St. Andrews will again host The Open in 2027, which made us examine all four major venues for that year. One sticks out like a sore thumb.
Unlike the United States Golf Association (USGA), which has announced U.S. Open venues for the next 25 years through 2051, the R&A likes to wait until the last minute to unveil their host courses for The Open Championship.
Look no further than Thursday’s announcement. The R&A selected the Old Course at St. Andrews to host The Open again in 2027. The 155th Open will also mark the 100th anniversary since the legendary Bobby Jones first conquered the Old Course as an amateur, doing so by six shots over Aubrey Boomer of Jersey and Englishman Fred Robson.
Three years later, Jones won The Amateur Championship at the Old Course, cementing himself as a legend at the Home of Golf. Almost three decades after that, in 1958, the City of St. Andrews awarded Jones a distinguished honor, naming him a Freeman of the City. Only one other American had ever received this award before Jones did, and that was Benjamin Franklin in 1759. Jack Nicklaus recently became the third American to earn this distinction in 2022.
The 155th Open Champion will conclude a memorable major championship run in 2027, as two other historic courses will be featured. As it does every year, Augusta National will welcome the world’s best players to The Masters Tournament in April. Then, in June, the U.S. Open returns to Pebble Beach for a seventh time. Nicklaus, of course, won the first U.S. Open ever played there in 1972, and in 2019, the last time it hosted, Gary Woodland bested Brooks Koepka by three to claim his only major title.
But the 2027 major calendar features a PGA Championship that will, unfortunately, stick out like a sore thumb. Field Ranch East at PGA Frisco in Texas, now the home of the PGA of America, will host its first major championship. This course, designed by renowned architects Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner, opened for play in May 2023 and hosted the Senior PGA Championship shortly thereafter. Steve Stricker defeated Padraig Harrington in a playoff that week, but the golf course itself did not stand out. Instead, it looked as if the seniors played through a cow pasture, a wasteland escape that made you think you were in rural West Texas — not a short drive north of Dallas. The course does not have the history and vistas that Augusta National, Pebble Beach, and St. Andrews have either, making it more challenging to hold up against these venerable institutions in golf. One could argue that these other courses are the three most famous in the world — the Holy Trinity of golf. Whereas at PGA Frisco, you will have the pros competing on a brand-new layout that fans are unfamiliar with. Sure, the course received rave reviews from Golf Digest and will challenge the world’s best thanks to its smaller, contoured greens, lengthy layout at 7,800 yards, and plenty of bunkering. But throwing it into the PGA Championship rotation, especially this year, seems a little short-sided.
Imagine if an iconic American venue, one that is familiar to golf fans far and wide, like Oakland Hills, Winged Foot, or Kiawah Island, hosted the 2027 PGA Championship instead. If that were the case, golfers and fans would point to 2027 as possibly the greatest year ever for major host sites. Instead, we have a PGA Championship that stands out, one that may make some fans anxious, simply because it is an unknown. Yet, given how we saw the 2023 Senior PGA Championship play out, it did not impress us at all, and in all likelihood, it will not hold up to the other three courses that host that year either.
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Follow him on X @jack_milko.
