The PGA Championship will be played at publicly accessible golf courses in consecutive years in 2019 and 2020. Multiple reports cite sources saying San Francisco's TPC Harding Park will host the 2020 PGA Championship.
A Golfweek report adds the facility will host the 2025 Presidents Cup, which it previously hosted in 2009. PGA Tour's design services led a $23 million renovation of the facility in the early 2000s before it hosted a Tiger Woods-John Daly showdown in the 2005 WGC-American Express Championship.
Harding Park will be the first Pacific time zone host of the season's final major since Vijay Singh won the Wanamaker trophy at Sahalee C.C. in Washington in 1998 -- a span of 22 years. The West Coast will host three majors in that span, including the 2019 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, the 2020 PGA and the 2021 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines.
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This news also likely means the PGA of America has abandoned the notion of taking its major championship abroad anytime before 2024. Golf is guaranteed to be part of the Olympic program not only in 2016, but also in 2020 in Tokyo. In both years, the PGA Championship will have to move from its traditional early August date, which opened the window for an ex-American PGA Championship in 2020. Baltusrol in New Jersey will host the 2016 PGA Championship. San Francisco's client, as Geoff Shackelford notes, opens to door to a variety of dates on the calendar.
Golf's future in the game is uncertain after that, however, with an International Olympic Committee vote coming shortly after the Rio games that will determine the sport's place in the Olympics beyond 2020.
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