Wentworth worthy of Golf Clubs For Sale

Wentworth worthy of Golf Clubs For Sale

Forget the Players' Championship, the real 'fifth' major is the PGA Championship at Wentworth this week. That's according to Lee Westwood, at any rate. The European Tour's flagship event outside the Open this year boasts a field including all four major champions - Graeme McDowell, Louis Oosthuizen, Martin Kaymer and Charl Schwartzel - and seven of the world's top 10 players. Only the Americans are missing golf clubs for sale. But, as the argument goes, with a field like this, who needs them? Lee Westwood is among those in action at Wentworth this week. Not Westwood, anyway. "The BMW PGA Championship is the biggest title that I play for outside of the majors. It's bigger than the World Golf Championships because of what the tournament represents for us as the European Tour," the world number one said recently. Westwood's pride for his Tour is commendable, and who are we to argue with a man who has represented Europe on seven Ryder Cup teams? But without delving into the relative merits of the European and US circuits, you'd have to say that an event without the Americans (of whom there are currently 18 in the world's top 50) is somewhat pushing its claims to be the 'fifth' major, just as the Players' would be with golf clubs for sale, shorn of the international contingent. "America is a big place but world golf is getting stronger," said Masters champion Schwartzel. "And the world is slightly bigger." Westwood, who missed the Players' this year, didn't actually say the PGA Championship is the 'fifth' major - that bit of spin was added by the Tour itself, a playful dig, perhaps, at the American media-induced moniker of the Players'. And anyway, how do you define a major? Well, we've talked about the field, so next is the cash on offer, not that the best players really need to be tapping their pockets before deciding whether to take part or not. The PGA Championship has a purse of about £4m, compared to about £5.8m for the Players'. So the PGA event lags well behind the majors and lucrative World Golf Championships and is not even the highest on the European Tour. That honour goes to the £4.6m up for grabs at the season-ending Dubai World Championship. The Byron Nelson Championship in the US this week also carries a pot of about £4m, by the way. History is another string to the major bow. Even the youngest of the majors with golf clubs for sale, the Masters, goes back to 1934. The PGA Championship began in 1955 and has been at Wentworth full time since 1984.