BMW PGA Championship Evolved Into a Top International Event

Billy Horschel remembers seeing the BMW PGA championship as a child.

Unlike this week’s tournament, the event was played in May, which coincided with the first summer holiday week at school in Grant, Florida, a fishing city in the middle of the east coast of the state, where Horschel, 37, grew.

Instead of heading to the golf course that week, Horschel, 10, said he asked his mother to let him stay at home and watch the televised golf at the Wentworth Club in Surrey, England, where the idea of ​​the Ryder Cup was born in 1926.

And it was a good golf to see. Some of the greats of the European tour (now DP World Tour) were winning the event in the 1990s: José María Olazábal and Bernhard longest, both twice teachers champions; Ian Wosnam, a champion of teachers and strength on the European tour; and Colin Montgomerie, the Great Great of the Ryder Cup that won the tournament in 1998, 1999 and 2000.

“He was a golf fan when I was a child and I am still,” said Horschel, who now lives on the Florida coast in Ponte Vedra Beach. “I remember saying that I want to be part of that tournament someday.”

In 2019, when the BMW PGA championship moved to autumn, Horschel played in him for the first time because there was no conflict with his PGA Tour schedule.

“It was incredible to be able to walk in that course,” he said. “Like any tournament, television never does justice. I immediately fell in love with the golf course. I understood what it required.”

Horschel did not play the BMW PGA championship in 2020, but when he returned the following year, he won the tournament for a stroke.

“I was chasing the leader and had to be some holes to have the opportunity to win,” he said. “It had to be aggressive. It was not after Laurie Canter lost her position that she sank that I just won this incredible event, the fifth or sixth best event in the world, which she had seen as a child on television.”

In the period of when Horschel watched the tournament when he was a child and won him as a professional golfer, very changed in Wentworth. But the 1990s and 2020 decade serve as two points on a bridge between the old European tour, a collection largely enclaustrated by Western European players, and the most international DP world tour today.

Wentworth, for a long time the home of the European tour, has gone from organizing a tournament that was the event of the Prime Minister for European professionals

One thing that is consistent is the course, originally designed by Harry Colt, an dear British architect. It presents a golf test for the golf so that whis players qualify, as it has done for decades through different restorations and times of the year.

“The normal European tour players always expected the PGA championship, perhaps more than the [British] Open because it was ‘our’ championship, directed by our staff at the European tour, “said Peter Teravainen, an American who was a member of the European tour when Horschel was watching as a child.

He played the event for 14 consecutive years, from 1984 to 1997. His best final tied in 13th in 1991 when Seve Ballesteros beat Montgomerie in a playoff.

Teravainen, who lives in Singapore today, recalled a very different course with very different conditions from what the players will see this week. The old third green in particular still stands out.

“He was one of the most crazy Greens I’ve played,” he said. “There was a false massive front to a high green. But once you reached the top of the false front, the green fell from that point to the back of the green.” (Since then it has been changed).

However, in the 1990s, not only the course but also the players and how they live so different today.

“The European tour was much more Russian and fallen than the United States tour,” said Michael Bamberger, who cadded for Teravainen and wrote about the experience in “To The Linksland: a golf adventure”, which was recently placed again. “Some of these players had five or six different currencies in their wallet. Paying cash for their caddies and sosigs. If you get a free dinner at the Club house, you have an advantage of that.”

“Nick skirt and those guys were elites, and they had the best of all,” Bamberger said. “The rest only expected that they could play golf good enough to stay in it. The main thing was that you loved this game and you loved traveling. Everything was dragged by the wind and I loved that part.”

Today, Wentworth is more careful than the wind circulation. But it has become an annual social event for people who come from London, similar to what masters are for Augusta, Georgia, and the players championship is for Ponte Vedra Beach.

This has not happened by accident.

“The event has changed a lot since I first got involved in 2006,” said Kit Garrelll, director of BMW PGA Championship championship. “There has been an important redevelopment in Wentworth that has had an impact inside and outside the strings. There have been two renovations of the course: the first was significant but too hard; the second changed the profiles of the greens.”

Garrell said that moving the event to autumn had allowed the course to be better, which in turn had helped attract international players. “In the old May appointment, they had some challenges with the greens who did not bring players,” he said. “But they also modified the old Harry Turt design of 18. Before there was no danger in him. Now there is the danger of water, with the fans cauldron we create around him. The roar is really special.”

When Alex Noren reached six centimeters from that hole in 2017, to shoot the course of the course and win the tournament, the sounds reverge through the property, Garrell said.

The other part of the tournament that is different today from the days of Tervainen game and the Horschel television observation is the experience of fans. It is more like a great sporting event than a golf tournament, with better food, a Pro-Am celebrity and bands to entertain at night.

“We were trying to diversify the product, so we not only trust what is happening inside the ropes,” Garrelll said. “When that final putt enters, everyone has fun. It is a pleasant family atmosphere with its history; the golf tradition is in the center of ESO.”

The Association of DP World Tour with the PGA Tour has helped in both areas. “We see it as a rising tide raises all ships,” said Christian Hardy, Senior Vice President of International in the Tour PGA. “When a player on PGA tours I want to compete in the PGA championship of the DP World, before he had bone,” we want you to play in the Xyz tournament. “Today is,” we are glad you can go and play there. “

Horschel, who will play this week, loves the support of fans and the roar of the crowds. But he proves the placement of the event in the calendar with the international introduction of professionals and raising his status.

“He has always had his place in the European tour as a Marquean event, as a players’ championship,” he said. “Move it to September gives you greater recognition. There is no great event at the PGA Tour at that time, so the BMW PGA has raised to another level.”

“The players,” he added, “they are realizing how good this course is now.”