Why this PGA Championship at Quail Hollow is lacking ‘major’ vibes

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — At least two questions have been percolating at the 2025 PGA Championship at Quail Hollow Club. 

(1) What makes the PGA Championship special?

(2) Why is a major championship visiting a traditional PGA Tour stop?

The PGA Championship’s identity crisis

As my colleague Sean Zak wrote on Tuesday, the PGA Championship has an identity crisis that needs fixing. 

That has been especially apparent this week.

“When you go to Augusta, you know what you’re getting,” Jon Rahm said Tuesday when asked what makes the PGA Championship the PGA Championship. “Same course every year, too. The U.S. Open, nine out of 10 times, you know what you’re getting depending on weather. Same with The Open, right? It will be firmer or less, but you know what you’re getting.

“It’s this championship that we change venues and drastically change the way we set it up, like the way a Southern Hills might play to the way this week might play to the way a Bethpage might play. They’re all drastically different. So it’s quite possibly the difference, which is more about, okay, your game needs to be a very high level as opposed to possibly the other three that you can adjust a little bit more knowing what’s coming.”

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That lack of identity to the season’s second major — an event that has over its lifespan shifted from match play to stroke play and August to May — has been accentuated this week as the tournament arrives at a course that the PGA Tour typically visits in May for the artist formerly known as the Wells Fargo Championship. 

A big part of what makes the three non-Masters majors special is that they normally go to courses we rarely see. The U.S Open goes to American cathedrals of golf, and the Open Championship rota needs no introduction. 

The PGA Championship host sites has alternated between brutish courses that provide a stiff test (Bethpage Black, Ocean Course at Kiawah) and designs that provide limited challenges for golf’s best (Valhalla). 

Quail Hollow falls more into the latter category, with the world’s best players set to take on a familiar course that doesn’t ask the type of questions that should define a major championship.

The Quail Hollow conundrum

Justin Thomas, who won the 2017 PGA Championship at Quail Hollow, was asked why Rory McIlroy, who has four career wins at the club, is so successful at the property. The two-time PGA Championship winner started by praising McIlroy before giving a candid assessment of the property that is hosting the year’s second major. 

“First and foremost, he’s really, really good at golf, so that definitely helps,” Thomas said of McIlroy. “I would argue he’s the best driver of the ball I’ve ever seen, and that is extremely important here.

“But I think his shot shape, I think this golf course fits a high draw really, really well. There’s a lot of tee shots, whether it’s holding fairways or fitting doglegs, taking bunkers out of play, whatever it is. He just has — when he’s on, he has such control of that driver, it seems like he can hit it in a window and an area that some guys are trying to hit short irons.”

Then came the dagger. 

“That’s a tremendous advantage or threat at any golf course, but I feel like a place like this, where it doesn’t necessarily require a lot of thought or strategy off the tee, it’s generally pulling out driver and just I need to hit this as far and straight as possible, and he’s really, really good at that.”

Doesn’t necessarily require a lot of strategy off the tee.

Thomas’ indictment of Quail Hollow was just the beginning. 

Next came World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler.

“On this golf course with it being so big, it’s a little bit easier just to step on the tee box and pretty much every hole is a driver,” Scheffler said. “Outside of that off the tee, there’s not really a bunch of strategy stuff you can do.” 

Then, on Wednesday, McIlroy delivered another haymaker to a course he has picked apart for 15 years. 

“I thought it was going to feel different just because it was a major championship, and I got out on the golf course yesterday, and it felt no different than last year at the Wells Fargo,” McIlroy said. “The rough is maybe a little juicier. But fairways are still the same cut lines and same visuals. It doesn’t feel that much different.”

Therein lies the problem. 

If it doesn’t feel much different than a normal PGA Tour stop, is it? If you don’t have an identity, eventually an identity finds you. You eventually become the sum of the decisions you make while searching for it.

The PGA Championship now finds itself in a place where its identity is determined annually by the character of its host site.

This week, the event arrives at a customary Tour stop that largely will ask players a one-dimensional question. 

There’s a major being contested at Quail Hollow Club this week, even if it might not feel like it.