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The PGA Championship (sometimes, especially outside of the United States, referred to as the U.S. PGA Championship or U.S. PGA) is an annual golf tournament conducted by the Professional Golfers Association of America. It is one of the four major championships in professional golf, and it is the golf season's final major, played in mid-August on the 3rd weekend prior to Labor Day weekend (although it is being rescheduled in 2016 to accommodate golf's return to the Olympics). It is an official money event on the PGA Tour, the European Tour, and the Japan Golf Tour, with a purse of $10 million for the 96th edition in 2014 (making it the most lucrative of the four majors.) In line with the other majors, winning "the PGA" gives a golfer several privileges which make his career much more secure, if he is not already one of the elite players of the sport. PGA champions are automatically invited to play in the other three majors (Masters Tournament, U.S. Open, and The Open Championship) for the next five years, and are exempt from qualifying for the PGA Championship for life. They receive membership on the PGA and European Tours for the following five seasons and invitations to The Players Championship for five years. The PGA Championship has been held at a large number of venues, some of the early ones now quite obscure, but currently it is usually staged by one of a small group of celebrated courses, each of which has also hosted several other leading events, including the U.S. Open and Ryder Cup. ==History== In 1894, with 41 golf courses operating in the United States, two unofficial national championships for amateur golfers were organized. One was held at Newport Country Club in Rhode Island, and the other at St. Andrew's Golf Club in New York. In addition, and at the same time as the amateur event, St. Andrew's conducted an Open championship for professional golfers. None of the championships was officially sanctioned by a governing body for American golf, causing considerable controversy among players and organizers. Later in 1894 this led to the formation of the United States Golf Association (USGA), which became the first formal golf organization in the country. After the formation of the USGA, golf quickly became a sport of national popularity and importance. In February 1916 the Professional Golfers Association of America (PGA) was established in New York City. One month earlier, the wealthy department store owner Rodman Wanamaker hosted a luncheon with the leading golf professionals of the day at the Wykagyl Country Club in nearby New Rochelle. The attendees prepared the agenda for the formal organization of the PGA;〔''Wykagyl, 1898-1998''; by Desmond Tollhurst and John Barban; pages 28-30〕 consequently, golf historians have dubbed Wykagyl "The Cradle of the PGA."〔''Wykagyl, 1898-1998'' by Desmond Tollhurst and John Barban; pp. 1-2〕 The new organization's first president was Robert White, one of Wykagyl's best-known golf professionals. The first PGA Championship was held in October 1916 at Siwanoy Country Club in Bronxville, New York.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=History of the PGA Championship )〕 The winner, Jim Barnes, received $500 and a diamond-studded gold medal donated by Rodman Wanamaker. The 2012 winner, Rory McIlroy, earned $1.445 million. The champion is also awarded a replica of the Wanamaker Trophy, which was also donated by Wanamaker, to keep for one year, and a smaller-sized keeper replica Wanamaker Trophy. Initially a match play event, the PGA Championship was originally played in early fall but varied from May to December. Following World War II, the championship was mostly played in late May or late June, then moved to early July in 1953 and a few weeks later in 1954, with the finals played on Tuesday. As a match play event (with a stroke play qualifier), it was not uncommon for the finalists to play over 200 holes in seven days. The 1957 event lost money, and at the PGA meetings in November it was changed to stroke play, starting in 1958, with the standard 72-hole format of 18 holes per day for four days, Thursday to Sunday. Network television broadcasters, preferring a large group of well-known contenders on the final day, pressured the PGA of America to make the format change. During the 1960s, the PGA Championship was played the week following The Open Championship five times, making it virtually impossible for players to compete in both majors. In 1965, the PGA was contested for the first time in August, and that move was made permanent in 1969, save for a one-year move to late February in 1971, played in Florida. The PGA Championship is primarily played in the eastern half of the United States, only ten times has it ventured west. The last championship played in the Mountain time zone was in 1985 at Cherry Hills south of Denver and the last in the Pacific time zone was in 1998 at Sahalee east of Seattle; the 2020 PGA Championship will be held at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco, California. In the mid-1990s, with the prestige of the tournament lacking, the PGA of America designed a marketing campaign around the fact that the PGA Championship was the final chance to become a major champion for the year. This campaign included the slogan "Glory's last shot" being applied to the championship, used in all promotional material and even in CBS's telecast opens. This made the PGA the only one of the major championships, or any professional golf tournament, to have a full-time marketing slogan. Other tournaments, most notably The Open Championship, have had numerous short-lived promotional taglines but they have never been used outside of commercials, and certainly not on the telecast of the tournament itself. The slogan drew scorn from golf writers due to the perceived cheesiness of having a slogan for a tournament, and the fact that the Championship's prestige had only slipped more since the slogan was instituted. Nonetheless, the slogan continued to be used through the 2013 PGA Championship. After the 2013 event, the PGA of America made a deal with the PGA Tour. If the Tour would arrange its schedule to give players more rest before the PGA of America's Ryder Cup, then the PGA of America would stop using "Glory's last shot" to refer to the PGA Championship, so that the stature of the PGA Tour's FedEx Cup would be bolstered. The deal went into effect in 2014, but although many of the same golf writers that had criticized "Glory's last shot" were now satisfied that the PGA Championship would drop its tagline, the PGA of America announced that it would instead be replaced by a new tagline: "This is major". The new tagline has drawn even more scorn due to the fact that it appears to be a desperate attempt to remind the viewing public that the PGA is indeed a major championship. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「PGA Championship」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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