Four Things from the PGA of America News Conference at the PGA Championship

Heading into the second men’s major championship of the year, PGA of America leadership was in the spotlight on Tuesday, sharing details about the days ahead at Oak Hill Country Club.

PGA Chief Championships Officer Kerry Haigh, President, John Lindert, and CEO Seth Waugh spoke on all things regarding the 2023 PGA Championship and its participants.

Here are the top five takeaways:

The conference kicked off with Lindert addressing the media about his excitement surrounding the Corebridge Financial PGA Team, 20 PGA Professionals that qualified to tee it up in this week’s major. 

“We’ve got 20 really good PGA Professionals this week,” Lindert said, giving shoutouts to 2023 PGA Professional Champion Braden Shattuck, Chris Sanger and Ben Kern. “We hope they perform at their top, top level. At Bethpage in 2019, we had three players make the cut, and we hope every year that one of our players stands out.” 

There is a sense of the unknown when it comes to upstate New York weather in May, and it is clear that many are worrying about what is in the forecast.

Haigh was asked about his thoughts on the weather for the week at Oak Hill.

“May in Rochester appears to bring more variety to the weather than we used to have when we played in August. There is a possibility of frost again,” Haigh said, also noting they had frost as recent as last Tuesday morning. “We’ve got different directions of winds. Northeast on day one, warming up, and a chance of rain on Saturday, hopefully clearing by Sunday.

“That is sort of the fun of golf — it’s an outdoor game. Can’t wait to see what Mother Nature brings, as well.”

Waugh shared a lot of exciting news on making the game look a lot more like the world today. 

Waugh went on to explain PGA REACH’s Place to Play initiative within the foundation to keep up with the demand of golf around the country, and to make golf more accessible to all.

“If we create all of these golfers and there’s no place to play, we have sort of defeated the purpose,” Waugh added. “We work with the local community to come up with something and in this case we are going to make a $250,000 donation to Genesee Valley Golf Course, going to build a practice facility and a short game facility to be welcoming and inviting to all.”

Waugh is aware of the trajectory golf potentially has, tasking the PGA of America with making a positive impact on the sport.

“If you think about where the game is right now, it has never been in better shape,” Waugh added. “New junior golfers are now up to about 40 percent girls — and about 30 percent kids of color.”

Waugh also shared an exciting statistic that the percentage of golfers under the age of 35 has grown to 48 percent.

“When we think about where the growth is coming from,” Waugh says, “that is the most exciting stat that I have seen.”

This is Oak Hill’s fourth PGA Championship in its storied history but it’s not the same exact East Course players say in 2013, with a recent restoration by architect Andrew Green in 2019. 

“It has provided a lot more variety for the golf course” says Haigh. “More hole locations, deeper, tougher bunkering, new tees, roll-offs around the greens, and less trees. That combination has certainly made it a visually spectacular golf course.”

Haigh expressed that the playing surfaces are “second-to-none.”

“All of the course conditions could not have happened without the club,” Haigh said. “The members of Oak Hill have not played the golf course this year, and the six weeks of spring that they’ve had produced what we see out there, which is a truly great golf course.”

“I can’t wait for the best players in the world to show how great Oak Hill is, and how great they are. It’s wonderful to return to Oak Hill. It is a treasure of a golf course.”