PGA Championship: Top 10 facts you must know

Anand Datla

July 26, 2016: Anirban Lahiri is about to play the eleventh major of his career this week, when he tees off on Thursday in the 98th PGA Championship at Baltusrol. The young Indian in inching ever closer to Jeev Milkha Singh’s mark of 14, the highest number of majors played by an Indian. The PGA Championship is also the event in which Anirban won the long drive competition before going on to finish fifth, the highest ever finish by an Indian golfer at a major tournament.

Here are ten interesting facts about the PGA Championship –

The Baltusrol Golf Club is a private course in Springfield, New Jersey. The club has 36 hole golf club was founded by Louis Keller in 1895.

Renowned architect, Albert Warren Tillinghast, the designer of over 250 courses produced the two courses at the club in Baltusrol.

Interestingly, the first course on Baltusrol wasn’t the one we have today. The club, having already hosted five big events made a bold decision to rip up the existing layout, offering Tillinghast the freedom to reimagine the design.

Tillinghast oversaw the development of two beautiful and challenging courses between 1918 and 1922. This week’s PGA Championship will be the 17th major championship hosted at the iconic club.

The course being used for the tournament this week is a par-70, 7428 yard layout. The two par-5 holes come at the end – 649 yard 17th hole and 554 yard 18th hole.

The fourth, ninth, twelfth and sixteenth holes are all par-3, with the longest of those holes measuring 230 yards.

The famous fourth is one of the most treasured par-3 holes in the game. The pond that protects the green stretches to the edge of the green, ensuring plenty of wet balls through the four rounds.

There is an interesting story about how the club acquired its name – Baltus Roll was a murder victim, a farmer who was killed outside his home in 1831.

The word “birdie” was coined by a member of the Tillinghast team. When one of his team member’s flew his tee shot very close to the flag, another remarked that “it was a bird of a shot,” and the birdie was born.

Finally, the plaque in the middle of the fairway. The grey treasure celebrates Jack Nicklaus’s historic 1-Iron on the 18th in 1967 that helped him beat Arnold Palmer to the US Open title.