Golf thrives on steady, unsurprising repetition. Players practice their swings and strokes until they become rote, travel in insulated comfort, compete on a prescribed schedule. Predictability is both the routine and the ultimate goal.
The PGA Championship, this year’s second major, tees off this week in conditions that are anything but routine. The defending champion, still wandering in golf’s wilderness, isn’t in attendance. The course itself had barely a year to prepare to host golf royalty after the PGA stripped the tournament from its prior host. And the players are still weighing the threats and opportunities of a lucrative rival tour funded with some of the most controversial money on the planet.
Chaos isn’t the ideal way to start a major week, but that’s where golf stands in 2022.
The history of this particular PGA Championship dates back to 2014. That’s when the PGA of America awarded the 2022 PGA Championship to Trump National Bedminster in New Jersey and its owner, a certain well-known New York real estate developer/TV reality show host. This was a year before Donald Trump would run for president, and the honor marked his long-desired final ascent into golf’s elite.
Trump had sought to buy his way into three different major rotations — first, by trying to secure a U.S. Open at Bedminster. That effort failed when the USGA informed Trump in 2011 that Bedminster would not be hosting a U.S. Open. Three years later, Trump purchased the venerable Turnberry, part of the Open Championship rota, with the expectation that it would host the Open in 2020.
Then Trump ran for president, setting in motion events that would vaporize all his golf dreams. His incendiary rhetoric caused the R&A to withdraw Turnberry from consideration to host future Opens. (The 2020 Open was canceled because of the pandemic.) The PGA of America stood by Trump, however, through all of his public controversies … right up until Jan. 6, 2021.
When supporters of Trump, protesting…
Source : yahoo
