Thank God Medinah is not acting like a major!

Tim “Old” McDonald, the farmer of prose, lends the notion that Medinah is not acting like a major. Thank God, I respond, Thank God. For too long the notion that under par is a no-no at a major has seeped insipidly into the golf-viewer psyche, to the point where Tiger Woods made something resembling the following claim: It doesn’t seem like a major.

A major championship is not decreed by the course on which it is played (Valhalla, a shaved and goateed Pinehurst Dos, a fire-hazard Hoylake, and that unforgettable place wherer Payne Stewart won his PGA.) Rather, it is the name of the trophy, and the credence given by the players. That’s why, try as he might, Tim Finchem will never get major status for his TPC. It’s a nice resort course, it’s a nice time of year, but you are trying to force it down our throats, and change history from four to five majors (whoops, that’s another blog.)

I have to wholeheartedly agree with our man of the soil (Old McDonald, the farmer) that I love this PGA. In fact, when the statistic claiming that “the top four have made 22 birdies and 1 bogey today” flashed across the screen, I was ebullient. These guys were not making birdies with the faux-trendy phrase of “bomb-and-gauge.” Instead, they were knifing five irons to mere feet, seven irons out of bunkers, around trees, to pithy inches. Hybrida (the plural of hybrids…I made it up) and five woods were fling inside leagues (that’s a nautical term) to set up eagle putts. This was a display of the world’s finest, peaking during the peak season, on a golf course that would accept their best.

Now, don’t think I want all majors to be like this one. I love a US Open, where blood, sweat and tears (and in John Daly’s case…naw, forget it, that’s too easy) are spilt (old English spelling) across browning fairways. I groove when the winds and the cold and the mizzle (a combination of mist and drizzle…I read it somewhere on SI.Com) force the concoction of swing planes and ball flights (not to mention bounces and not-bounces) rarely seen in this technological millenium. And, of course, I am drawn to the siren set in April, when the enchanters and witch doctors of northeast Georgia whip a former fruit farm into the greenest, smoothest, fakest golf course ever envisioned by man or southener.

Do ya’ see? Each major is and should be different. Augusta (not TPC, Tim Fin, not TPC) is the only major that should be played on the same course each year. The USA Open should always be glute-high rough and shaved greens. The GBI Open should be a seen from Macbeth (the one with the witches) and the PGA should be completely unpredictable, just as club jobs for PGA professionals are from state to state, region to region, town to town. I love the PGA. I hope they shoot 52-under with one irons today.