The PGA Championship is the second major of the calendar year, run by the PGA of America and contested in mid-May. The field is one of the deepest in golf — every top-ranked player is eligible, the bracket of PGA professionals adds club-pro storylines, and the venues rotate across a mix of classic American parkland courses. For a pool, the PGA Championship is a strong anchor: the date sits inside the spring sports window, the field is famous enough to draw casual entrants, and the course archetype rewards thoughtful drafting rather than pure name recognition.
The PGA Championship suits a standard four-round pool with a 36-hole cut. Lock Thursday morning, give your group ten days of lead time, and bias rosters toward ball-strikers who handle long, demanding setups.
When to launch your pool
The PGA Championship plays Thursday through Sunday in mid-May. The pool needs to be open and accepting rosters well before R1 tee-off Thursday morning, which means the practical launch window is the Saturday or Sunday before tournament week. That gives entrants the weekend to think about their picks, all of Tuesday and Wednesday to react to practice-round news and weather forecasts, and Thursday morning to finalize.
A common pattern: open the pool ten days out, send the first reminder five days out, send the second reminder Wednesday evening. Most entrants draft Wednesday night or Thursday morning regardless of how early you open the pool — the late draft is a feature of golf pools, not a problem to solve. Earlier opening gives your group room to absorb stragglers, not faster drafting from the regulars.
Lock time is the morning of R1 — Thursday — at first-tee-off local time. The platform anchors lock automatically to the published tee sheet for that tournament. If your group has international entrants, surface the lock time in your invite message so nobody is caught out by time-zone math.
Picking your rules for this tournament
The PGA Championship cuts after 36 holes to the top 70 and ties. That is wider than the US Open and most signature events, which means roster damage from the cut is generally lower — a roster of six with sensible spread typically loses one or two golfers on Friday night rather than three.
For the cut rule, worst_active is the right default. The 70-and-ties cut is wide enough that most rosters survive most cuts, and worst_active keeps the math honest by applying the highest counting round score from each cut golfer in place of the missed round. fixed_penalty is the alternative for groups who prefer a more predictable penalty structure; field_average works on paper but tends to feel arbitrary to first-time entrants.
For the tiebreaker, best_single is the obvious choice — a four-round major with a wide field will produce hot rounds, and a low single-round score is a clean, defensible tie-breaking signal. predict_winner is the alternative for groups who want a draft-night picking ritual layered on top of the roster build.
Payout structure depends on field size. For a group of twelve or fewer, a 60/30/10 split is plenty. For thirty or more, three or four payout positions with a lighter top weight (40/25/15/10/10) keeps the bottom of the leaderboard engaged through the weekend.
What makes this tournament different
The PGA Championship rotates host venues year to year. Recent editions have visited Quail Hollow, Oak Hill, Valhalla, Southern Hills, and Kiawah Island. The common thread is length and difficulty — most PGA Championship venues stretch past 7,300 yards and are set up to demand precision off the tee. The tournament is not as fairway-narrow as the US Open, but the greens are firm, the rough is meaningful, and weather frequently becomes a storyline.
The field is the largest of any major outside of The Open Championship. The PGA of America reserves twenty spots for club professionals, which adds a layer of human-interest storyline that the other majors do not carry — a teaching pro from a Midwest country club making the cut is a moment every PGA Championship produces at least once. Casual entrants in your pool will engage with that storyline if it lands; surface it in your invite or recap messages.
Weekend pin positions tend to be aggressive. The PGA of America is known for setting up the course to produce drama on Sunday, which favors golfers who can recover from misses rather than golfers who rely on perfect ball-striking. Read the practice-round commentary on this point — the trend in any given year matters more than the long-running average.
Who tends to perform well here
The course archetype rewards long, accurate ball-strikers. Distance off the tee matters because most PGA Championship venues are long; accuracy matters because the rough is real; and approach precision matters because the greens are firm and the pin positions are aggressive. Putting matters less than it does at the US Open — most PGA Championship venues are not famous for tricky greens.
In practice this points your roster toward ball-strikers in the top twenty of the world ranking and away from short-game specialists who rely on getting up and down. Length-and-accuracy is a rare combination at the top of the ranking, so the available pool of true fits is small. Most entrants stack two or three such names as anchors and fill the remaining slots with depth picks. See the Picking Your Roster guide for the value-band trade-off math.
Avoid year-specific predictions — naming a defending champion as your favorite is the fastest way to start a pool entry on the wrong foot. Recent winners have been a mix of obvious stars and unexpected veterans; the PGA Championship is not a tournament that prints the same name on the trophy year after year.
Setting up a Weekend Shootout instead
If your group missed the Thursday morning lock — common in May, between the run-up and the Memorial Day weekend distraction — the Weekend Shootout format puts you back in the game. Pool locks Saturday morning at 7:00 AM Central, drafts cover R3 and R4 only, and the field is already pruned to the post-cut survivors. Most years the PGA Championship cut leaves a deep enough field of survivors that drafting on Saturday morning is genuinely interesting. The two-round format compresses the pool into the weekend itself, which suits groups who gather to watch Saturday and Sunday anyway.
Common questions
Can I run a PGA Championship pool without a buy-in?›
Yes. Most pools on the platform are free for entrants. The commissioner picks the entry fee during pool creation; setting it to zero produces a bragging-rights pool with the same roster, scoring, and leaderboard behavior as a paid pool, minus the payout tracking. See the commissioner guide for the full set-up walkthrough.
The PGA Championship overlaps with the NBA playoffs. Does that hurt engagement?›
Some, but less than you might expect. Casual golf-pool entrants tend to engage with the tournament most heavily on Sunday afternoon, which is well after the NBA Saturday slate. The bigger calendar risk is the Memorial Day weekend pull at the front of the following week — surface results promptly on Sunday evening so the pool wraps before the long weekend starts.
What happens if a top player withdraws on Wednesday?›
The wizard updates the available player list automatically as withdrawals are published through tournament week. Entrants who already drafted a withdrawn golfer can edit their roster before lock; the value-cap math recalculates against the updated field. The full withdrawal-handling contract is in the scoring guide.
Set one up
The PGA Championship is the most pool-friendly of the four majors — deep field, mid-week storyline arc, generous cut. If your group has been thinking about running a pool this spring, sign in, open the wizard, pick the tournament, and follow the host walkthrough. Ten days of lead time is plenty.