In what the PGA of America is calling a “landmark agreement,” the organization is bringing eight championship golf tournaments to Bethesda’s Congressional Country Club in a 16-year stretch, including the PGA Championship in 2031 and the Ryder Cup in 2036.
The deal will also bring the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship in 2022 and 2027, the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship 2025 and 2033, the PGA Professional Championship for club pros and instructors in 2029 and the Junior PGA Championship in 2024.
All of the events will take place on Congressional’s famed Blue Course, the host of the 1976 PGA Championship and U.S. Opens in 1964, 1997 and 2011. Designed by Devereux Emmet in 1924, the course has received enhancements from some of the game’s most famous designers, including Donald Ross and Robert Trent Jones. Next year, designer Keith Jones is slated to start a full restoration.
Over the last two decades, the Baltimore area has hosted major championship golf with the Constellation Senior Players Championship at Caves Valley in 2017 and Baltimore Country Club Five Farms from 2007-2009, and the LPGA Championship at Bulle Rock from 2005 to 2009. But the majors of the PGA Tour have not made a stop in the Baltimore area since the 1928 PGA Championship at BCC Five Farms.
The closest the Ryder Cup, a biennial team competition between the United States and Europe, has ever come to Baltimore is 1975, when the match was contested at Laurel Valley Country Club in Ligonier, Pennsylvania, 186 miles away. The exhibition was contested between the U.S. and Great Britain and Ireland then.
So the D.C. area offers a short trip for Baltimore-area golf fans hoping to see championship competition. And it would appear the PGA of America considered Baltimore and other markets outside the nation’s capital when deciding to bring this group of tournaments here.
“We’re also looking forward to building a lasting relationship with the legions of knowledgeable golf fans from Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia and believe they will enjoy their time with us and marvel at the talents we will bring to Congressional in the coming years,” PGA of America interim CEO John Easterbrook said in a statement.
Bethesda was also the closest regular PGA Tour stop for Baltimoreans in the last decade. Starting in 2007, Congressional hosted the AT&T National, a tournament founded by Tiger Woods. Though the tournament moved around in its time, it was played at Congressional seven times and relocated to nearby TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm in 2017. Earlier this year, the tour announced the tournament would be moving to Detroit in 2019 and rebranding as the Rocket Mortgage Classic.
