After a season that saw Augusta National Golf Club, along with the PGA and European Tours, conduct six major championships due to covid-19 induced postponements and cancellations, the 2022 season appears, at least for now, to be looking more traditional in its scheduling. The Masters will take place in April, followed by the PGA Championship at Tulsa’s Southern Hills Country Club in May, the U.S. Open at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts the next month, and the 150th Open Championship will be held at St. Andrews, the birthplace of the game.
The Masters is played at Augusta National every year, so it’s the only major championship where the winner has a chance to defend his title on the same course.
The Masters Tournament
The Masters is played at Augusta National every year, so it’s the only major championship where the winner has a chance to defend his title on the same course. Hideki Matsuyama became the first player from Asia to claim a major title with his win at the Masters in 2021, a truly historic achievement, especially given the popularity of the sport in his home country of Japan.
The list of favorites will be similar to what it looked like this past April, with U.S. Open winner Jon Rahm most likely leading the way along with former winners Dustin Johnson and Jordan Spieth also near the top of the betting odds. Three-time Masters winner and reigning PGA champion Phil Mickelson, now 51 years of age, could be a factor depending on how he’s playing but it’s unlikely we will see Tiger Woods teeing it up at Augusta.
The PGA Championship
The last time the PGA was contested at Southern Hills was in August of 2007 when Tiger Woods was still at the height of the game. He won his 13th major title in brutally hot conditions that will be much milder with the event now held in May.
It will be the fifth PGA Championship since 1970 to be held at the par 70 course and it has also hosted three U.S. Opens as well as the 2021 Senior PGA Championship. All of the previous PGA Championships held at Southern Hills have been won by eventual winners of multiple major championships, including Woods, Dave Stockton, Nick Price, and Retief Goosen.
The U.S. Open
The Country Club is hosting its fourth U.S. Open and has been the site of nine other USGA championships, including six U.S. Amateurs and three U.S. Women’s Amateurs. It was the location for Francis Ouimet’s famous U.S. Open victory in 1913 when the 20-year-old became the first amateur to win the title.
It is also where Curtis Strange won his first of a back to back championships in 1988, the first player to accomplish that feat since Ben Hogan and the last time the U.S. Open was contested at the Country Club. The course used for the U.S. Open is a composite of the club’s Main and Primrose courses to allow for more yardage to be added to accommodate professional driving distances.
The Open Championship
For its 150th anniversary of the first golf tournament in the world, The Open Championship returns for the 30th time to the Old Course at St. Andrews and the first since Zach Johnson’s win in 2015. The venue has hosted the Open Championship more than any other site in the rota, with its winners reading like a Hall of Fame listing, including Sam Snead, Peter Thompson, Jack Nicklaus (2), Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo, and Tiger Woods (2).
St. Andrews usually hosts the Open Championship every five years, but the schedule was adjusted to allow the course to be the site of the 150th edition of the event, originally scheduled for 2021. The Open Championship wasn’t contested in 2020, prompting another shift to St. Andrews to 2022.
