The BMW PGA Championship is an annual men's professional
golf tournament on the
European Tour. It was founded in 1955 by the
Professional Golfers' Association, and originally called the British PGA Championship.
History
The BMW PGA Championship has usually been played each May, on the weekend of the UK's
Spring Bank Holiday, over the West Course at the
Wentworth Club in
Surrey
Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...
,
England. The PGA European Tour has its headquarters at the club and as the tour's home tournament, the BMW PGA Championship is often regarded as the flagship event on the European Tour. The tournament switched to September in 2019 as part of a revamp of the golfing calendar in which the US
PGA Championship moved to May.
It has usually had the highest prize money of any event which the tour organises, but this changed in 2009 with the introduction of the Race to Dubai, and the $10 million
Dubai World Championship at the end of the season. There are other more lucrative events than the BMW PGA Championship which are part of the European Tour schedule, such as the
majors
Jonathan Michael Majors (born September 7, 1989)Majors in is an American actor. He rose to prominence after starring in the independent feature film ''The Last Black Man in San Francisco'' (2019). In 2020, he garnered wider notice for portraying ...
and the
World Golf Championship
The World Golf Championships (WGC) are a group of annual professional golf tournaments created by the International Federation of PGA Tours as a means of gathering the best players in the world together more frequently than the pre-existing four ...
events, but these are organised by other bodies. It is also the European Tour's designated "Premier event" for the purposes of the
Official World Golf Rankings, with a minimum of 64 ranking points available to the winner.
The winner of the tournament is given an exemption into that season's
U.S. Open and the next three
Open Championships.
In 2000,
Colin Montgomerie became the only player to win three years in a row.
In 2021,
Billy Horschel became only the second American to win the event, the first since
Arnold Palmer in 1975.
Winners
Multiple winners
Only nine men have won the event more than once up to and including 2019.
*4 wins:
**Nick Faldo – 1978, 1980, 1981, 1989
*3 wins:
**Peter Alliss – 1957, 1962, 1965
**Bernhard Langer – 1987, 1993, 1995
**Colin Montgomerie – 1998, 1999, 2000
*2 wins:
**Tony Jacklin – 1972, 1982
**Seve Ballesteros – 1983, 1991
**Ian Woosnam – 1988, 1997
**Anders Hansen – 2002, 2007
**Luke Donald – 2011, 2012
Media coverage
Currently in the
United Kingdom, all four rounds of the BMW PGA Championship are shown live by
Sky Sports with highlights being shown by the
BBC.
Notes
References
External links
Coverage on European Tour official site
– official BMW golf site
{{Use dmy dates, date=June 2017
European Tour events
Golf tournaments in England
Sport in Surrey
BMW
Recurring sporting events established in 1955
1955 establishments in England