ROCHESTER, NY – (Staff Report from PGA Tour Brunch) – The 2023 PGA Championship is the 31st event of the FedEx Cup regular season and second major championship of the year. Just 14 events played over the next 12 weeks remain before the start of the FedEx Cup Playoffs.
The 2015 PGA Championship winner – Jason Day – is coming off a win at last week’s AT&T Byron Nelson, his 13th career PGA Tour title and first since the 2018 Wells Fargo Championship (5 years, 8 days prior). Day has won in back-to- back starts twice in his Tour career: 2015 PGA Championship-2015 FedEx St. Jude Championship (then The Barclays) and 2016 Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard-2016 WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play.
The last player to win on Tour and win a major the following week was Rory McIlroy, who won the 2014 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational followed by the PGA Championship.
Two PGA Tour members are making their major championship debuts: Tour rookies Nico Echavarria and Ben Griffin. Echavarria, who won the Puerto Rico Open, is the only rookie to win on Tour this season, while Griffin played in the final group on Saturday at THE PLAYERS Championship with eventual champion Scottie Scheffler (finished T35). Among the other 14 players making their major debuts is David Micheluzzi, a two-time winner on the PGA Tour of Australasia in 2023 who made his PGA Tour debut on a sponsor exemption at last weekβs AT&T Byron Nelson (T-67).
At No. 4 in the Official World Golf Ranking, Patrick Cantlay is the highest-ranked player that has not won a major championship. Cantlay, the 2021 FedExCup Champion, has seven wins over the last five seasons, the third-most of any player in that span and most of any player that has not won a major (McIlroy/9, Rahm/9). Cantlay has three Top-10s in 24 prior starts in majors (T-3/2019 PGA Championship, T-8/2022 Open Championship, T9/2019 Masters Tournament).
Wyndham Clark is making his first start since winning the Wells Fargo Championship, his first career PGA Tour title. Clark is one of eight first-time winners on the tour this season and enters the week No. 32 in the Official World Golf Ranking (first start as a top-50 player in the OWGR). He is making his sixth career major start.
Rickie Fowler has five consecutive Top-20 finishes on Tour and following a T-14 at the Wells Fargo Championship in his most recent start, Fowler moved into the Top 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking for the first time since the ranking published November 29, 2020.