JOURNAL SPORTS
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Sam Burns has strung together his best golf of 2025 in the past month, except for his last nine holes last week, and his improved ball-striking combines with his PGA Tour-best putting to warrant notice as the season’s second major, the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow Club, begins today.
Burns, a Shreveport native and Calvary Baptist product who was an All-American star at LSU for two seasons, will tee off on No. 10 at 7:55 a.m. CDT today, playing with emerging PGA Tour star Akshay Bhatia and Denny McCarthy. They will have an early afternoon tee time off No. 1 on Friday.
Beginning at The Masters, Burns has made four straight cuts after a skid of three consecutive missed cuts. In his last three starts in the month since Augusta, he was in contention on the weekend: the RBC Heritage (10-under, a tie for 13th), the CJ Cup Byron Nelson (T5, -13) and last week’s Truist Championship, where he was tied for 8th early in the final round but had a bogey-filled back nine to card his highest score since The Masters, a 73 that left him tied for 30th at 5-under.
He had nine straight rounds carding scores in the 60s until a second-round 70 last week. He rebounded with a 67 in tough conditions last Saturday in Philadephia and comes into the PGA with 10 sub-70 scores in his last 12 rounds.
Now a resident of Choudrant where he plays out of Squire Creek Country Club, Burns will be making his sixth PGA Championship start and his 20th major appearance. He did not make the cut in the 2023 and 2024 PGA Championships, but his best PGA Championship finish was in 2022 when he tied for 20th after surging into the top 10 early in the final round.
Burns ranks No. 1 on the PGA Tour in strokes gained putting (0.997) and has been even better in his last five starts, with a rate of 1.18. The 28-year-old ranks 16th on tour with 25.1 percent of his rounds under par this season. His putting prowess should come in handy at Quail Hollow, noted for having some of the most challenging greens of any American course.
The PGA Championship field has 155 players, including 13 former champions, and Masters champ Rory McIlroy, who has four career wins on the Quail Hollow layout. The field includes 98 of the top 100 players in the Official World Golf Rankings. Burns stands 35th.
Today and Friday the streaming and television coverage will be exclusively on ESPN with the main broadcast on ESPN+ from 6- 11 a.m. ESPN will then have the coverage on ESPN.
Saturday and Sunday the streaming broadcast will begin on ESPN+ from 7-9 a.m. with ESPN on air from 9-noon. CBS Sports will have the complete coverage of the leaders from noon to 6 p.m. both days.
ESPN+ will also have four feature group pairings each day as well as feature hole coverage all four days.