US PGA Championship Betting Offers 2024

The PGA Championship is held in May these days having originally been held in August. It was moved in 2019 to prevent a clash with the NFL season that damaged TV ratings for the major. The US PGA now follows the Masters as the second major of the year and it will remain in May for the foreseeable future making the Open Championship the last major of the year.

The U.S. PGA Championship enters its 106th year in 2024, established 106 years ago in 1916, and despite its name is a money event the European and Japanese tour as well as the PGA.

The long and challenging Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky, hosts the event for the fourth time, having first hosted the event in 1996.  Mark Brooks won that one, the only major of his career in a sudden death play off.  Tiger Woods won his second USPGA in succession when he won in 2000 and the last time the major was held at Valhalla in 2014 it was Rory McIlroy who won, that was his last major to date.

Event prize money this year is expected to be up on last years $18.0M, when the winner took home $3.24M.  As usual we’ve got all the top deals, schedules, event information and more below.

US PGA Championship Betting Offers for 2024

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2024 PGA Championship Schedule

US PGA Championship Format

Qualification and The Field

Similar to the other majors most of the worlds top 100 golfers qualify directly in some way or other for the PGA pinnacle event. Direct entry is granted to a field of 156 players based on the following criteria, the PGA is the only major that is does not allow amateur golfers to qualify:

• All prior PGA Champions
• Last five US Open, Masters and Open winners
• Last three winners of the Players Championship
• Reigning senior PGA champion & senior champion
• 15 runners up at the previous Championship
• 20 top scorers at the PGA Professional National Championship
• Current top 70 golfers in the official money standings
• All golfers in the previous years Ryder Cup teams so long as they are in the top 100
• Winners of this seasons PGA tour events
• PGA invited players
• Extra spaces are filled by players below the top 70 in the money rankings

Tournament

As with all majors the PGA Championships proper is played from Thursday to Sunday with four rounds of 18 holes but this was not always the case. During its first 50 years the tournament was a match play event played anywhere between May and December each year. In 1953 the event finally settled to a date in July but remained a match play tournament with a stroke play qualification event. This meant golfers could play in excess of 200 holes over the week.

Despite changing to a stoke play event with 4 rounds and 72 holes in line with other the majors; In the late 50’s and early 1960’s the event began to lose money and interest as players would struggle to play at the Open in the United Kingdom up to a week before the PGA event. In 1965 the Championships moved to mid-August to give a longer gap between majors, the event remained on this schedule from 1971 until 2018 with the exception of 2016 where the event was be moved to accommodate golfs inaugural entry into the Olympics in Brazil.

For 2019 the decision was made to move the tournament to May to allow the PGA Tour to finish before August to prevent competition for viewers with the main NFL season.

Ties and Playoff

If there is a tie following the final round of the USPGA Championships, the tied players enter into a 3-hole aggregate play off.

This is different to The Open which used a 4-hole playoff, The Masters that goes straight to sudden death and The US Open where an entire extra round is played.

If players are still tied after three holes the event goes to sudden death until a winner is declared.

2024 Valhalla Golf Club (Louisville, Kentucky)

Similar to most other majors the PGA Championship moves around with various host venues used. The 2024 Championship will be held at Valhalla Golf Club, hosting the US PGA for the fourth time. It has previously hosted the major in 1996, 2000 and 2014, the second time it held the event it was won by the legendary Tiger Woods who won his second USPGA in succession.  When it hosted in 2014 that was the last time that Rory McIlroy won a major.  If you told people then he wouldn’t win another major for 10+ years people wouldn’t have believed you.

The club was established in 1986 and was designed by Jack Nicklaus and so was always destined to be a course used in the USPGA. The course is set on the outskirts of Louisville around 16 miles from the centre and the Ohio river.  Despite it’s inland location it can be subject to changeable weather blowing in across the open plains.

When the course was designed in the 1980’s it was chosen from a list of 40 potential sites and shortly after it was build was named one of the top three new courses in the US in 1987.  Nicklaus said of the course: “[it is a] golf designer’s dream because there is a variety of terrain, vegetation, and water to work with. Everything necessary for an excellent golf course is here: room for wide, tree-lined fairways and spectacular golf holes.”

The course measures 7,458 yards or 6,820 meters, and therefore favours big hitters.  The par 71 course longest hole is the 7th known as Players Pick (597 yards, par 5) and the shortest is the next on the course, the 8th known as Thor’s Hammer (174 yards, par 3).

PGA Championship Venues

In its history the PGA Champs have moved around more than any other major with few courses used more than twice. The most used course, Southern Hills, has held the event just five times. Below you can see a list of upcoming event hosts and most used courses.

Future Venues

Most Used Venues

Previous PGA Championship Winners

Most Successful Players (Stroke Play Era)

The table of winners above shows players who have won the PGA Championship at least twice in the stroke play era from 1958 onwards.

PGA Championship Winners Since 2000

Statistics

History and About the PGA Championship

The formation of the PGA Championship is intricately linked with the beginnings of the United States Golf Association (USGA), the governing body for golf in the USA. In the late 1800’s there were just over 40 registered golf courses in the US with two unofficial events held for amateurs each year; one held at Newport Country Club in Rhode Island, which went on to become the US Open, and another at St Andrews in New York. In 1894 St Andrews also held an unsanctioned event for professional golfers, in the controversy that followed the USGA was formed.

In the middle of the first world war in 1916 professional golfers from the Wykagyl Country Club met to in a meeting organized by Rodman Wanamaker to prepare an agenda for the formation of the Professional Golfers Association of America (PGA). Just over a month later the PGA was established in New York with Robert White, a professional at Wykagyl, named first president.

The very first PGA Championship was held later in the October of 1916 at the Siwanoy Country Club in New York. Englishman Jim Barnes won the inaugural event collecting a prize money of $500 along with a gold medal containing diamond studs. The event was not held in 1917 or 1918 due to the first world war and it Barnes won the next event in 1919 on its return.

For nearly half a century the event was a match play competition and in the early years it was American Walter Hagan who dominated winning the event five times and four times on the trot (1921, 1924, 1925, 1926 and 1927). Despite an Englishman winning the first two titles the PGA was won only by US nationals up until 1947 when Australian Jim Ferrier won the event at Plum Hollow in Michigan.

In 1957 the PGA event lost money and it was decided to change the event from a match play to a stroke play tournament. The 1958 tournament was the first to be held over the standard 72 holes with four rounds to the finish. American Dow Finsterwald won the first PGA Championship stroke play major at Llanerch Country Club in Pennsylvania.

In the early 1960’s the event, held in late July, began to be snubbed by some of the top players due to the proximity of the Open Championship in Britain. In 1965 the event moved to August and by the 70s was permanently fixed in August. That was until 2016 when golf first became an Olympic sport requiring the event to move back to a late July slot. With so many golfers snubbing the Olympics it remains to be seen whether the same will happen at the next Olympics in 2020.

The PGA Championship in the modern era has only really seen two great dominant players. Jack Nicklaus who won the even five times between 1963 and 1980 and Tiger Woods winning on four occasions between 1999 and 2007.  Only Tiger and Brooks Koepka have won the event consecutively in the modern stroke play era.

Phil Mickelson became the oldest golfer to win a major when he secured the 2021 PGA Championship, having first won in 2005.  He was just weeks shy of his 51st birthday and dominated the last two days of the tournament in challenging changing conditions.  Brooks Koepka won his third USPGA in 2023, taking his place third on the list of winners in the stroke play era.

In the history of the tournament the USA, as expected, has produced the most wins with 87 from 59 players. Australia is second with 5 wins from 5 players with England (Jim Barnes), South Africa (Gary Player), Zimbabwe (Nick Price), Figi (Vijay Singh) and Northern Ireland (Rory McIlroy) all having 2 wins from one player.

Location and Courses

On the whole the PGA Championship is an Eastern US event, it has to this date only been played on ten occasions in the Western half of the country.

The last time the tournament was held in the west was at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco that hosted the 2020 event.  Prior to this it was Sahalee east of Seattle in 1998. New York lays claim to the title of most frequent hosts having held the Championships on no less than 12 occasions followed by Ohio with 11 and Pennsylvania with 9.

In its history the event has been played at some small and obscure courses with a desire to move around as much as possible. These days the PGA Championship is restricted to a smaller range of more prestigious courses.

Wanamaker Trophy

The PGA Championship trophy is named after Ronald Wanamaker, the organiser of the meeting that set up the USGA and driving force behind the creation of the PGA. Wanamaker donated the diamond studded golf medal that was awarded to Jim Barnes at the first Championship in 1916 and later donated a trophy that was named in his honour. The initial silver cup was lost in the 1928 by 5 time winner Walter Hagan who claimed to have entrusted it to a taxi driver. The trophy was however rediscovered in 1930 strangely it was found in the factory that made Walter Hagan branded golf clubs. Suspicious or what!

The original cup is now housed in the PGA Historical Center in Florida with an exact replica given to the winner each year. The player can keep the trophy for a year before returning it and they also receive a smaller replica to keep.

Name and Prize Money

The PGA suffered a down turn in popularity in the 1990’s requiring the slogan “glory’s last chance” to remind players and spectators alike that this was in fact still a major. This irked the PGA Tour organisers who felt this hurt the prestige of subsequent events such as the Fed Ex cup that follow the Championship. This tag line was dropped in 2013, it is said, in exchange for the PGA Tour rearranging its schedule to give players more rest before the Ryder Cup.

The first ever winner Jim Barnes received $500 when he won the event for the first time in 1916. This rose progressively until the last every champion of the match play era won $8000 in 1957 but as the event lost money that year the first winner of the stroke play era in 1958 won just $5,500.

Jack Nicklaus won $13,000 when he won it for the first time in 1963 with the prize money rising to $60,000 by the fifth and last time he won it in 1980. Tiger Woods picked up $630,000 when he first won the Championship in 1999 and the first player to win over a million dollars was Shuan Micheel winning $1,080,000 in 2003. By the time Tiger Woods won his fourth and last title in 2007 the fund for the winner hit $1,260,000.

In 2023 the prize fund overall rose to $18,000,000 with $3,240,000 for the winner. This is expected to rise further for the 2024 tournament.