PGA Championship Golf TriviaWoody Austin plays a bunker shot on the 17th hole during the final round of the 89th PGA Championship at the Southern Hills Country Club on August 12, 2007 in Tulsa, Oklahoma

Did you know?

  • The golf professional wasn't always a great career – during the late 1800s the pro was club maker and repairer, producer of golf balls, caddy, playing partner to the amateur (particularly when there was a juicy wager on the match), source of lessons and green keeper.
  • Pros were still seen much as club servants until the 1950s and weren't even allowed in the club house – playing second fiddle to the rich amateur players of the day.
  • Some pros rebelled against the stiff and intolerant club attitudes. Henry Cotton would signal his contempt for the social barriers that were placed in front of the pro by eating his lunch from a Fortnum and Mason hamper while sitting in the limousine in the club car park.
  • In 1920 the great American Walter Hagen disrobed in a hired car outside Royal Cinque Ports in protest at the fact professionals competing in that year's Open Championship had to change in the professional's shop. But the stock of the pro was helped by the game's popularity in America with the likes of Walter Hagen and amateur Bobby Jones adding to the lure of the sport. In fact, Walter Hagen was engaged as Club Professional by the Oakland Hills country club – the venue for the 2008 US PGA Championship.
  • An interesting piece of PGA Championship golf trivia is that, to this day, we still don't know for sure how the word 'golf' came about.
  • The earliest known reference to golf dates to 1457, when King James II of Scotland banned golf and football on the grounds that they were keeping his subjects from their archery practice. The ban was repeated in 1471 by James III and in 1491 by James IV for the same reason.
  • The first surviving written reference to golf in St. Andrews is contained in Archbishop Hamilton’s Charter of 1552. This reserves the right of the people of St. Andrews to use the linksland “for golff, futball, schuteing and all gamis”. As early as 1691, the town had become known as the “metropolis of golfing”.
  • The term 'bogey' originated from the mythical golfer, Colonel Bogey, a player of high amateur standard who was held to play every hole of a given course in the standard stroke score. The meaning of the term has changed over the years. It is now most commonly used to denote a score of one stroke over par, but was originally the target score that a good amateur should achieve on a given course. In the same way par became associated with the target score for professionals. For a while the two terms were interchangeable until par became the standard term.
  • The term 'par' is defined in the dictionary as usual or average. This is why it was adopted by golfers to mean the standard score in strokes for each hole of a given course.
  • The term 'birdie' seems to have developed into a commonly used term. It appears to have come from the phrase “a bird of a shot”. In American slang a bird was used to mean that something was wonderful or excellent
  • The terms 'eagle' and 'albatross' came about after the term 'birdie' was commonly used. Compared with 'birdie', as the score under par increases so does the size and rarity of the bird. Eagle is two under par and an albatross refers to three stokes under.

Your knowledge of PGA Championship golf trivia could help you pick the winner of the 2008 US PGA Championship to be held at the Oakland Hills golf course in Michigan later this year.

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