US PGA deserves better than 'fourth' major tag

Without possessing the traditions of the Masters or the history of the foundation stone events like the US Open and the Open, this week's USPGA Championship is generally regarded as the fourth major in terms of status.

On pure merit, it deserves better.

Over the years, it has found ways to compensate by moving from a match-play format to strokeplay in 1958 and more recently shifting position in the calendar from August to May.

Furthermore, with 99 of the world’s top 100 taking part this week, it is the strongest of the quartet of events which define the men’s golf year.

The calendar change seems to have worked particularly well and it now sits in the central vortex of the season rather than in its slipstream.

The 2019 Brooks Koepka-Dustin Johnson heavyweight contest at brawny Bethpage Black was a good start for the new date while the subsequent two editions of staging the championship in May have each seen history being achieved and, thereby more eyeballs trained on the drama.

The staging at Kiawah Island in 2021 saw the first ever player over 48 years of age triumph in a major with 50-year-old Phil Mickelson’s 'one for the ages’ win in North Carolina.

Then last year at Southern Hills, there was the extraordinary final day comeback victory of Justin Thomas from a record seven shots back on the final day in Oklahoma, where events in determining the outcome were characterised significantly by Mito Pereira’s driver-slashing implosion on the 72nd hole.

So what drama does Oak Hill in upstate New York have in store over the next four days? Will an Irish player rise to the challenge as witnessed around the East Course in the extraordinary European Ryder Cup comeback victory here in 1995 with the clinching point secured on the 18th