PGA Championship 2012 ( A Little Late on the Recap)

So, I struggle sometimes of actually keeping up on posting things as they happen. Sometimes, like today, I’m a bit behind. By like a year and a half. Sometimes I just get too busy and I forget to do these updates. Oops. As I am sitting here watching Bubba Watson and Jordan Spieth battle it out in the final pairing at The Masters, I realized I never did a post about my trip to the PGA Championship in 2012. So, here we go…. a year and a half later.

So, similar to tennis, there are four major championships in golf: the Masters, the US Open, the British Open and the PGA Championship. It is on my bucket list to make it to all four majors. I got the Masters in 2007 and the PGA in 2012. I still have the other two to get at some point. The 2012 PGA Championship was held at the Ocean Course on Kiawah Island. It was August, which is the craziest time of the year for my work, so I could only go down in the early part of the week My Dad got passes for the first two days of practice rounds and it was great! There are still plenty of people, but it is not nearly as packed as it is during the four tournament days. There are always packs following certain players (such as Tiger Woods) so it was hard to see some players at times. Bonus to going during practice rounds, you can take pictures during practice rounds!

The course is absolutely gorgeous, but it is really long. A number of courses are kind of compact and a lot is packed into a short space. This course is literally built on a barrier island so it has the ocean on one side and an inlet/marsh on the other an runs along the two length-wise. It is also has a lot of sand dunes and bluffs to navigate… so there are some hills. And South Carolina in August is not only as hot as fried hell, but the humidity is so thick it is crazy. So it was definitely a good little work out walking all over that place for two days. It was also August in the South, so there were a number of off and on thunderstorms… we were totally chilling in the car for 45 minutes in the middle of a field turned into a parking lot before they would even let us board the bus on one of the days!

Anyway, it was fun. I would totally go again and really need to get moving on nailing down the next tournament to get passes too. Below is a photo dump of some of the hundreds of pictures I took over the two days! Some of the players I easily recognize a year a half later, some I don’t remember. You can clearly tell how pretty the course is though!

The Ocean Course, 2012 PGA Championship

The Ocean Course, 2012 PGA Championship

Cool Tree
The Ocean Course, 2012 PGA Championship

Creek
The Ocean Course, 2012 PGA Championship

The Ocean Course, 2012 PGA Championship

The Ocean Course, 2012 PGA Championship

Hole 8 or 9 (I forget who it is too)
The Ocean Course, 2012 PGA Championship

Another where I forget who it is…
The Ocean Course, 2012 PGA Championship

The Ocean Course, 2012 PGA Championship
Complete with the Atlantic Ocean in the background. I love the South Carolina coast!

The Golf Channel set up
The Ocean Course, 2012 PGA Championship

The swanky reserved boxes…
The Ocean Course, 2012 PGA Championship

Rich Beam signing flags
The Ocean Course, 2012 PGA Championship

Miguel Ángel Jiménez and another golfer whose name I can’t remember. I struggle with memory! The 2012 PGA Championship

You can get an idea of how deep the bunkers are!
The Ocean Course, 2012 PGA Championship

Retief Goosen. The Ocean Course, 2012 PGA Championship

Tiger Woods. The crowds surrounding him even during practice rounds were nuts!
The Ocean Course, 2012 PGA Championship

Bubba Watson
The Ocean Course, 2012 PGA Championship

Ernie Els
The Ocean Course, 2012 PGA Championship

Thanks for coming!
The Ocean Course, 2012 PGA Championship

I’d like to say that I’ll get better at posting things when they actually happen… but I know that I am always going to struggle with that. So I’ll just try to do better! And now that I am just finishing this, Bubba Watson won the Masters! Aw, isn’t that little toddler just adorable?! Way to go Bubba!