Southern Hills Country Club

Waite Phillips, the oilman who owned the land south of Tulsa, did not want to give it up in 1935, in the middle of the Depression. He set a price on his cooperation: 150 people had to sign up at $1,000 each, within two weeks. Bill Warren and Cecil Canary came back a day early with 140. Phillips donated the ground anyway. The course opened on 23 May 1936 and the clubhouse followed on 17 October. Eight majors have been played here: U.S. Opens in 1958 (Tommy Bolt), 1977 (Hubert Green) and 2001 (Retief Goosen), and five PGA Championships — Dave Stockton 1970, Raymond Floyd 1982, Nick Price 1994, Tiger Woods 2007, Justin Thomas 2022.

Perry Maxwell laid out the original eighteen. The card reads 7,481 yards and par 71, but par comes down to 70 for the majors, and the length keeps moving: the 1977 U.S. Open was 6,873 yards, the 2001 U.S. Open 6,973, the 2022 PGA 7,556. Keith Foster renovated the course in 1999, and Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner restored it in 2019; the PGA Championship came back three years after that. The rating is 78.2, the slope 142. A second nine, the West, is by Coore & Crenshaw: par 35, 2,969 yards. No other course has hosted five PGA Championships.