Sunday at the PGA Championship: Live updates, scores, leaderboard, and highlights from Quail Hollow

They say the PGA Championship doesn’t start until a birdie hangs on the lip and drops for birdie on the ninth hole.

Okay, they don’t really say that. Sunday at Quail Hollow, though, they could have, after Justin Thomas lit up the rather ho-hum proceedings with a Tiger Woods/Masters 2005-like “In your life have you seen anything like that?” birdie.

It’s hard to feel like it’s been a long time coming for a 24-year-old to win a major championship. But, maybe, somehow it does. Justin Thomas is a major champion.

Thomas held off Patrick Reed, Hideki Matsuyama, and a host of others at Quail Hollow to take home the 99th PGA Championship. The 24-year-old Kentuckian fired a final round 3-under-par 68 to take home his first major championship and immediately vault his name alongside good friend Jordan Spieth into American golf superstardom.

The PGA Championship uses a three-hole aggregate playoff to break any ties atop the leaderboard after 72 holes. If two or more players are knotted, they’ll replay holes No. 10, 17, and 18. If the score is still even after that, a sudden-death playoff begins on No. 18. It continues on the 10th, 17th, and 18th, until someone has finally won a hole. Whoever comes out on top takes the Wanamaker Trophy and the championship. A playoff is certainly possible, wirh several players sitting within just a few shots of leader Justin Thomas

The three-hole aggregate format puts the PGA somewhere in the middle of the sports four majors. The U.S. Open is the longest slot, mandating an 18-hole playoff on Monday if players are tied after Sunday. The Masters is the shortest, with an immediate sudden-death competition on Sunday. The Open Championship uses a four-hole aggregate playoff. So the PGA’s answer is neither all that short nor all that long.

If anyone is destined to win this PGA Championship, it has to be Justin Thomas.

After nailing a tree with his tee shot on the par-5 10th, JT could not believe his good fortune when the big old oak on the left side of the fairway spat his ball back to the fairway.

You wouldn’t be alone if the 99th PGA Championship at Quail Hollow has left you wanting, thus far. But finally, finally — it seems we’re getting the drama golf fans expected when one of the PGA Tour’s top regular tracks received the bid to host 2017’s final major in the first place.

After stumbles from overnight leader Kevin Kisner at the seventh, Hideki Matsuyama holds a one-shot lead heading to the back nine in Charlotte on a muggy North Carolina Sunday afternoon in search of his first major championship. It’s a storyline that should wake up folks across the world, very literally. Japan’s been long-starved for a golf superstar, and they’ve never had a major winner as a country despite a slew of near misses. A Hideki win would be a Big Freaking Deal, so to speak -- and that’s putting it lightly. The impact on the game would be massive. He’s at 7-under-par as we head to the back nine, even despite a slow start with the putter on the opening holes.

Jon Rahm was well out of the running for the Wanamaker Trophy when he located his ball right inside the hazard line after hitting his second shot on the par-4 18th hole. No Phil Mickelson, the righty had the option of stripping off his shoes and socks, rolling up his trousers, and hitting the shot from the stream.

Instead, the creative Spaniard turned his back to the flag, flipped his iron around, and, without grounding the stick in the hazard, with his right hand hit a terrific chip shot — his third on the hole — up on to the green.

We’re finally here. The final major championship Sunday of the year is upon us. And while it’s been something of a sleepy start to the week with Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy well out of contention, we’re still set for an awesome finish. And it could be one that could perhaps have the biggest impact on international golf in decades.

With a few holes to go on Saturday, Kevin Kisner seemed set to possibly run away from the pack heading into Sunday’s final round at the 99th PGA Championship. But Quail Hollow’s famed three-hole difficult closing stretch named the Green Mile reeled the Georgia back into the rest of the back. Kisner, the world’s 25th-ranked player, will start Sunday in the final pairing with a one-shot lead alongside journeyman Chris Stroud. But it’s those just ahead of Kisner on the tee sheet and behind him on the leaderboard that will grab the day’s major attention.

There are just 18 holes left of major championship golf in 2017 and Sunday’s PGA Championship at Quail Hollow could be a perfect cap to a stout major season ... or it could be a complete bore. Who knows!? We’ve got some top young guns in the mix and playing together two shots off the lead in Hideki Matsuyama and Justin Thomas. And we’ve got a journeyman on that lead in Kevin Kisner, a super talented player who doesn’t have quite the power game that modern golf so rewards but does everything well after hustling to make it as a pro.

CBS will have the coverage of the final round of the final major, coming on the air at 2 p.m. ET and taking us home until right round 7 p.m., barring no weather stoppages. While everyone associates CBS with the Masters, highest-rated golf broadcast every year, this August stretch is probably their strongest on the calendar. Nothing can match the Masters, of course, but they have a WGC, a major championship, and the first leg of the FedExCup all within a four-week span before heading off to football season.

If you’re a golf fan, this is one of the biggest days of the golf season — there are only four major championship Sundays per year. But it’s also one of the saddest, as it marks the conclusion to majors season and the start of an interminable eight-month wait until you hear that treacly theme music on TV and the Masters begins. The PGA Championship is not going to hold the anchor spot on the major championship calendar much longer, but it’s there for the next two years and Sunday will be the final major showcase of the season.

And the round should move pretty fast compared to Saturday’s debacle. A Friday night storm pushed the finish of the second round into Saturday morning, the cut was made, and then the PGA of America put the remaining field out in threesomes off No. 1 tee for the third round. It was a two-hour block of tee times that ensured, barring no more weather delays, that we’d get the third round done by Saturday night and start Sunday morning with a fresh slate. The heat, setup, and some slow players did their best to challenge that notion, however, with some rounds pushing almost six hours. The final group of Kevin Kisner, Hideki Matsuyama, and Jason Day took five hours and 40 minutes to play their round, which is just unacceptable.

A U.S. Open broke out on Saturday at the PGA Championship, where the best in the world were beat up at Quail Hollow. The heat and humidity were intense and the setup was borderline, with players grumbling about pin placements and pace of play. We’ve got an ... eclectic (?) leaderboard heading into Sunday in Charlotte. It won’t be the Spieth vs. Rory battle we all wanted, but there’s a mix of styles and stories inside the top 10. Some notes from Saturday at the PGA.

In an era when the game feels dominated by 20-something bombers, it’s a refreshing change of pace to have Kevin Kisner on top of the major championship leaderboard. Kisner didn’t come into his pro career with his TrackMan numbers dialed in and specialized fitness for hitting bombs off the tee. We’re trending toward a game with much less art, skill, and variety than we used to have, opting for primed young studs who try to hit it as far as possible and then figure the rest out later.

Relatively unknown Aussie golfer Rod Pampling authored one of the great highlights in major championship history late Friday night. With the sun down and play about to be suspended for the day, Pampling rushed to the 9th tee, his last hole of the day, and hastily duffed a tee shot with a running Happy Gilmore-esque swing.

Unfortunately for Pampling, but fortunately for all of us and golf history, the TNT/CBS production crew had a TrackMan device set up on the tee box. So what would have otherwise just been some clip of a hasty swing became art.