NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — It was bound to happen, and Tuesday morning, in a white tent almost in the shade of the massive stone clubhouse of the Aronimink Golf Club, where the 108th PGA Championship is being played this week, it did: The stealth work of the Committee to Resurrect Walter Hagen went public.
It happened during a press conference with Rory McIlroy, a two-time winner of the PGA Championship, both times at stroke play. Hagen won it five times, all at match play.
“Have you heard about this stealth committee, the Committee to Resurrect Walter Hagen?” McIlroy was asked.
That word, again.
There had been speculation, not widespread, that McIlroy knew about the committee’s work. Hagen is one of the great sporting legends from Rochester, N.Y., where Erica Stoll, McIlroy’s wife, grew up. Plus, McIlroy is so in the loop. He knows Jimmy Dunne, for one thing. But McIlroy had not heard.
The reigning Masters champion leaned in (in the modern, figurative sense of the phrase), seemingly eager to learn more.
The Hagen Committee is working to combine the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am with the PGA Championship in a unique stroke play/match play format by which the PGA Championship would be the first major of the year, played in February.
The PGA Championship — with AT&T as its sponsor and continuing to raise vast sums for the many good works done by the Monterey Peninsula Foundation — would begin with a 54-hole qualifier played at the Pebble Beach Golf Links on a Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in late winter. The medalist would receive the Bing Crosby Medal, along with an automatic spot in the fields of the year’s three remaining Grand Slam events, plus a place in the FedEx Cup playoffs and a winner’s check large enough to send all his kids through college and grad school.
(The Crosby Medal, per circulating early artist renderings, depicts the iconic singer and golf impresario in follow-through, pipe in mouth.)
The top-16 finishers from the 54-hole Crosby event at Pebble then qualify for the match play weekend portion of the PGA Championship. Eight matches Saturday morning (loser goes home), four matches Saturday afternoon (ditto), two Sunday morning (again), one Sunday afternoon. The player who goes 4-0 on the weekend receives the Wanamaker Trophy as the PGA Champion, the player’s named etched on it, alongside Walter Hagen’s, Rory McIroy’s and other luminaries of the game.
The weekend play would be held down the road (17 Mile Drive) from Pebble Beach, at the golf course of the Cypress Point Club.
Tied matches would be settled in by sudden-death playoff beginning on the pitch-shot par-3 15th hole, sometimes cited as the most aromatic hole in golf.
The committee’s work was explained to McIlroy.
“Sounds amazing,” he said.
You might want to let that comment settle in you for a moment before you continue.
