High stakes on historic grounds at the 2024 PGA Professional Championship

06/06/2024

The PGA Professional Championship moves to the Medieval town of Conwy in North Wales this year, historically guarded by Conwy Castle, with its 22 towers and battlements overlooking the mountains of Snowdonia National Park.

But the 2024 battle will take place on the golf course, where from 11th-14th June, PGA Professionals from around Great Britain and Ireland will take on Conwy Golf Club, host venue of the 2021 Curtis Cup.

Follow the scoring from the PGA Professional Championship here.

Defending champion Paul Hendriksen (Ivybridge Golf Club) has started his 2024 season well with a number of top 10 finishes and two wins under his belt already: “I'm preparing for this one quite well - it's the highlight of the year, so I always try to make sure every area of the game is as good as it can be and prep in a way that I can peak hopefully for the tournament - it's good to be going in the right direction, so we'll see.

“I tend to do better at bigger events. The PGA Professional Championship is a really good event. It's four rounds, so if you have a couple of bad holes in there, at least you've still got a chance - it's more of a marathon than a sprint and I think that suits my game better.”

Hendriksen also won the PGA Professional Championship in 2015 and defended the championship the following year with a top 3 finish, so will be one to watch going into the 2024 edition of the tournament.

This year, it won’t just be the PGA Professional Champion celebrating, as the tournament results will also finalise an additional six places in the 2024 PGA Cup team. Points are allocated to the leading twenty players in the Championship from 2023 and 2024 and the top six players in the two year points table who haven’t already qualified will make the team.

2024 PGA Cup Captain, Tim Rouse, will be on site at Conwy Golf Club with his Vice Captain, Graham Walker, observing the players in the running: “Obviously it's a massively important week for the team because we get six players who will play their way into that team. At the Championship a lot of the players will play together and hopefully get a feel for who they'd like to play with in our Cup match. The players getting to know one another and each other's games is just massive. I'm really looking forward to the event.

“Graham and I will be observing the players that we feel might play their way into the team. Thursday and Friday we should get a better feel for it and it may be somebody we haven't followed before, so we'll need to get to know them and their game. The tournament gives us a great opportunity to see them on the golf course and get to know them a little bit as players.”

Whitchurch Golf Club’s Toby Hunt has already made the team thanks to his excellent performance at the 2024 PGA Play-Offs, but with tournament clashes meaning that previous qualifiers, Simon Thornton (Spa Golf Club) and Paul O’Hara (North Lanarkshire Leisure Ltd) are sadly unable to take part in the PGA Cup, Team Captain Tim Rouse will have a total of three Captain’s Picks to make after the PGA Professional Championship to complete his 10-man team.Woodhall Spa Golf Club’s Adam Keogh represented Team GB & Ireland in the 2022 edition of the PGA Cup, held at Foxhills Country Club and Resort, and is hoping to play his way into the 2024 team next week.

Keogh said: “I've been fortunate to play plenty of events but The PGA Cup has been, to date, the pinnacle of all of those. I couldn't recommend the event highly enough.

“I've got to go into the PGA Professional Championship next week and have a really good week to be in consideration or contention for the team. Once you've played one PGA Cup, you never want to miss one, so it would obviously mean everything to qualify.”

The 31st PGA Cup will take place at Sunriver Resort, Oregon from 13th-15th September where Team GB & Ireland will take on Team USA in the hope of regaining the Llandudno International Trophy.

To follow the scoring from the PGA Professional Championship, click here.

To find out more about the PGA Cup, click here.