top 100 of the OWGR. Of the three who were not, Dean Burmester and David Puig both tried to earn their way in by playing on the DP World Tour and Asian Tour, respectively, and both won at least once. The outlier is Gooch, who has only played for LIV since he joined the Saudi-backed circuit and earlier this month said he won’t be attempting to qualify for the U.S. Open while 34 of his colleagues will try to play their way in.
Talor Gooch of the United States walks to the eighth tee during a practice round prior to the 2024 PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club on May 15, 2024 in Louisville, Kentucky. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
Haigh avoided a direct question about Gooch’s invitation being strictly based on his LIV performance – he’s currently eighth on LIV’s season-long standings for 2024 but won the season-long individual championship last year – and gave no hint about LIV-specific qualifying criteria being implemented.
“Well, our invitation process has been pretty much the same for many years. You know, we have 15 criteria that are pretty much set, and then there’s an opportunity for us to invite those players who may not be in those 15 criteria,” said Haigh. “That process over the years has made us be able to have what we feel is a field we are really proud of. It brings the best players in the whole world together to compete on a great golf course for a major championship, and that’s what we pride — we are very proud of the field that we have, and we feel they are the best players in the game.”
“We have the most flexibility of any of the majors, right. We are not bound to World Rankings. We are not bound to special invitations,” Waugh added. “But Kerry has the ability, we all have the ability, to kind of lean in and really pick the best field in golf, and that’s never been, frankly, more important than it is right now.”
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Just two days after picking up his 26th career PGA Tour title at the Wells Fargo Championship, Rory McIlroy made headlines on Tuesday for the wrong reason – filing for divorce from his wife of seven years citing the marriage as “irretrievably broken,” requesting “shared parental responsibility” of their daughter, Poppy, and “establishing a parental plan, including a timesharing schedule.”
McIlroy released a statement through his manager saying he would not be making any comments about his private life and the closest he came to answering a question on the subject during his pre-tournament press conference on Wednesday ahead of the 106th PGA Championship asked him about his energy levels and, on a personal level, how he was doing?
“I’m ready to play this week,” he said before moving on.
McIlroy, who turned 35 last week, has made plenty of headlines between being embroiled in PGA Tour policy board politics and serving as a de facto spokesman for the PGA Tour in its fight with LIV Golf, but the one headline he hasn’t made for a nearly a decade is as a major champion. It was at the 2014 PGA Championship here at Valhalla Golf Club in August that McIlroy captured his second Wanamaker Trophy and fourth major title. He was 25, the third-youngest to win four major titles since 1900 (Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus), the No. 1 player in the world, and his future seemed boundless.
“I thought at that point in time that we might see Rory win 10 major championships. He had limitless ability, unbelievable length, could do everything, and was making it look really easy,” said ESPN’s Andy North. “Life changes. You get married. You have kids. You have other business obligations. Your focus becomes not as singular on golf as it should be, and every single good player has gone through that. Rory has had an amazing career. I personally thought that he might win more than he has, which that’s scary because he’s won plenty.”
During the 35 major starts since his last win, McIlroy has recorded 20 top-10 finishes including 10 appearances in the top five, the most of any player in the last decade.
“To not at the very least fall into one is unfathomable,” said CBS Sports lead analyst Trevor Immelman.
When McIlroy left the PGA Championship a year ago after finishing seventh, his confidence was shot. The cameras for the Netflix documentary “Full Swing” captured McIlroy in an uncharacteristic fit of rage in the locker room.
“My technique is nowhere near as good as it used to be. I almost feel like I wanna do a complete reboot … It’s the only way I feel like I’m gonna break through,” McIlroy complained to his manager and caddie.
Speaking on Wednesday during his press conference, he said, “I felt like my game wasn’t in really good shape after Oak Hill. Sort of needed to reset, work on a few things.”
Rory McIlroy works out on the driving range during a practice round of the 2023 PGA Championship golf tournament at Oak Hill Country Club. (Photo: Adam Cairns-USA TODAY Sports)
One year later, McIlroy’s game is in a much better place. The world No. 2 was a non-factor in his latest quest to complete the career Grand Slam at the Masters in April, but enters the PGA having teamed with Shane Lowry to win the Zurich Classic of New Orleans and winning last week in Charlotte with a closing 65 to blow past 54-hole leader Xander Schauffele. The last time McIlroy played here he was oozing confidence, having won his two previous starts heading into the PGA, and that symmetry hasn’t gone unnoticed.
McIlroy, for one, downplayed the significance of his success here 10 years ago and what it could mean for his bid to win a fifth major title.
“It’s hard to rekindle those feelings and those memories. I can vaguely remember, you know, coming here off the back of winning The Open and the old WGC at Akron,” he said. “But you know, I think it’s all about confidence and momentum, and I have a lot of confidence and quite a bit of momentum coming into this week.”
McIlroy said that he’s found a driver he loves and his tee game has been as good as ever. That should come in handy at a big, brawny course softened by recent rainstorms like Valhalla.
“I think this is a golf course that allows you to play with freedom because it’s a big golf course. The corridors are wide, not too dissimilar to last week at Quail Hollow, so you can open your shoulders up off the tee and try to take your chances from there,” he said.
If McIlroy can quiet all the noise in his life and find safe harbor between the ropes and keep playing with the swagger of the Summer of 2014, he could finally capture that elusive fifth major. ESPN’s Curtis Strange tabbed it a big week for McIlroy.
“If he could win a major championship, then the energy that it would create within him to do more might be phenomenal,” he said.
Check out the golf equipment being used by the pros at the 2024 PGA Championship.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The driving range and practice area at Valhalla Golf Club are filled with golf’s best players as they prepare for the season’s second major, the 2024 PGA Championship, and Golfweek’s David Dusek has been on-site all week taking notes on what clubs players are using.
Conditions in the fairways are soft and the sand around the greens is clumpy, so players are testing wedges to ensure they have the ideal blend of bounce and loft.
Check out the gallery of in-hand and close-up images below to see some of the most interesting gear Dusek has seen this week from players such as Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, Rickie Fowler, Scottie Scheffler and more.
Golf balls are round for a reason: They’re supposed to roll. If the weather begins to cooperate in Louisville, Kentucky, golf balls in this week’s PGA Championship could be rolling farther than ever at Valhalla Golf Club.
And that’s a good thing.
In 2021, Valhalla replaced its former bentgrass fairways with Zeon Zoysiagrass. Requiring less water and fewer chemicals than bent, the zoysia plays much faster and firmer, allowing golf balls to roll until they sometimes roll too far.
The club also removed the strips of bluegrass rough between the fairways and fairway bunkers, allowing balls to trundle unimpeded into the bunkers. That is more in keeping with the links style of golf found in the British Isles, where even slightly misplaced shots often bounce along the ground until they reach some kind of trouble.
All in all, those changes should put a greater emphasis on accurate driving and controlled shotmaking, especially if the predicted rains are light or end early. Combine that with Valhalla’s copious bluegrass rough, and the leaderboard of this year’s PGA Championship will be packed with players who are in control of all aspects of their games.
No. 13 at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky. (Photo: Gary Kellner/PGA of America)
“Hitting the fairways is way more at a premium here than it is at a lot of places,” Keith Reese, PGA general manager at Valhalla since 2013, said in the lead-up to the tournament. “It’ll be interesting to see if the players have to adjust their aiming points off some of the tees this year, just because we are getting more roll than we typically would.”
Designed by Jack Nicklaus and opened in 1986, Valhalla already has proved to be an excellent ball-striking test in past PGA Championships with Mark Brooks (1996), Tiger Woods (2000) and Rory McIlroy (2014) the victors. This year’s will be Valhalla’s fourth major championship, the most of any modern layout. Golfweek’s Best course-ranking program defines modern courses as being built since 1960, and heading into this year’s event, Valhalla was tied among modern courses with the Straits Course at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin as the host of three PGA Championships. Both Valhalla (2008) and the Straits (2020) also hosted Ryder Cups.
The PGA of America once owned Valhalla, which is ranked by Golfweek as the No. 1 private course in Kentucky. The organization bought a 25 percent stake in Valhalla in the early 1990s, increased its stake to 50 percent in 1996, then bought the club outright in 2000 with the promise to make it an anchor site for future events. In 2022, the PGA of America sold the club to a group of Louisville investors, and the desire to host elite events hasn’t wavered.
Valhalla has proved its worth several other times, as well. Hale Irwin won the 2004 Senior PGA Championship there, and fellow World Golf Hall of Fame member Tom Watson took that title in 2011.
Akshay Bhatia won the second of his back-to-back Boys Junior PGA Championships at Valhalla in 2018 before joining the PGA Tour as a 21-year-old, and Anna Davis won the 2021 Girls Junior PGA Championship at Valhalla before capturing the 2022 Augusta National Women’s Amateur.
“I think the golf course is a good test of golf, but it’s a fair test of golf,” said Reese, who has witnessed all the big events at Valhalla. “As you’ve seen, we’ve had some really exciting finishes and a really great list of champions. It’s a golf course that has some scoring opportunities but it also has areas that can jump up and bite you if you’re not careful.
“The last six holes, I think, are fantastic, just a great finishing stretch with some short holes and some long holes.”
Those closing holes include a short par 4 with an island green, a long par 3, two mid-length par 4s, a long par 4 and a reachable par 5 to close it all out. There are birdie opportunities, as evidenced by Woods and May each shooting 31 on the back nine in their epic 2000 duel that ended with a playoff victory for Woods. McIlroy in 2014 likewise blitzed the back nine in 32 shots to sneak past Phil Mickelson, Rickie Fowler and Henrik Stenson.
But don’t consider it a pushover. If past performance is any indicator of future outcomes, Reese expects Valhalla’s combination of thick rough, fast fairways and tricky greens to punish even slightly wayward efforts.
“You look at the champions who have won here, traditionally they have been very good ball-strikers and really good iron players, Tom Watson and Tiger Woods obviously,” Reese said. “A lot of our greens complexes are elevated, so if your iron shots are a little off, they wind up basically being repelled away from the green even more.
“The rough just gets very unpredictable, and I think that’s probably the most difficult thing for the tour players, putting them in a situation where they can’t predict how far a shot is going to go or how much it’s going to spin.”
No. 12 at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky. (Photo: Gary Kellner/PGA of America)
There have been other changes to Valhalla over the years, besides the switch to zoysia fairways. The greens were renovated in 2012, and more recent work focused on adding length. Valhalla played to 7,458 yards in 2014, and Reese said about 130 yards have been added in preparation for this year’s event. The par-4 first hole has been stretched 50 yards with a new tee, the par-4 12th was stretched 20 yards and the par-3 14th has a new tee 30 yards farther back as the hole now plays 250 yards. To cap it all off, the par-5 18th was extended 30 yards.
It doesn’t hurt that the Louisville area saw early spring weather this year, Reese said. The course is several weeks ahead of its normal growing patterns, and the rough has soaked up that warm sunshine, growing even thicker than normal and further elevating the demands on shot control.
“If you hit good shots, you will get rewarded,” Reese said. “If you hit bad shots, it can punish you in a hurry, each and every hole.”
The tournament begins Thursday at Valhalla Golf Club, a 7,603-yard track that willl and play as a par 71 this week.
The field is 156 players with 32 major winners and 16 past PGA champs as well as 20 PGA professionals.
The total prize money and first-place check haven’t been announced yet but in addition to a large sum of money, the winner of the PGA gets a lifetime exemption into the event as well as a replica of the Wanamaker Trophy.
