PGA Professional Championship PGA Professional Championship The PGA Professional Championship is a golf tournament for golf club professionals and teachers who are members of the Professional Golfers' Association of America. It has been held by the PGA of America since 1968, when touring professionals split off to found the PGA Tour. The PGA Professional Championship was known as the PGA Club Professional Championship until 2006 and as the PGA Professional National Championship from 2007 through 2015. Since 1997, the tournament has usually been played in late June, six to seven weeks before the PGA Championship in mid-August. Previously, the club pro tournament had
South African PGA Championship became the first tournament in South Africa to be co-sanctioned by the European Tour. The following year Alfred Dunhill took over from Lexington as title sponsors, breaking a 23-year association with the PGA. Following the 1999 event, Dunhill decided to end their association with the South African PGA and create their own tournament, the Alfred Dunhill Championship, which also replaced the PGA Championship on the European calendar. As a result, there was no PGA Championship held in 2000, but the tournament returned to the Sunshine Tour the following year with a new sponsor. It is one of the richest sole-sanctioned