The PGA Grand Slam of Golf is an annual off-season golf tournament contested by the year's winners of the four major championships of regular men's golf, which are the Masters Tournament, the U.S. Open, The Open Championship (British Open), and the PGA Championship. It is one of several invitational events for leading male golfers which are held each year after the PGA Tour and the European Tour seasons have concluded. The competition is organized by the PGA of America and the prize money does not count towards the PGA Tour money list.
The tournament has been staged since 1979 with a couple of short breaks. Since 1991, it has been played as a 2-day, 36-hole stroke play competition, except in 1998 and 1999, when it was played at match play. From 1979 to 1990, it was played as a 1-day, 18-hole stroke play competition. If a player wins more than one major in a calendar year or a player declines the invitation to play, the PGA of America will fill the four-man field by inviting the former major winner(s) with the best overall finishes in that year's majors.
Initially the PGA Grand Slam of Golf was played at a different golf course each year, but from 1994 to 2006, it was played at the Poipu Bay Golf Course in Koloa, Hawaii on the island of Kauai. The tournament in Hawaii allowed the event to be televised in prime-time American television with live coverage because of the time difference.
In 2007, the tournament moved to the Mid Ocean Club in Bermuda and it was played in mid-October, reflecting the earlier end to the main part of the PGA Tour season after the introduction of the FedEx Cup. In 2009, the event stayed in Bermuda but moved to the Port Royal Golf Course.
The current prize fund is $1.35 million, of which $600,000 goes to the winner. This is likely to be the lowest first prize some of the competitors have played for all year, but on the other hand there is a guaranteed $200,000 for coming in last. From 1991 to 2005, the prize fund was $1 million, of which $400,000 went to the winner. In 2006, the purse was $1.25 million, with $500,000 going to the winner.
In the 2004 tournament at Poipu Bay Golf Course, Phil Mickelson shot a 59 in the second round.
Read more about PGA Grand Slam Of Golf: Results, Multiple Winners
Famous quotes containing the words grand, slam and/or golf:
“Philosophy is written in this grand book—I mean the universe—
which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.”
—Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)
“Hilary Clinton’s great sin was that she left the nicely wallpapered domestic sphere with a slam of the door, took up public life on her own, leaving big feminist footprints all over the place, and without so much as an apology.”
—Patricia J. Williams (b. 1942)
“And the wind shall say “Here were decent godless people;
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls.””
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)