The PGA Championship is golf’s first foremost in over a year

The 2020 PGA Championship tees off Thursday at San Francisco’s TPC Harding Park, which is internet internet hosting its first-ever foremost.

Why it matters: Or no longer it is miles the first foremost in extra than a year — and the first of seven majors in the subsequent 12 months. Though there could no longer be any fans in attendance, the pleasure is palpable.

• “We are about to enter, starting Thursday, the finest stretch of golf in the history of the game,” sportscaster Jim Nantz mentioned.

The speak of play: Naturally, the sphere is loaded, that contains 95 of the area’s high 100 golfers.

• Brooks Koepka is going for his third straight PGA Championship title, a feat by no procedure completed because it switched to stroke play in 1958 (Walter Hagen obtained four in a row in match play sometime of the 1920s).
• Tiger Woods appears plot to originate a rare putter switch, the use of his backup Scotty Cameron as every other of the notorious Newport-2 he used to decide 14 of his 15 majors.
• Justin Thomas is at prove ranked No. 1 in the area and is coming off a ambitious World Golf Championship decide. He obtained the 2017 PGA Championship and accomplished tied for sixth in 2018 (didn’t play in 2019).
• Bryson DeChambeau is basically crushing the ball off the tee. That makes him a favourite, as Harding Park’s thick tough favors expansive bombers because it is miles less complicated hit brief irons out of it than it is miles to hit long irons.

TPC Harding Park is a metropolis-owned direction, with roughly 65,000 rounds carried accessible as soon as a year, some for as limited as $50.

• This makes it arguably “basically the most unpretentious role ever to host a foremost,” mentioned Phil Ginsburg, customary supervisor of San Francisco’s Game and Parks Department.
• “One aspect is lined by dorms and rental constructions throughout a busy boulevard, fenced by chain-hyperlink,” writes the New York Times’ John Department.
• “There is rarely always a chateaux-type clubhouse, and amid the cart-pulling, procure-carrying golfers are joggers and dog walkers.”
• “But the direction is blessed with a classic layout — tight fairways lined by majestic cypress bushes, its entrance 9 folded internal a abet 9 that unwinds alongside Lake Merced.”