Binks Forest Golf Club

The PGA of America Championship is the fourth major championship played each year in men’s professional golf. The other three are the Masters, the U.S. Open and the British Open.

The PGA Championship is played on a different course in the United States each year, though the tournament returns to some courses. The tournament is the championship of the Professional Golfers’ Association of America.

Inaugural Tournament

The PGA was founded in 1916 and hosted its first championship that same year at Siwanoy Country Club in Bronxville, N.Y. England’s Jim Barnes won the first title in the match-play event, earning $2,580.

Rodman Wanamaker, a department store magnate, provided the purse and a trophy, the Wanamaker Trophy, which is still awarded to the tournament winner.

Early champions

Jim Barnes also won the second PGA Championship in 1919, following a two-year interruption for World War II. Then Walter Hagen, one of the golfers who founded the PGA, became its first dominant champion, winning five crowns in the 1920s. Gene Sarazen won three that decade, too. Byron Nelson had a memorable run starting in 1939 when he reached the finals of the tournament four times in five years, winning twice.

Stroke play and the emergence of Nicklaus

The PGA Championship switched from match play to a stroke-play format in 1958. Five years later Jack Nicklaus won his first PGA Championship.

He went on to win five PGA tournament titles during his career, tying Hagen’s record in 1980 when he won the event in Hagen’s hometown of Rochester, N.Y. A frequent Nicklaus rival, Arnold Palmer, never won the PGA Championship–it was the only major he failed to win.Tiger’s Time

Tiger Woods became the fifth-youngest PGA Championship champion in the event’s history in 1999, then won again in 2000 to become the first back-to-back winner of the PGA since Denny Shute in 1936 and 1937. Woods then won the tournament again in back-to-back years in 2006 and 2007.

Records

Gene Sarazen is the youngest champion in the tournament’s history. He won his first title at age 20 in 1922. Julius Boros, who won the tournament in 1968 at age 48, is the oldest.

David Toms, the 2001 champion, holds the record for the lowest winning score, a 15-under-par 265 in 2001. Woods owns the lowest sub-par score in the tournament’s history, twice winning with scores of 18 under par.

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