The PGA Championship has a Canadian flavor

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The second biggest men’s golf of the year kicks off Thursday at Oak Hill in Rochester, New York, just an hour and a half drive from the Ontario border. With a record six Canadians in the field, there’s a better chance one of them will hoist the Wanamaker Trophy on Sunday. More on that below, plus a few other things to know about the tournament:

It’s round 2 of the PGA Tour vs. LIV Golf.

This is the second largest since the flow of defectors to the Saudi-funded league was stopped and the battle lines were clearly drawn. The only arena for players from rival tours to play against each other is the four majors, each run by independent entities. The PGA Championship belongs to the PGA of America, a separate organization from the PGA Tour.

The Rebels made a statement at the Masters, where Brooks Koepka and LIV Golf posterboy Phil Mickelson tied for second and Patrick Reed tied for fourth. Those results dispelled the myth that LIV’s decadent 54-hole events with no cuts and big guaranteed paychecks would make its stars too soft to compete on the sport’s biggest stages.

There will be 18 LIV Golf players at the PGA Championship, the same number that played at Augusta. Mickelson will try to recapture his magic from the 2021 event at Kiawah Island, where, less than a month shy of his 51st birthday, he became the oldest major champion in history and captured his sixth major title. Koepka was runner-up that year, coming close to losing his fifth major victory after winning back-to-back PGA and back-to-back US Open championships late last decade.

Other LIV players on the field this week include Reed, reigning British Open champion Cameron Smith and previous Grand Slam winners Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau.

Rory McIlroy seems a bit out of place.

LIV Golf’s most outspoken critic of the PGA Tour has suddenly gone silent on the matter, giving a series of clipped answers to questions from reporters about the rivalry on Tuesday. This continued a strange pattern of behavior for the four-time major champion, who following his devastating missed cut at the Masters (the only major he hasn’t won) skipped the following week’s mandatory event.

A large component of the PGA Tour’s battle plan against LIV Golf involved 13 of its tournaments with high prizes and mandatory attendance for the best players. They’re allowed to miss one of them, but McIlroy had already skipped the year-opening Sentry Tournament of Champions, resulting in him essentially being fined $3 million dollars by the Tour. That’s a lot of money, even for someone as rich as McIlroy. Also, it was strange that the fiercest anti-LIV warrior on Tour would turn his back on a major event. But he said he needed a break for his “mental and emotional well-being.”

McIlroy returned for next week’s heightened event, the Wells Fargo Championship, but flopped as low as 47th. So he’s not exactly in top form as he chases his first major title in nine years.

Tiger Woods is not playing.

The GOAT was clearly hurt at the Masters, barely making the cut before retiring due to a bout of plantar fasciitis. The following week, Woods announced that he had undergone another surgery on his crumbling body, this time an ankle procedure to treat arthritis stemming from the 2021 car accident that nearly cost him his leg.

There is no timetable for the 15-time Grand Slam champion’s return, and he had already been reduced to an extremely limited schedule after the clash. Woods is now also dealing with a lawsuit filed by his ex-girlfriend Erica Herman, who is seeking to invalidate a confidentiality agreement and claims that Woods used a lawyer to break up with her.

Jon Rahm and Scottie Scheffler are the co-favorites.

The betting markets give the top two world-ranked players an equal chance of winning their first PGA Championship. Rahm, a 28-year-old Spaniard, won the Masters last month for his second major title. Scheffler, a 26-year-old American who looks 46, captured the green jacket last year for his only specialty. He also won the “fifth major” in March, pocketing a record $4.5 million for his victory in the Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass.

The defending champion is American Justin Thomas, who rallied from seven strokes before entering the final round to defeat Will Zalatoris in a tiebreaker to capture his second PGA Championship last year at Southern Hills.

Six Canadians will target the country’s longest male drought.

It’s been 20 years since Mike Weir’s historic Masters victory, but Canada has a full cylinder to shoot at Oak Hill. The group of six includes three players who have won on tour this season in Corey Conners, Adam Svensson and Mackenzie Hughes. They are joined by Taylor Pendrith, Nick Taylor and Adam Hadwin.

Conners seems to have the best chance. The 31-year-old from Listowel, Ontario is ranked 29th in the world, comfortably the highest among Canadians. He is also the best Canadian in betting odds, with an implied win probability of around 1 per cent. That’s a long shot, but Oak Hill is not a particularly long course that rewards mostly accuracy, a good fit for Conners’ skill set.

Keep an eye on Taylor too. The 35-year-old from Abbotsford, BC, is the top Canadian in the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup standings at No. 22. But he might be a little rusty (and sleep-deprived) coming off a three-week layoff for the birth of his and his wife’s second child. Read more about Taylor and the other Canadians at the PGA Championship here..