The 2018 PGA Championship will be staged at Bellerive Country Club just outside St. Louis. It’ll be the second time Bellerive hosts the event, and it’s an unfamiliar setting for many fans new to the game. Here are 13 things to know about it.
1. The defending champion at the course is Nick Price, who won by three strokes when the PGA was last staged at Bellerive in 1992. Price was never a big hitter, so perhaps that means this is a course where guile and a short game can carry a player to a title. But then again…
2. This year the parkland course will be set at 7,318 yards. In ’92, it played to 7,148.
3. It will play as a par 70, and its defining features will be its deep bunkers and wide greens.
4. The club opened in 1897 and was called The Field Club. It included a nine-hole golf course. In 1910 it moved to nearby Normandy and was renamed the Bellerive Country Club after Louis Groston de Saint-Ange de Bellerive, who was – who can forget – the last French commander in North America.
5. In 1959, the club moved southwest to its current site. Robert Trent Jones designed the new course, which opened one year later.
6. While it will commonly be referred to as St. Louis, the course is actually situated in Town and Country, Mo., a suburb due West of the city center.
7. Bellerive underwent a major, year-long renovation in 2005, led by Rees Jones, who rebuilt his father’s design while expanding the putting surfaces, repositioning the fairways and bunkers and adding a lake on the 2nd hole.
8. The 2018 PGA will be the second PGA Championship at Bellerive, but the third major. It also hosted the 1965 U.S. Open, which produced a significant moment in golf history: Gary Player won in an 18-hole playoff over Kel Nagel, and at age 29, it completed Player’s career Grand Slam. It was Player’s only U.S. Open title.
9. Bellerive has also hosted a handful of other notable pro events, including the 2004 Senior Open (won by Peter Jacobsen), the 2008 BMW Championship (Camilo Villegas) and the 2013 Senior PGA (Kohki Idoki).
10. It was also slated to host the 2001 WGC-American Express Championship, but that event was cancelled after the September 11 attacks, which occurred during the Tuesday practice round.
11. Holes 14-16 comprise a tough three-hole stretch known as “The Ridge,” and typically play into the prevailing wind. The 16th is a 235-yard par-3, and a shot into its deep greenside bunker could require a blast of more 30 yards to escape.
12. The par-3 6th is the shortest hole on the course, at 213 yards.
13. Bellerive will become the 18th course to host multiple PGA Championships.
