CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Maybe it was the moment the leader’s tee shot bounced off a rake, ricocheted left and rolled to the center of the green that the golf world turned to each other and asked: What the hell is this PGA Championship?
A major championship led by a 40-year-old journeyman with so many past surgeries his doctor once told him he’s out of luck. He’d have to just live with the pain.
A major championship with constant talk of mud balls and slammed clubs and an angry Irishman flipping the bird to an inanimate object.
A major championship where one of the only stars in contention had been going through such an emotional gantlet he’s missed more cuts than times he’s finished in the top 50 this season.
Welcome to the 2025 PGA Championship at Quail Hollow, where nothing makes sense and anything is possible. Haven’t played good golf in a year? Come on up the leaderboard. You’re one of the best players in the world? Please get out of here.
Turtles in bunkers. Ducks on greens. Snakes in fairways. Mules on leaderboards. This major championship has everything. Venezuelan veteran Jhonattan Vegas leads by two at 8-under-par. Behind him are Matthieu Pavon, Si Woo Kim and a slumping Matt Fitzpatrick. World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler finished on a heater to get to 5-under, but he’s the only top-10 golfer inside the top 15. That other big name at the top is Max Homa, the famous 34-year-old personality in such poor form his professional relationship ended with his caddie/longest friend Joe Greiner in March.
Masters champion Rory McIlroy had a driver ruled non-conforming and had to switch right before the start. Si Woo Kim was caught taking a smoke break off a tee box Thursday, hit a 252-yard hole in one Friday and launched his club into the air with maybe six spectators watching. Dustin Johnson, one of the greatest players of his generation, was beaten by 10 PGA teaching professionals, and finished ahead of exactly one professional golfer, 48-year-old Jason Dufner.
Just to truly put a bow on the absurdity of these two days, McIlroy, in danger of missing the cut, hit his 18th tee shot so far left it bounced off the top of a grandstand and bounced down to the bank of the creek, saving himself from disaster by mere feet.
McIlroy crosses a creek to get to his ball on No. 18 Friday. (Ross Kinnaird / Getty Images)
So as we hit the 36-hole mark Friday and settle down to make sense of the rubble left of Quail Hollow Country Club, the most apparent lesson is how wildly wrong we all got it. This was supposed to be the most straightforward, binary major in recent memory, a marquee event hosted by a PGA Tour venue that McIlroy has won at four times and where the longest bombers seem to have a direct route to victory.
Oh, how wrong we were. We completely misunderstood what lives at the core of this place. Where we saw past winners like McIlroy, Tiger Woods and Jason Day, we failed to look closer inside the actual stories Quail Hollow produces. It is not simply a course that highlights the game’s biggest talents. It’s a venue that unearths the names we will soon know.
You may see four McIlroy wins and be right. Now, I see a struggling 20-year-old phenom with back problems getting his first career PGA Tour win at the 2010 Quail Hollow Championship before he took over the world.
You see Wyndham Clark now, a U.S. Open champion with three signature wins. When he broke through at the 2023 Wells Fargo Championship, he was a 29-year-old with zero PGA Tour wins.
Homa, now a Ryder Cup star and one of the biggest names in the sport, was a funny social media darling who had dropped to the Korn Ferry Tour when he rose from complete obscurity to win the 2019 Wells Fargo.
Did you know Rickie Fowler’s first win was at Quail? Or Anthony Kim’s? Shoot, even Justin Thomas won his first career major at the 2017 PGA Championship at Quail. And outside of those names, it’s a whole lot of Derek Ernst, Joey Sindelar, Sean O’Hair and James Hahn. It is not a safe haven for the world’s elite. It’s where anyone can win, and sometimes go on to make Quail Hollow look good.
There’s simply something weird about this place. Hence the mudballs and the shots off rakes and the bizarre, no-name leaderboard. Maybe the mudballs are the metaphor for it all. As Scheffler and Xander Schauffele were glad to explain to us Thursday, the rain has led to an issue with shots in the fairway resulting in mudballs, and those mudballs led to unpredictable shots with aerodynamics you can’t control. “It’s just unfortunate to be hitting good shots and to pay them off that way,” Schauffele said. “It’s kind of stupid.” Everybody in the field had this problem, but maybe that variance brings everybody back to center.
“Got some weird breaks out there,” said Bryson DeChambeau, five back of the lead. “That’s what this golf course does to you.”
Many golf fans will scoff at this leaderboard, wanting to see the biggest stars in contention. But if you look at it through another lens, it’s the most entertaining two days of major golf in years.
You’ve got Phil Mickelson taking four balls to get out of a bunker. You’ve got McIlroy tossing his club against a hole-and-distance sign. Shane Lowry flipped off a rolling golf ball.
Mickelson just took 4 shots to get out of a green side bunker. Dang pic.twitter.com/DT1P2MxsVo
— Mark Clarke (@OldHeadHoops) May 16, 2025
The cream does tend to rise to the top over four rounds of difficult competition, and Scheffler pointed out the greens will only get much firmer, leading to even more variance. Scheffler is right there at three shot back, and DeChambeau and Jon Rahm remain in striking distance, while many expect some of those names at the top to eventually come back to earth.
This PGA Championship is nonsense. But when you remember the week began with the course being compared to a Kardashian, maybe we should have seen this coming.
(Top photo of Scottie Scheffler: Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)