PGA Championship Power Rankings: Top ten at Quail Hollow
![SPRINGFIELD, NJ - JULY 28: The Wanamaker Trophy is displayed on the first tee during the first round of the 2016 PGA Championship at Baltusrol Golf Club on July 28, 2016 in Springfield, New Jersey. (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images) SPRINGFIELD, NJ - JULY 28: The Wanamaker Trophy is displayed on the first tee during the first round of the 2016 PGA Championship at Baltusrol Golf Club on July 28, 2016 in Springfield, New Jersey. (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)](https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/c_fill,w_720,ar_16:9,f_auto,q_auto,g_auto/shape/cover/sport/0a0d7bfe194ac953046dcc2e84ec2bf37104826937207e7241ec97bca9ef13be.jpg)
The season’s final major, the PGA Championship, is set to begin at Quail Hollow on Thursday. Who tops our Power Rankings as the favorite to hoist the Wanamaker Trophy?
The PGA Championship marks something of an end to the 2017 PGA TOUR season. Sure, the FedEx Cup Playoffs are looming, and the $10 million prize at East Lake is nothing to shake a stick at. But if you want to make real history in golf, there are four chances each year to do it, and this is the last one until the azaleas bloom in April.
This year’s PGA Championship host is the Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina. The home course of the Wells Fargo Championship – among other names – since 2003, it will be the first time a regular TOUR stop has hosted a major since the 1995 PGA at Riviera. But will that relative familiarity pay off for the players in this week’s field?
Not entirely, thanks to the work of Tom Fazio. In the year and change since the 2016 Wells Fargo, Fazio and his team have revamped the Quail Hollow Club, toughening it up and turning some things around in anticipation of the course’s first major.
Playing to 7,600 yards, Quail Hollow’s first five holes have been shifted, moved and joined together for an entirely new routing. Gone are the bent grass greens, replaced in favor of Bermuda, which holds up better in the late summer heat. A pile of twists, turns, and contours will present all players with a challenge they haven’t really seen before.
What hasn’t changed? Quail Hollow’s infamous “Green Mile” – three of the hardest closing holes in all of golf, still await anybody who dreams of holding up the Wanamaker Trophy at week’s end. This will likely be a contest down to the very end, making these rankings that much tighter.
So who will come out on top this week in the year’s final major? There’s no sure bets, but these ten players top our power rankings. Let’s jump in one more time.