A pair of Masters champions will make their debut.
A pair of Masters champions are set to make their debut at the 2024 PNC Championship.
Fred Couples and Trevor Immelman will tee it up for the first time next month at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club Orlando in the silly-season event. Couples will partner with his 16-year-old stepson, Hunter Hannemann, while Immelman will pair with his 18-year-old son Jacob Immelman.
Eighteen of the 20 teams were announced Monday, and there were plenty of familiar names on the tee sheet. Lee Trevino, who has played in every edition, will be back, as will defending champions Bernhard Langer and son Jason.
However, there is one notable omission as of yet: Tiger Woods and son Charlie.
The duo has teed it up the past four years, including a runner-up finish in 2021. But with Tiger undergoing surgery for another back surgery in September, his status for the PNC, and his Hero World Challenge event in the Bahamas in two weeks, remains in the air.
The PNC features 20 major champions and their relatives competing in a two-day, 36-hole scramble for the Willie Park Trophy. To qualify, players must have won a major championship or the Players while their partner must not hold any playing status on a professional Tour.
Here’s a look at the field for the 2024 PNC Championship, which is set for Dec. 19-22:
“It’s not like a full-time gig or anything … It’ll be kind of fun,” Azinger told Golfweek on Monday.
Paul Azinger is returning to the broadcast booth in 2025.
Golfweek has learned that the 64-year-old former 12-time PGA Tour champion and winner of the 1993 PGA Championship will replace Lanny Wadkins, who announced his retirement on Friday, as the lead analyst on Golf Channel’s coverage of PGA Tour Champions for 10-12 tournaments next season as part of a one-year deal.
“It’s not like a full-time gig or anything, which I don’t want, but to be able to go in there and part-time some golf, some really great golf, it’ll be kind of fun,” Azinger told Golfweek in a phone interview on Monday. “I’ll just be as candid as I can and enjoy it.”
Peter Jacobsen and John Cook will split time in the analyst chair when Azinger is off. [Cook will serve as on-site walking reporter when he’s not an analyst.]
“Paul brings a lot of credibility to that seat and has a lot of creative ideas that we think can just add to our overall telecast,” Miller Brady, president of PGA Tour Champions, said. “It’s hard to replace a Hall of Famer like Lanny week in and week out, but, I think Paul will be tremendous for us.”
Azinger was the lead golf analyst for NBC Sports’ coverage of the PGA Tour for five years until the network stunned him by electing not to renew his contract last December.
“I thought I would do at least one more year and then sign a four-year deal. They made the offer, my agent said ‘No, we’ll counteroffer the next day.’ And they said, ‘Sorry, we’re moving on.’ You know, it wasn’t a conversation with me, like, ‘What do you need Zinger? What do we need to do? Here’s our situation. You know, this is why we need you to accept this deal.’ There was no reason, it just was it’s complicated, it’s complicated. I was like, ‘How complicated can it be, bud?’ It’s money,” Azinger told Golfweek in March.
The Peacock still hasn’t hired a replacement for Azinger, instead rotating this season through a cast of veteran players including Kevin Kisner and Luke Donald, Golf Channel commentators Paul McGinley and Brandel Chamblee, who did the U.S. Open, and caddie Jim “Bones” Mackay, who has since rejoined Golf Channel as an on-course commentator.
Sep 24, 2022; Charlotte, North Carolina, USA; Paul Azinger holds up a fish at the lake near the 14th hole during the foursomes match play of the Presidents Cup golf tournament at Quail Hollow Club. Mandatory Credit: Peter Casey-USA TODAY Sports
While Azinger will appear on Golf Channel, he isn’t employed by the network but rather by PGA Tour Entertainment, which has final say on talent for PGA Tour Champions coverage. All parties involved said that the relationship has been reconciled despite the messy parting nearly a year ago.
“I hope that that’s water under the bridge and that everyone just moves on. I know Paul wants to move on, and we want to move on,” Brady said.
“Paul has called some of golf’s biggest events and has been a part of the PGA Tour as a player or analyst for more than four decades, and we’re excited to have him bring that experience to the PGA Tour Champions telecasts on Golf Channel,” an NBC Sports spokesperson said.
During his interview with Golfweek in March, Azinger hinted that he’d be interested in calling the 50-and-over tour.
“I’d rather call the Senior Tour than the PGA Tour to tell you the truth. I’m over the PGA Tour. To call the best senior players in the world, at least they’re the best,” Azinger said, a not-so-subtle jab at the Tour’s loss of talented players to LIV Golf.
Brady said he and Greg Hopfe, the Tour’s senior vice president and executive producer of live programming, met with Azinger in February to feel out his interest in the Champions Tour.
“And, you know, he wasn’t quite sure,” Brady said. “It took a lot of time to think about it. We continued to answer questions that he had, and we said, look, at the end of the day, we’re not asking you to come do a full schedule. We’re asking you to dip your toe in the water and let’s see if you like it.”
Wadkins has been the lead analyst of Golf Channel’s coverage of the Champions Tour for the last 13 years. He told Golfweek on Friday that he would do his final broadcast in January at the Mitsubishi Electric Championship, the kickoff to the 2025 Champions Tour season, and Brady said the tour would honor Wadkins’ contributions in a special ceremony to be held before the tournament. At his newsletter, The Quadrilateral, Geoff Shackelford called Wadkins “one of the most underrated analysts in golf television history.”
Azinger, who was the winning U.S. captain at the 2008 Ryder Cup, started in television in 2005 with ABC and ESPN, sharing analyst duties with Nick Faldo in a three-man booth with Mike Tirico. When ESPN lost its right to the British Open in 2015, Azinger signed with Fox Sports as lead analyst when it outbid NBC for the U.S. Open and other USGA championships. NBC hired him in 2018 to replace Johnny Miller when he passed the baton and signed off from the 2019 WM Phoenix Open. Azinger’s final broadcast was the 2023 Ryder Cup in Rome.
In January, Golfweek asked Brady about Azinger and he noted that he had seen him shortly after his departure from NBC at the World Champions Cup, which was played not far from Azinger’s home at The Concession in Bradenton, Florida. Brady wondered if he could talk Azinger into bringing his vast talents to the booth on the senior circuit.
“At the right time, I want to go see if maybe he’ll jump in the booth here. Why not? But the money’s vastly different. He has to want to do it. So I’ve got to find the right time,” Brady said. “If I’m with him, just to say, hey, do you want to do a couple events? It’s too raw now.”
Turns out, the time is right for Azinger.
“For Paul, it’s not about the money and he’ll tell you it’s not about the money,” Brady said, “it’s about just staying involved in the game and being close to a lot of his contemporaries.”
When Azinger was reminded that if he enjoys it enough to stick around for a second year, he may have the opportunity to call Tiger Woods again, Azinger’s voice lit up.
“I hope he does,” Azinger said. “He says he will. I mean, if I could do five or six or seven of Tiger’s events, I would be thrilled. I’ll be thrilled anyway. Trust me, it’s gonna be good fun.”
Bernhard Langer, a 46-time winner on the PGA Tour Champions, holds a one-shot lead at the 2024 Charles Schwab Cup Challenge after a third-round 4-under 67.
Langer, 67, entered the week ranked 22nd in the Charles Schwab Cup points list, but is projected to end the season at No. 7 if he goes on to win at Phoenix Country Club in Arizona.
The German has done everything but win in 2024. In 15 starts, Langer finished inside the top-25 11 times, inside the top-10 seven times and was the runner-up at the Ascension Charity Classic.
The two-time Masters champion is looking for his first win since the 2023 U.S. Senior Open.
As for the points race, Steven Alker, who entered the week ranked No. 2 behind Ernie Els, has taken over the top spot. He’s shot rounds of 70-68-63 and is 12-under total, alone is second.
Els hasn’t played his best golf this week, sitting at 3 under after rounds of 69-70-71. Stewart Cink, the 36-hole leader, struggled throughout the day, eventually signing for a 4-over 75. He’s solo sixth at 8 under, five back.
The shot of the day went to Langer, who used this beauty on the 16th to make his fifth birdie on the round.
First place at the Schwab is good for $528,000, with $300,000 going to the runner-up, $252,000 for third place, $210,000 for fourth and $180,000 to fifth place. Everyone in the field earns a paycheck, with 35th place getting $17,250.
The winner of the tournament wins the Charles Schwab Cup Championship. The winner of the season-long race is the Charles Schwab Cup champion.
The shortest golf course on the 2024 calendar sits along the Southern California coast. The longest is in the Middle East. Fifteen of the 28 are longer than 7,000 yards.
Check out the full list of 28 golf courses from longest to shortest:
Royal Golf Dar Es Salam, Rabat, Morocco – 7,638 yards (Trophy Hassan II)
A replacement for Wadkins will be announced at a later time.
World Golf Hall of Fame member Lanny Wadkins is winding down his 13th season of serving as the lead analyst for Golf Channel’s coverage of PGA Tour Champions this week at the Charles Schwab Cup Championship at Phoenix Country Club in Phoenix. It will also be his last full season.
“I’ve had my run,” Wadkins, who turns 75 next month, told Golfweek in a phone conversation. “It’s time.”
Wadkins will retire after working one final telecast at the season-opening Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai on the Big Island of Hawaii in January, which also coincides with the Tour’s transition to having the TV broadcast team call PGA Tour Champions and Korn Ferry Tour events from its new studio that was built next to the Tour’s Global Home in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. [A test run of how this will work next season is being conducted this week for the first time.]
Wadkins, who won 21 PGA Tour titles over the course of his playing career, including the PGA Championship, and was a former U.S. Ryder Cup captain, has known for a couple of years this move was coming and it would require him to fly to Jacksonville 15+ weeks a year to be part of the broadcast team with host Bob Papa (and occasionally John Swantek) and fellow commentators such as John Cook, John Mahaffey, Billy Ray Brown and Phil Blackmar.
“I think that telecast is going to be losing something for all the positives that they can come up with,” Wadkins said. “I think the personal interaction with the players is one of the best things you can do. I know, for example, when I call the tournament in Hawaii, I have breakfast every morning with various players and you get them in a surrounding like that you’re able to get more info from them on what’s going on with their games, who they’re working with, how they’re hitting it, and what they’re trying to achieve, everything else.”
This week, Wadkins is in Phoenix but he noted cost-cutting means he doesn’t even call the action from a booth anymore.
“I’m going to call this tournament, which is arguably the biggest on the Champions Tour, and I’ll sit in the compound, a little 10-by-10 windowless room, and call it off monitors. You know, they’ve just taken it in that direction,” he said.
Wadkins said he found flying from his longtime home in Dallas to Jacksonville between 15 to 20 times a year to sit in a studio less appealing. Papa already has moved his family to Ponte Vedra Beach, and Swantek is a longtime resident of the area. [An on-course reporter still will be at each tournament.]
A framed Phoenix Gazette newspaper from 1992 is part of a display case for Lanny Wadkins at Phoenix Country Club. (Golfweek)
“They want most of the people that are going to work there to move there otherwise, I mean, for me, for example, they would still be paying for a plane ticket in there, a hotel and per diem and, you know, they’re not saving money on me not living there if I was doing the telecast. So, that seems to be the bottom line in the thinking. I just hope the product doesn’t suffer, that’s my concern,” Wadkins said. “A lot of times, we’d be in the same hotel that most of the players were staying so we’d see them at the bar. And you know, I think that interaction is crucial to getting info that can improve the telecast. It doesn’t always come from me, but it may come from Papa or Cookie or whoever, but only having, you know, a walker on site, it sounds like a really lonely life just being the only person on site, nobody else there, you know, that’s gonna be kind of weird.”
Talent for PGA Tour Champions coverage is chosen by PGA Tour Entertainment not Golf Channel. A replacement for Wadkins will be announced at a later time, and Wadkins will be honored at the tour’s annual awards ceremony at Hualalai.
Wadkins may be hanging up his headset but he plans to stay active in the game with his design work.
“I’ve got six projects going on right now for Invited so I’m covered up. I’ve got two guys working for me. We’re having a very successful run and I’m really enjoying that,” Wadkins said. “And I can control my schedule better too, which is nice. I got grandkids on the way and things like that, so, you know, all the other things in life that you get to do. Think about it: I’ve been traveling 25 weeks a year or more since I’ve been 21 years old. So that’s well over 50 years. So that’s a lot of road time.”
Lanny Wadkins watches as a putt for birdie fails to drop during the 1993 PGA Championship.
He’s getting to go out on his terms after a 13-year run with PGA Tour Champions following six seasons as lead analyst on CBS Sports’ coverage of the PGA Tour, which ended on a sour note.
“It’s a business that they don’t really train you. They just throw you in there and see if you can do it. I think it took me a couple years to get my footing with CBS, for example. I think that’s why the end there was so kind of sharp because I think I had gotten my footing. I remember the last PGA Championship, which was the last telecast of the year that Jim Nantz and I did in those six years and Jimmy looked at me and said, ‘You were right on the money. You and I have hit our stride. We’re going to be great going forward.’ And a month later, it ended, and I still had three years left on my contract. So, weird business, you know, it’s hard to say what’s happening.”
But Wadkins knows one thing: he enjoyed broadcasting the senior circuit immensely.
“It kept me in the game and I’ve been around guys I’ve known my whole life,” he said.
Asked what he’ll miss most, Wadkins said he is going to miss the people and then complimented everyone from his broadcast partners to his producer. Then he remembered one more thing he’ll miss: martini night with Papa, Cookie and Billy Ray.
“We all like the same vodka, so it was a lot of fun for a while,” Wadkins added.
What night was Martini night?
“Oh, whatever night we’re all there together,” he said. “We weren’t picky.”
Ernie Els, Stephen Ames and Padraig Harrington each tied for most wins with three.
There have been 19 different winners on the PGA Tour Champions in 2024.
The season drew to a close at the Charles Schwab Cup Championship, a four-day, 72-hole, no-cut, 36-man field at Phoenix Country Club.
Ernie Els, Stephen Ames and Padraig Harrington each tied for most wins with three. Paul Broadhurst won twice, but no one else won more than once in 2024. In all, 16 of the 18 winners finished in the top 20. All 18 made the 36-man finale.
Here’s the list of each tournament’s winner in 2024.
There was more than $67 million in prize money on the line in 2024.
The 2024 PGA Tour Champions season comes to a close at the Charles Schwab Cup Championship at Phoenix Country Club.
The season features 28 events in all, 25 from the regular season and the three-tournament Charles Schwab Cup Playoffs.
There was more than $67 million in prize money on the line in 2024. There’s a $3 million purse at the Schwab event, which ranks it ahead of two of the five senior majors in 2024.
U.S. Senior Open: $4 million
Kaulig Companies Championship: $3.5 million
KitchenAide Senior PGA Championship: $3.5 million
Charles Schwab Cup Championship: $3 million
Senior Open: $2.8 million
Regions Tradition: $2.6 million
First place this week in Phoenix is good for $528,000.
Here’s a list of the top 20 money earners in 2024.
Harrington still likes to measure his game against the best.
Padraig Harrington is in a kind of middle ground in his career. Now 53, the Irishman is one of the best players on the PGA Tour Champions. In three years on the circuit, he has nine wins in 48 starts and nearly $7 million in earnings. This season, he has three wins, including a Charles Schwab Cup playoff event, the third year in a row he’s won a playoff tournament.
But he still likes to measure his game against the best and in 2024 he played seven PGA Tour events. But “these guys are good,” as the saying goes, and Harrington found some tough sledding.
“At the Scottish Open this year on the regular tour I was definitely leaning towards playing more on the Champions tour. I felt a little bit out of my depth,” he admitted on a Zoom call during a media day at Phoenix Country Club ahead of the 2024 Charles Schwab Cup Championship.
Harrington played seven PGA Tour events in 2024, missed the cut in five of them and was a combined 13 over but he also just missed a top 20 at the Open Championship, shooting even par at Royal Troon Golf Club.
Tournament
Finish
Scores
Mexico Open at Vidanta
T-52
72-66-72-70
Cognizant Classic in The Palm Beaches
Missed cut
71-73
Texas Children’s Houston Open
Missed cut
70-74
Valero Texas Open
Missed cut
75-75
PGA Championship
Missed cut
77-75
Genesis Scottish Open
Missed cut
70-71
The Open Championship
T-22
72-73-71-72
“I played nicely at the Open and I played nicely at a few European Tour events and so I will probably go into next year the same way I went into this year, playing my favorite events on the regular tour, the PGA Tour, and on the Champions tour,” he said. “I’ve not quite given up on the old guys as of yet but certainly there was moments this year where I was thinking ‘What am I doing?'”
On the PGA Tour Champions, Harrington played 14 events, earned 13 top 25s, seven top 10s and three wins.
Tournament
Finish
Scores
Chubb Classic
T-15
69-70
Cologuard Classic
T-14
70-70-65
Hoag Classic Newport Beach
1
63-67-69
Insperity Invitational
T-19
70-72
Regions Tradition
T-8
65-70-69-74
KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship
T-17
74-68-70-67
Dick’s Open
1
68-65-68
U.S. Senior Open Championship
T-16
66-71-69-71
The Senior Open Championship
T-5
71-70-73-72
Rogers Charity Classic
T-7
65-64-70
The Ally Challenge
T-63
73-74-72
SAS Championship
2
66-67-71
Dominion Energy Charity Classic
T-11
72-66-72
Simmons Bank Championship
1
67-65-67
Harrington is in the field of 36 for the Schwab, Nov. 7-10. He won the tournament two years ago and he’s currently fourth in the points. He’ll be among the favorites to win the tournament again but he’s also put himself in position to claim the season-long championship.
“When I’m out here on the Champions tour, and you play well, you think ‘This is brilliant,’ but the better you play on the Champions tour, the more you think you can beat the young guys so it’s kind of a Catch 22 in that sense that if you start winning on the Champions tour you think, ‘Oh maybe I can do it on the regular tour.'”
The last of Harrington’s PGA Tour wins came in the 2015 Honda Classic. His last top-10 was at the 2023 Valero Texas Open. He also has 15 international wins on his resume.
The famous showdown against Tiger Woods 16 years ago remains a topic of conversation.
PHOENIX — The over-under on the number of questions that Rocco Mediate gets asked in any media scrum before the 2008 U.S. Open comes up is probably four.
Yes, 16 years later and the showdown against Tiger Woods remains a topic of conversation. Good thing Mediate still likes to entertain the subject.
At Phoenix Country Club during a media day on Monday to preview the 2024 Charles Schwab Cup Championship, Mediate, 61, was asked if that Open experience is as memorable as his 12 wins (six on PGA Tour, six on PGA Tour Champions). He didn’t hesitate.
“Oh, gosh yea. It is,” he said before adding, “the most memorable win was the Fry’s two years after. If the Open was the last thing, OK, it was awesome.
“But I won again after that and that really made me happy, you know, that I won another tournament, which was cool. But no, the Open, I have no … you know if I had three-putted from three feet to lose, it probably wouldn’t be OK to talk about it but that didn’t happen, so. When you lose something and get beat, you get beat. There’s nothing else you can really say. It was awful fun trying.
“That was the most fun I’ve ever had playing golf. For sure. Bar none. I wish I could do it again.”
Mediate and Woods ended up in an 18-hole playoff that Sunday at Torrey Pines and even that wasn’t enough to decide things. Mediate eventually succumed to Woods on the first playoff hole of sudden death.
But as soon as Mediate said “I wish I could do it again,” he quickly mentioned how there are no more 18-hole playoffs at the U.S. Open. In 2018, the USGA switched to a two-hole aggregate format, followed by sudden death.
Mediate says that’s just wrong.
The 2008 U.S. Open featured a memorable playoff between Rocco Mediate and Tiger Woods.
“The 18 hole playoffs are over. Which is ridiculous. Every major should be an 18-hole playoff. And if you tie, it should be 18 more. It’s a major. It’s not a normal event.”
Are you serious about that, he was asked?
“100 percent serious. 100 percent serious. ‘Oh but TV’. I don’t care about TV. I want the trophy,” he said. “Sudden death at Augusta National? What? The Masters, we’re just going to have one hole? TV? Not concerned.”
Mediate is 20th in the Schwab Cup standings, plenty good enough to make the 36-man field at the 2024 season finale.
The total prize money is the highest in the tour’s 45-year history.
There’s one event left in 2024 but on Wednesday, the PGA Tour Champions announced its schedule of tournaments in 2025, a slate that includes 25 regular-season events, three playoff stops and a record $69 million in prize money.
There’s one new tournament on the schedule next year, and that’s the James Hardie Pro Football Hall of Fame Invitational in Boca Raton, Florida, April 4-6.
Another tournament is getting a new venue – the Steve Stricker co-designed TPC Wisconsin – and a new format, as the American Family Insurance Championship will become a two-man team event.
The 2025 season starts once again at the Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai, Jan. 16-18 in Ka’upulehu-Kona, Hawaii, the 29th consecutive year that tour has started its season at Hualalai Golf Course.
The Charles Schwab Cup Championship will again be the season finale, Nov. 13-16, at Phoenix Country Club.
PGA Tour Champions majors in 2025
There are five majors on the circuit. The first two are on back-to-back weekends, as are the second two.
Dates
Major
Host
Location
May 15-18
Regions Tradition
Greystone Golf & Country Club
Birmingham, Alabama
May 21-25
Senior PGA Championship
Congressional Country Club
Bethesda, Maryland
June 19-22
Kaulig Companies Championship
Firestone Country Club
Akron, Ohio
June 26-29
U.S. Senior Open
The Broadmoor Golf Club
Colorado Springs, Colorado
July 24-27
Senior Open Championship
Sunningdale Golf Club
Berkshire, England
In 2025, the Kaulig Companies Championship and the U.S. Senior Open will flip positions on the schedule. Also, KitchenAid is no longer the title sponsor of the Senior PGA.
20 states, 3 countries, $69 million
The Champions tour will visit three other countries – Morocco, England, Canada – and 20 states during the 2025 schedule.
The nearly $70 million in prize money is the highest in the circuits’s 45 years.
“As we prepare for a thrilling finale to our 2024 season, I’m excited to share the 2025 PGA Tour Champions schedule,” said Miller Brady, president of the PGA Tour Champions. “Next season promises even greater heights for the Champions Tour, as we continue to build on the tremendous foundation already in place. The partnership we share with our title sponsors and tournaments is second to none and their support can be seen across our Tour, from the increased purses to the charitable support in the local communities where we play.”
PGA Champions Tour on TV
All 28 events will be on Golf Channel in 2025 with two events, the Senior PGA and the Senior U.S. Open, will be on NBC on the weekends. Most tournaments will also be streamed on Peacock.
