The 91st PGA Championship has received commitments from 100 of the world’s top 101-ranked players, the most for any golf event this year, continuing a tradition since 1994 of featuring golf’s strong field in the season’s final major.
The PGA Championship marks its second return to Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minn., Aug. 10-16, with 71 international players representing 21 countries, the most of any U.S. major and the largest international contingent in PGA Championship history. The current Official World Ranking attendees, should it not change, would surpass the all-time record set at the 2002 PGA Championship at Hazeltine National, which featured 98 of the top 100 world-ranked players.
Defending Champion Padraig Harrington of Ireland leads a group of 13 PGA Champions in the field, and joined by: Bob Tway (1986), John Daly (1991), Paul Azinger (1993), Steve Elkington (1995), Mark Brooks (1996), Davis Love III (1997), Vijay Singh (1998, 2004), David Toms (2001), Rich Beem (2002), Shaun Micheel (2003), Phil Mickelson (2005) and Tiger Woods (1999, 2000, ’06, ’07).
Overall, 28 major champions who have combined to win 52 major titles will be among the 156-player field.
They are: Azinger, Beem, Brooks, Angel Cabrera, Michael Campbell, Stewart Cink, Fred Couples, Ben Curtis, Daly, Elkington, Ernie Els, Jim Furyk, Retief Goosen, Todd Hamilton, Harrington, Trevor Immelman, Zach Johnson, Tom Lehman, Justin Leonard, Love, Micheel, Mickelson, Geoff Ogilvy, Corey Pavin, Singh, Toms, Tway, Mike Weir and Woods.
Harrington, who owns three major titles, snapped a 78-year non-European winless streak a year ago when he won the PGA Championship at Oakland Hills in Bloomfield Township, Mich. He is one of 11 members of the 2008 European Ryder Cup Team in the field, with the lone absentee, Sweden’s Robert Karlsson, the current No. 18 world-ranked player, who has been sidelined since May due to an eye injury.
All 12 members of the 2008 U.S. Ryder Cup Team are in the field.
The PGA Championship is one of four premier golf events conducted by The PGA of America. Others include the Ryder Cup, the Senior PGA Championship and the PGA Grand Slam of Golf, which brings together the winners of golf’s four major championships.