2014 PGA Championship field: Tiger Woods remains member of year’s deepest entrants list

The PGA Championship is the season’s fourth major, and generally considered the least prestigious. It has not established the identity, which are mostly overhyped narratives, of the other three majors. But the PGA has the best and deepest field of all of them, and this week’s group just reinforces that strength.

There are, of course, some spots in the 156-man field reserved for PGA of America members, the club pros and teachers that are always a part of this tournament. Those 20 players almost never contend into Sunday afternoon, but rarely do the Open qualifiers at the U.S. Open and British Open, and those are much larger groups in those two fields.

The one major question surrounding this group centers on the most important, popular draw in the history of the game. Losing Tiger Woods would obviously be a big blow to this tournament, as it is to every tournament in the world, including this year’s Masters. We may not know whether Woods will play until Wednesday, according to his agent Mark Steinberg. But for now, he’s a part of the 156-man field and could give it a go one more time before taking several months off for the winter.

Here’s the full group, separated by exemption and methods of qualification. Each player is listed under the first way they achieved entry. There are obviously several players, such as Tiger or Phil Mickelson, who are exempt in multiple ways and fall under several of these categories.

Like the other three major championships, the PGA holds its former champions in high regard. Winning the PGA earns you a lifetime exemption. A U.S. Open title earns you an exemption for a decade, and a British Open win ensures an automatic invite up until age 60. So only the PGA and the Masters and go the lifetime route, which is why you’ll see guys like Rich Beem, Mark Brooks and John Daly still giving it a rip this year. Here are the past champions cashing in that exemption.

The PGA maintains the arrangement at all the other majors, granting a 5-year exemption to winners of the other three championships. This is already a pretty decorated list, so no one is sneaking through on past glory at another major championship. Darren Clarke might be the only player from this group that would not earn an invite via another exemption.

Don’t let anyone tell you our man Monty is not a major champion. The Scot finally won on American soil this year, taking the Senior PGA Championship up in Michigan at the end of May. That’s one of the oldest and most prestigious titles for the 50-and-over crowd, and the 51-year-old Monty backed it up by winning the U.S. Senior Open in mid July. The Hall-of-Famer will always be a controversial figure and easy target, but he is playing some world class golf. It’s still probably not enough to contend for his first ever major at the non-Senior level, but his form is certainly good enough to be a member of this field.

While Jason Dufner gets the lifetime invite for his success at Oak Hill, his closest chasers get to come back again a year later for another shot at Valhalla. Scott Piercy, who had a solid 2013 season but has sat out most of this year due to injury, will tee it up for the first time at a major in 2014. This is also an accomplished group that would have made it through on other exemptions. Marc Warren, who debuted at the PGA with a T12 last year, played well at the Open just two weeks ago, but is probably the least-known commodity and isn’t likey to contend in Louisville.

Unlike the other majors, the PGA does not utilize the Official World Golf Rankings as the measurement for assembling a large swath of its field. Instead, they have their own special points list that’s based off PGA Tour earnings from last year’s PGA Championship through the RBC Canadian Open last week.

The current exemption framework often doesn’t get the field to a full 156 players, and when that doesn’t happen, the PGA just dips back into their Points List and takes the next group just below the 70th ranked player. So far, there are six guys originally outside the top 70 who have made it through to round out the field. That number could increase, as the alternates come from this points list as well.

It’s hard to have won a PGA Tour event and not qualify via the Points List, but three players this year fall into this bucket. Two of them have won events opposite WGC tournaments, the Puerto Rico Open and the Barracuda Championship. While all the best players in the world compete for some of the richest purses in golf at those WGC tournaments, the concurrent events for the rest of the regular touring pros feature the smallest purses of the season, and significantly less FedExCup points. That’s how you end up with a win without getting into the top 70 of the above points list.

With a points system that gives no weight to the World Rankings, and so much to success on the PGA Tour, there are obviously a ton of successful and competitive players from around the world left out. That’s where the PGA carves out special invitations for many of these players from mostly non-US tours. They’re all capable of contending and winning this week.

While there’s no specific criteria, this exemption is mostly used to ensure the full top 100 in the world will have an invite. If they’re not a Euro Tour player, then it’s not hard to find out why they got a special invite, such as Tom Watson, who will rep the PGA of America as Ryder Cup captain this fall, or Kenny Perry, a son of Kentucky with a history at Valhalla.

Every major has its own unique way of filling out its field. Augusta National is beholden to an excessive set of traditions, including a roster of amateurs to honor Bobby Jones, and almost always keeps their invitees list around 95. The U.S. Open holds “golf’s longest day” and usually compiles more than a third of its field, around 60 players, from sectional qualifying. The Open Championship now has qualifying sites set up all over the globe, including some that hand out spots during the prior calendar year almost eight months out from the actual tournament.

For the PGA of America, they are always going to keep spots reserved for their membership, the club and teaching pros across the country. They’re sometimes pejoratively referred to the sweater salesmen who play a little golf on the side, but the club pros are an important part of this event. Even though none will contend, they’re not really watering down a loaded field. The PGA of America hands out those 20 invites based on how participating pros finish at the PGA National Professional Championship, where 312 pros competed for those 20 spots in Myrtle Beach back in June. Here’s the group that made it through, and will mostly get paired together instead of playing with the more well-known PGA Tour pros.

As I noted above, the alternates roll off in order from that PGA Championship Points list. Here’s the group hoping Tiger Woods, and maybe a few others, are unable to go this week.