Three reasons why the PGA Championship should be moved back to August

For the 2019 PGA Tour season, a rejigging of the calendar saw the Players Championship return to its March slot with the PGA Championship moved up to May to replace it.

This was in a bid to bring the PGA Tour season to an end in August with the Tour Championship, rather than in mid-to-late September, with golf then competing with the start of the NFL season.

There have since been calls for the PGA Championship to return to its traditional August slot, with Rory McIlroy claiming the tournament now has less of an identity than the Players Championship, and endorsed suggestions of a return to August, even if one doesn’t appear to be forthcoming.

Below we look at three reasons why the PGA Championship should return to August.

The majors are finished too early

It’s never quite sat right with golf fans that major season which begins in April is halfway done by mid-May. It still feels strange seeing somebody sitting on the lip of a bunker on the 18th green holding the Claret Jug in July knowing that major golf is now over until the following year.

It’s been suggested that moving the PGA Championship to May has helped bring about a higher standard of champion. Indeed, the list of May winners reads Brooks Koepka, Collin Morikawa, Phil Mickelson, Justin Thomas, Brooks Koepka, Xander Schauffele, Scottie Scheffler.

But the seven previous May winners weren’t exactly lacking in quality: Rory McIlroy, Jason Dufner, Rory McIlroy, Jason Day, Jimmy Walker, Justin Thomas, Brooks Koepka.

The PGA Championship has lost its identity

Rory McIlroy wasn't wrong when he said the Players now has more of an identity than the PGA Championship. No longer Glory's Last Shot, what is it now if not simply the fourth major?

The US Open is ultimate golfing test; The Open Championship is the game’s oldest tournament; the Masters is the Masters. The PGA Championship has struggled to fit in alongside the other three majors. Originally founded as the tournament for professionals in a time when the game was largely played by wealthy amateurs, the game has since shifted.

Golf is now dominated by professionals and the vast majority of amateurs are all desperate to join their ranks. The appeal of a pros-only tournament isn’t what it was, and if anything, omitting the world’s leading amateurs for club professionals dilutes the quality of the tournament.

The PGA Championship isn’t set in the idyllic surroundings of an Augusta National, nor does it boast the rugged terrain of The Open. It’s also not as stern a test as the US Open, typically designed to be as difficult as reasonably possible.

A return to August would at least give it a proper place in the calendar, bookending major season and giving players one last shot at glory – as its old motto implied. It should be the major where players can experience their year’s – even career’s – best moment.

There’s something about watching players trying to win their first major and it being the last one of the season. Jason Day was right up there with Jordan Spieth in 2015, and it in winning the PGA Championship, it felt like the baton being passed as Day established himself as the best player in the world.

Even with Xander Schaufele in 2024, there would have been a poignancy to him coming up the 18th green needing to hole a putt to win his first major, or potentially have to wait until the following April to try again.

The Players Championship can return to May

When the Players was in May, appetites would build for months and months waiting for the Masters. In moving the Players to March, golf fans have been given entrée, something to tide them over until Augusta.

There are two weather factors at play in the August-to-May switch. The first is that the Players can avoid the unpredictable weather seen in Florida in March and potentially get the course running faster and firmer, making for an even stiffer test.

The other is that the PGA would need to very carefully consider hosting in one of the southern states.

One of the reasons given for moving the PGA Championship back to May was that it allowed the PGA of America to host the tournament further around the country – no one in their right mind is scheduling a major in August in Texas; the 2007 PGA Championship at Southern Hills in Oklahoma crossed the line from hot to downright unpleasant.

And while it’s a nice idea to move the majors around, the USA is not short of top quality golf courses in the north east, with the likes of Winged Foot, Bethpage Black, Baltusrol, Oak Hill, Aronimink, and that’s ignoring the likes of Shinnecock Hills, Oakmont, and other venues on the US Open rota, as well as the great courses around the Great Lakes, all of which would host proper major tests in August.