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The PGA Championship is golf's first major in over a year

06 August 2020
 Dan Ackermann

The 2020 PGA Championship tees off Thursday at San Francisco's TPC Harding Park, which is hosting its first-ever major.

Why it matters: It's the first major in more than a year — and the first of seven majors in the next 12 months. Though there won't be any fans in attendance, the excitement is palpable.

  • "We are about to enter, starting Thursday, the greatest stretch of golf in the history of the game," sportscaster Jim Nantz said.

The state of play: Naturally, the field is loaded, featuring 95 of the world's top 100 golfers.

  • Brooks Koepka is going for his third straight PGA Championship title, a feat never accomplished since it switched to stroke play in 1958 (Walter Hagen won four in a row in match play during the 1920s).
  • Tiger Woods appears set to make a rare putter switch, using his backup Scotty Cameron instead of the famous Newport-2 he used to win 14 of his 15 majors.
  • Justin Thomas is currently ranked No. 1 in the world and is coming off an impressive World Golf Championship win. He won the 2017 PGA Championship and finished tied for sixth in 2018 (didn't play in 2019).
  • Bryson DeChambeau is absolutely crushing the ball off the tee. That makes him a favorite, as Harding Park's thick rough favors big bombers because it's far easier hit short irons out of it than it is to hit long irons.

TPC Harding Park is a city-owned course, with roughly 65,000 rounds played there each year, some for as little as $50.

  • This makes it arguably "the most unpretentious site ever to host a major," said Phil Ginsburg, general manager of San Francisco's Recreation and Parks Department.
  • "One side is lined by dorms and apartment buildings across a busy boulevard, fenced by chain-link," writes the New York Times' John Branch.
  • "There is no chateaux-style clubhouse, and amid the cart-pulling, bag-carrying golfers are joggers and dog walkers."
  • "But the course is blessed with a classic layout — tight fairways lined by majestic cypress trees, its front nine folded inside a back nine that unwinds alongside Lake Merced."

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.