This week’s two PGA Tour stops are the final warmups for the year’s second major tournament – the PGA Championship. The top stars will be at the Truist Championship at Quail Valley, in Charlotte, N.C., which tees off on Thursday.
World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, the runner-up in his last three tournaments, won’t be there but Cameron Young – the winner of the Cadillac Championship last week – and Rory McIlroy, winner of the Masters the last two years, will.
The PGA’s under card event, the ONEflight Myrtle Beach Classic at The Dunes Club in North Carolina and also tees off on Thursday. Itis unique, though. It represents one of the few times the bulk of the Illinois-connected tour players will be playing in the same tournament.
Illinois alum Adrien Dumont de Chassart, Arlington Heights’ Doug Ghim, Northbrook’s Nick (also an Illinois alum), Wheaton’s Kevin Streelman and Northwestern alum Dylan Wu are all in the field.
Hardy and Wu have spent most of this season on the Korn Ferry Tour. Dumont de Chassart was on the developmental circuit last year but earn his PGA Tour card for 2026 after finishing in the top 20 on the Korn Ferry circuit in 2025.
Streelman, 47, has made 407 cuts and is a two-time winner on the premier circuit since earning his PGA Tour card in 2008 but surgery to repair a torn meniscus has cut into his playing time the last two years.
No doubt all would prefer to play in the Truist this week . It has a $20 million purse while only $4 million will be on the line at Myrtle Beach. That tournament, though, does have one very big name. Five-time major champion Brooks Koepka is paying the price for defecting to the LIV Tour. Though a past PGA Championship winner, he was given only alternate’s status in the Truist so opted to take a spot at Myrtle Beach rather than sit out this week.
U.S. OPEN: University of Illinois alum Jackson Buchanan dominated the second of three local qualifiers, shooting a 7-under-par 64 on Monday at Illini Country Club in Springfield. Illini hosted a local Open elimination for the 45th consecutive year, and Buchanan had a six-stroke edge on runner-up Luke Gannon of downstate Monticello.
Buchanan, from Dacula, Ga., qualified for last year’s U.S. Open and missed the 36-hole cut. He’s been playing on the Korn Ferry Tour this year. The third and final Chicago area local qualifier with be at Flossmoor Country Club on May 11.
COLLEGE: The Illinois men’s team, ranked No. 12 nationally, gets its NCAA regional assignment at 1 p.m. Wednesday on The Golf Channel. Coach Mike Small’s Illini, runner-up to UCLA last weekend in the Big Ten Championship at Pumpkin Ridge, in Oregon, will be in the NCAA tourney for the 18th consecutive year.
The men’s regionals are May 18-20 at six sites, the closest being on Ohio State’s course in Columbus. The finals are May 29-June 6 at Omni LaCosta Resort, in California.
NCAA regional assignments are already set for the women’s teams. Illinois is headed for the Stanford course in California and Northwestern will play in Ann Arbor, Mich., Both those regionals begin a three-day run on May 13. The women’s finals will also be played at LaCosta, from May 22-27.
WESTERN GOLF: The Western Golf Association has selected five future sites for its Western Amateur tournament, and four of them are in the Chicago area – Knollwood (Lake Forest), 2027), Conway Farms (Lake Forest), 2029, Glen View Club (2030) and Skokie (Glencoe), 2032.
Baltimore Country Club will host in 2028. This year’s Western Am is at Chicago’s Beverly Country Club from July 27 to Aug. 1.