Golf Capsules: Official: Charlotte to host 2017 PGA Championship
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Since Quail Hollow Club returned to the PGA Tour in 2003, big-name golfers from Tiger Woods to Phil Mickelson have said the Charlotte course could be the site for a major championship.
That will come in 2017 when it will host the PGA Championship, the final major of each pro season.
A state government official with knowledge of the decision told The Associated Press on Monday that the PGA of America will make a formal announcement on Tuesday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to pre-empt the official announcement.
Quail Hollow's difficult but fair old-style layout has drawn one of the top non-major fields of the year. Tiger Woods, who won there in 2007, chose Charlotte as his first non-major tournament after he missed much of the beginning of this season when his extramarital affairs were exposed.
While Woods missed the cut, he said a year earlier that Quail Hollow would be a good spot for a U.S. Open or PGA Championship.
"You add rough, make it a par-70 and there you go," he said.
Added Geoff Ogilvy during last May's event: "It's a course that feels a step above, challenge-wise. ... I think if we all turned up here and had a U.S. Open or PGA (Championship), it would feel like a normal U.S. Open or a PGA. It does feel like a major kind of place."
Gov. Beverly Perdue, Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx and club president Johnny Harris all are expected at Tuesday's announcement, a public relations firm said.
Quail Hollow's first major will be part of a busy time for the Carolinas hosting golf's biggest events. The 2012 PGA Championship will be at Kiawah Island, S.C. In 2014 Pinehurst, N.C.'s famed No. 2 course will host the men's and women's U.S. Opens in consecutive weeks.
Harris said in May he was interested in Quail Hollow hosting a big event, whether it was a PGA Championship or Ryder Cup. PGA officials have made numerous trips to the course as they decided on the tournament in 2017, the earliest year in which the course hadn't been picked.
Quail Hollow will have a slightly different look because the calendar year's last major is in August.
The warm, late-summer date will mean the course will be entirely played on Bermuda grass. The May PGA Tour event is played on overseeded rye. That would mean what's now called the Wells Fargo Championship continues past the bank's title sponsor deal of 2014, it likely wouldn't be held at Quail Hollow in 2017 so officials can prepare for the PGA.
The course will also likely make other changes — some in response to Mickelson's criticism earlier this year. While he's said the course is major-worthy, Mickelson was critical of the 12th and 18th greens. Harris has said he would consider tweaks to both.
Getting picked for the PGA Championship is a coup for the private club and the city of Charlotte, a banking city hit hard by the financial crisis. It's expected to being in thousands of visitors and pump millions of dollars into the economy.
Next year's PGA Championship will be held at Atlanta Athletic Club.
USGA pleased with Chambers Bay after Amateur
UNIVERSITY PLACE, Wash. (AP) — Until Chambers Bay morphed from an everyday public course into championship conditions, Mike Davis didn't know what to expect.
Davis, the U.S. Golf Association's director of rules and competition and responsible for developing the setup used at the U.S. Open, had some preconceived ideas of how Chambers Bay would play during the U.S. Amateur that ended on Sunday.
And after a week of watching the best amateur golfers in the world try and solve the hard fairways and sloping greens of the links course, Davis came away excited for what awaits five years from now when Chambers Bay hosts the U.S. Open.
"It's very fun to set it up," Davis said.
Fun seemed to be the overwhelming word players and officials used to describe the way Chambers Bay played during the Amateur, won by Oklahoma State's Peter Uihlein. Shot making was at a premium, as was imagination, taking away the idea of shooting right at pins or playing the hole exactly as it appeared.
Uihlein had a perfect example in Sunday's final against David Chung. Knowing his downhill putt on the drivable par 4 12th hole had no chance of stopping near the hold, Uihlein rolled his putt past the hole, up a slope and watched it inch back toward the cup, settling just a couple of feet away.
"You can't really get close to the flags by hitting them at the flag. You've got to use the slopes and be creative," Uihlein said. "You've got to hit every shot with a certain spin and height. You've really got to control your ball."
Chambers Bay was awarded the Amateur and the 2015 Open within a year of the course first opening. It's unique fescue grass, large footprint and setting on the shores of Puget Sound was the setting the USGA had been hoping to find to finally bring it's national championship to the Pacific Northwest for the first time.
That meant the Amateur was a dress rehearsal for five years from now. The discoveries last week were plentiful.
For example, Davis learned that even with hard, brown fairways and greens, the grass at Chambers still needed sufficient water. During the stroke play portion of the Amateur, the firmness of the golf course got out of hand, Davis said.
The discovery: because of its sandy base, the golf course needed adequate water six, 12, 18 inches below the surface to maintain a level of fairness for players.
"There were some things that we did anticipate we thought might work really well. We had some questions about some things and there were some things that being very candid, we never had an idea, nor did the architects or any of the Chambers Bay people," Davis said.
Davis said there will be plenty of adjustments to the golf course by the time it's next in tournament conditions five years from now. Some fairways will be narrowed, others will be widened, and even others will be moved one direction or another. One major benefit for the USGA staff was seeing various weather conditions during the week and seeing winds blowing from three different directions.
Outside the ropes, there are issues with spectator transportation, crowd flow and fans climbing on the steep and slippery dunes around the course to be addressed.
"I think we'll spend the next few years trying to get that right because this was a dry run," said the USGA's Tom O'Toole. "That's why we came here. ... A lot of notes this week (and) it will really help us in preparation for '15."
-- Tim Booth
Sorenstam, Ochoa highlight Begay Challenge
VERONA, N.Y. (AP) — Notah Begay III always thought he would make a name for himself on the golf course. He has, but not necessarily in the way he first envisioned.
After graduating from Stanford, where he was a three-time All-American and roomed with Tiger Woods, Begay made the top 10 on the Nike Tour money list to earn a place on the PGA Tour for 1999. He had a pair of wins in each of his first two seasons on tour, but since then has been plagued by back trouble and has turned much of his attention to charity work.
Begay, the only full-blooded Native American on tour, and his dad formed the NB3 Foundation in 2005 in an effort to improve the lives and well-being of Native American youths. The foundation's signature fundraiser is a golf event, the NB3 Challenge. It's a collaboration between the Oneida Indian Nation of New York and the San Manuel Band of Serrano Mission Indians of California.
The third annual challenge will be staged Tuesday at the Oneidas' Atunyote Golf Club, home of the Turning Stone Resort Championship on the PGA Tour.
It will be a mixed-team skins match with a purse of $400,000, and as usual it has a star-studded field: former LPGA superstars Annika Sorenstam and Lorena Ochoa, along with current stars Suzann Pettersen, Cristie Kerr, Morgan Pressel, and Anna Rawson. PGA Tour regulars Anthony Kim, Camilo Villegas, Hunter Mahan, Vijay Singh, and Rickie Fowler, who is part Navajo, along with Begay complete the field.
All it took to assemble the field was a few phone calls from Begay.
"The turnout we got is amazing. This field is second to none," Begay said. "There was no hesitation on anybody's part. To get players of this caliber, assemble this kind of field, pull players out of retirement and get them interested and behind what we're doing is very inspiring to me. It says a lot about what we're trying to do."
Begay said money his foundation donated to San Felipe Pueblo helped fund a $750,000 soccer field and park that just opened in New Mexico.
"San Felipe Pueblo has been located there since around the 13th or 14th century, and this is the first recreational facility that they've ever had," Begay said. "We wouldn't have been able to do that without the Challenge. There's no way. The event's had a tremendous effect, and the players really respect what we're trying to impact in Native American communities."
Begay said 230 kids already have signed up for soccer. "It's really growing," he said.
Begay's foundation also has contracted with Johns Hopkins University to help design health studies regarding Native Americans, who are plagued by diabetes and obesity.
"We want to put our money into causes that are evidence-based and researched," he said. "We're not out there to throw money at issues and kind of see what sticks. We're making decisions on how this money is used so that we don't waste anybody's resources. We're very proud of that."
Last year, Woods accepted Begay's invitation to play, and he didn't disappoint. He won three straight holes at the close to edge Villegas for top money. The foundation netted over $1 million from the event and Begay said he expects a similar return this time.
Originally a pure skins game format, Begay made the switch to a mixed-team, best-ball format this year because of the absence of Woods, who is trying to put his personal life back together following revelations about numerous affairs that led to his divorce last week.
Reverting to the original concept might be on the horizon, though.
"Tiger has already asked about next year," Begay said. "We'll be glad to have him back."
And that can only help in the long run.
"I feel like this event is just going to continue to grow and gain more and more support across the country," Begay said. "There's so much need out there. It's a big struggle, but it's a lifelong commitment for me. I'm 37 years old and I'll be doing this until the day I die. I just want to serve my people any way I can."
-- John Kekis
