Counterpoint: They Should Switch the Order of the Majors Back

Outside of “these guys are good,” the best slogan in all of golf was “glory’s last shot.”

Three simple words that summed up exactly what the PGA Championship was; a final opportunity for the best golfers in the world to bag a major championship. It’s also a good reminder that the PGA Championship should be the final major of the year and move back to August.

Every major has an identity; the Masters is the most coveted and most anticipated, the U.S. Open is the crown jewel of American golf (and typically the sternest test) and the Open, the oldest, is the most global and one that requires a totally different set of skills to contend and win.

The PGA Championship? It’s the fourth major. It’s played on the least interesting major championship courses and typically plays the closest to everyday PGA TOUR golf courses.

This isn’t to say the PGA Championship is bad. It’s quite the opposite. I would contend that over the last decade or so, the PGA Championship has provided the most dramatic finishes in all of major championship golf. When you go over the Sundays at PGA Championships and the winners (and those in battling the eventual champions), they are some of the biggest names in all of golf.

But it’s the identity thing.

The PGA Championship’s identity needs to be restored. It needs to be moved back to August. We need to reevaluate the golfing schedule and figure out a way to elongate the major championship season.

In its current form, the majors are played in a 101-day window. Compare that to the most relatable sport to golf, tennis, and what they do for their Grand Slams. The Australian Open typically starts in mid-January and the U.S. Open concludes in late September, meaning the major offseason for tennis is similar to the actual major season in golf.

The reason the PGA Championship was moved was to get it out of the way of the FedEx Cup playoffs(and to avoid any conflicts with the Olympics). FedEx pays a boatload of money to be a major factor in terms of the way the season wraps up and they should be given a proper runway to flaunt their events.

But something I think makes a lot of sense is to simply move the playoffs to the early parts of each year. I wrote a piece a couple of years ago about the PGA TOUR's playoffs and how it would make sense to have the season conclude at The Players Championship. I think a run of playoff events during the early parts of the year when the NFL is wrapping up and a lot of the country is stuck indoors would add some pop to the gravitas of the playoffs. Imagine courses like TPC Scottsdale, Pebble Beach and Riviera being a part of the playoffs? Those events already matter a ton—now they’d have a bigger pop in terms of meaning.

If you did that, you can shift the PGA Championship back to its original date and lean into glory’s last shot once again. You could also make the PGA Championship the final event of the pre-playoffs season, meaning it isn’t just the last chance at a major, it’s the last shot at a big golf tournament for the year.

A move like this doesn’t just help take some stress off a compacted major championship season, it brings back the importance of some of the non-major events that have been crammed in between the majors. The Memorial, for instance, now can own May and be the marquee event during that time of year. Events like the Wells Fargo and the Travelers could find a more sensible time slot on the schedule if they wanted, considering one of the biggest events in golf isn’t played a month after the Masters and a month before the U.S. Open.

I miss the end-of-season PGA. I miss the fact that after the Open Championship we had a few weeks to regroup before going to Hazeltine or Medinah or Valhalla. Those golf courses seem to be in their best shapes during the August months and you don’t have to worry about brutal winners throwing a wrench into some of the golf courses that have defined this particular major.

Glory’s last shot deserves a comeback.