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The last couple of weeks, the U.S. suffered the kind of tabloid treatment familiar to many a beleaguered international celebrity, from Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan to Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Wayne Rooney. The country’s credit rating was downgraded; its stock market plunged. And as the U.S. fell from grace, the global community took a guarded new look at the longtime world economic power, eyeing it as warily as the parents of a stammering teenager left at home for a holiday weekend.
Tiger Woods can relate.
Woods, his aura diminished just as badly as that of the U.S. of A., officially returned to major championship golf competition on Thursday, Aug. 11, when he teed off at 8:35 a.m. in the opening round of the 93rd PGA Championship at the Atlanta Athletic Club in Johns Creek, Ga. Woods, a four-time PGA champion, plays the first two rounds of the final major of the year with 1997 PGA champion and 2012 U.S. Ryder Cup captain Davis Love III and 2008 PGA champion Padraig Harrington of Ireland. Love scored a respectable -2 on his first day, while Harrington posted a +3. Those scores, however, look more than respectable when compared with Woods’: a +7 that puts him 14 strokes behind first-round leader Steve Stricker and virtually guarantees he won’t make the cut for the weekend, further eroding the confidence of his sponsors and fans.
The pairings for the first two rounds, announced last week by the PGA of America, also feature the traditional grouping of the winners of the first three major golf championships of the year, defending PGA champion Martin Kaymer of Germany in a group that includes the last two PGA champions, and the pairing of the top two finishers in the 2001 PGA Championship that was contested at the Atlanta Athletic Club. For those attempting to follow along at home, the last seven major championships have been captured by a first-time winner; a foreign-born player has won the PGA Championship the last three years in a row (Harrington in 2008, Y.E. Yang of South Korea in 2009, and Kaymer last year); and Phil Mickelson is the last American to win a major golf championship (the 2010 Masters).
The last time that no American won a major championship in a calendar year was 1994.
The 2011 PGA Championship features the strongest field in golf and is considered one of the largest sporting events in the world, with 100 of the top 102 ranked players in the world in the field. Equally as strong, the Atlanta Athletic Club, perhaps most famous as the place where the legendary Bobby Jones learned how to play golf, this week becomes only the fifth club to host the PGA for a third time. The club hosted the tournament in 2001 and 1981, and also hosted the U.S. Open in 1976.
“The course is in magnificent condition, and it’s quite long and demanding off the tee,” says Adam Scott, winner of last week’s WGC-Bridgestone Invitational in Ohio. “I think driving the golf ball this week is certainly going to be the only way to create opportunity for birdies. You must be in the fairway. … It’s a very demanding golf course.”
A purse of $7.5 million was shared among players who competed in the 92nd PGA Championship last year at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin, and this year’s take is expected to exceed that amount. Kaymer, last year’s winner, received $1,350,000 and had his name engraved on the Wanamaker Trophy, which is permanently enshrined at the PGA of America national office in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.
The tournament is lucrative for the golf-crazy state of Georgia, and for the 20 PGA club pros qualified to compete in the event as well. In March 2009, the most recent period for which such numbers are available, the size of Georgia’s direct golf economy was about $2.4 billion, according to state economic development studies. Georgia’s golf industry in 2009 generated a total economic impact of $5.1 billion, supporting nearly 57,000 jobs with $1.5 billion of wage income and an additional $1 billion in tourism.
