US PGA Championship Betting Offers 2020

The 2020 PGA Championship will remain scheduled for May having moved last year from its original mid-August date to prevent a clash with the NFL season.  This allows the PGA tour to end before August to prevent a clash with American Football fixtures.  This means the US PGA now follows the Masters becoming the second major of the year instead of the last.  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 102nd year in 2020, established 104 years ago in 1916, and despite its name is a money event the European and Japanese tour as well as the PGA.

The challenging Black Course at Harding Park, San Francisco, hosts the event for the first time, and has been hosting significant golf events since it was revived and renovated in the early 2000’s, this will however be the first major at the course. Event prize money this year is expected to be up on last years $11.0M, when the winner took home $1.98M.  As usual we’ve got all the top deals, schedules, event information and more below.

U.S. PGA Championship Betting Offers

US PGA New Customer

US PGA All Customer

2020 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
• Reigning senior PGA champion
• 15 runners up at the 2018 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.

2020 TCP Harding Park (San Francisco)

Similar to most other majors the PGA Championship moves around with various host venues used. The 2020 Championship will be held at TCP Harding Park, hosting the US PGA and indeed its first Major for the very first time. It has previously hosted the Presidents Cup and other high profile tournaments and is named after former American presidetn Warren G. Harding.

The course was opened 95 years ago in 1925 but fell into decline in the 1970’s, it fell so low that for the 1998 US Open, held at the nearby Olympic Club, the course was used as a car park.  In the early 2000’s however the state stepped in and began to renovate the course for the good of the city of San Franscisco at a cost of $16M and in 2005 Harding Park hosted the WGC-AmEx Championship, its first PGA event since 1969.

The municipal course is longer than average, measuring 7169 yards or 6555 meters, and therefore favours big hitters.  The par 72 course longest hole is the 4th (606 yards, par 5) and the shortest is up immediately before that, the 3rd (183 yards, par 3).

The 2020 Championship will be first time it has been held in the western United States since 1998.

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 four 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.

In the history of the tournament the USA, as expected, has produced the most wins with 79 from 56 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 in Sahalee east of Seattle in 1998 however the event is due to return to California for the first time since 1995 with TPC Harding Park in San Francisco due to host the 2020 event. 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 2018 and 2019 the prize fund overall rose to $11,000,000 with $1,980,000 for the winner. This is expected to rise further for the 2020 tournament.