In contrast to the USA Golf Affiliation (USGA), which has introduced U.S. Open venues for the subsequent 25 years by 2051, the R&A likes to attend till the final minute to unveil their host programs for The Open Championship.
Look no additional than Thursday’s announcement. The R&A specific the Outdated Course at St. Andrews to host The Open once more in 2027. The one hundred and fifty fifth Open may also mark the one hundredth anniversary for the reason that legendary Bobby Jones first conquered the Outdated Course as an newbie, doing so by six pictures over Aubrey Boomer of Jersey and Englishman Fred Robson.
Three years later, Jones received The Newbie Championship on the Outdated Course, cementing himself as a legend on the House of Golf. Virtually three a long time after that, in 1958, the Metropolis of St. Andrews awarded Jones a distinguished honor, naming him a Freeman of the Metropolis. Just one different American had ever obtained this award earlier than Jones did, and that was Benjamin Franklin in 1759. Jack Nicklaus lately grew to become the third American to earn this distinction in 2022.
The one hundred and fifty fifth Open Champion will conclude a memorable main championship run in 2027, as two different historic programs will probably be featured. Because it does yearly, Augusta Nationwide will welcome the world’s greatest gamers to The Masters Match in April. Then, in June, the U.S. Open returns to Pebble Seaside for a seventh time. Nicklaus, after all, received the primary U.S. Open ever performed there in 1972, and in 2019, the final time it hosted, Gary Woodland bested Brooks Koepka by three to assert his solely main title.
However the 2027 main calendar contains a PGA Championship that may, sadly, stick out like a sore thumb. Area Ranch East at PGA Frisco in Texas, now the house of the PGA of America, will host its first main championship. This course, designed by famend architects Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner, opened for play in Might 2023 and hosted the Senior PGA Championship shortly thereafter. Steve Stricker defeated Padraig Harrington in a playoff that week, however the golf course itself didn’t stand out. As a substitute, it regarded as if the seniors performed by a cow pasture, a wasteland escape that made you assume you have been in rural West Texas — not a brief drive north of Dallas. The course doesn’t have the historical past and vistas that Augusta Nationwide, Pebble Seaside, and St. Andrews have both, making it tougher to carry up in opposition to these venerable establishments in golf. One may argue that these different programs are the three most well-known on this planet — the Holy Trinity of golf. Whereas at PGA Frisco, you’ll have the professionals competing on a brand-new structure that followers are unfamiliar with. Certain, the course obtained rave evaluations from Golf Digest and can problem the world’s greatest due to its smaller, contoured greens, prolonged structure at 7,800 yards, and loads of bunkering. However throwing it into the PGA Championship rotation, particularly this 12 months, appears a bit of short-sided.
Think about if an iconic American venue, one that’s acquainted to golf followers far and vast, like Oakland Hills, Winged Foot, or Kiawah Island, hosted the 2027 PGA Championship as a substitute. If that have been the case, golfers and followers would level to 2027 as probably the best 12 months ever for main host websites. As a substitute, now we have a PGA Championship that stands out, one that will make some followers anxious, just because it’s an unknown. But, given how we noticed the 2023 Senior PGA Championship play out, it didn’t impress us in any respect, and in all probability, it is not going to maintain as much as the opposite three programs that host that 12 months both.
Jack Milko is a golf workers author for SB Nation’s Enjoying By. Comply with him on X @jack_milko.
