Hunter Mahan compares Quail Hollow to the Kardashians: The celebrity family won’t be pleased with the comparison

The 2025 PGA Championship has barely begun but we may have already heard the quote of the week already.

US golfer Hunter Mahan isn’t even competing at the Quail Hollow Golf Course in Charlotte, North Carolina but he’s still got some strong opinions about this year’s venue. Ahead of the tournament, The Athletic spoke to Mahan to get his thoughts on the course and he delivered a bizarre but striking comparison.

“I guess I would say Quail Hollow is like a Kardashian,” Mahan explained. “It’s very modern, beautiful and well-kept. But it lacks a soul or character.”

Quite what the Kardashians did to draw the ire of Hunter Mahan isn’t yet clear, but he does get at a fundamental problem with the PGA Championship. As one of the four Major tournaments it is undoubtedly a illustrious competition.

However it is often ranked as the fourth of the four men’s Major tournaments with some pointing to a lack of ‘X-factor’ surrounding it. The Open is the oldest and most historic. The Master is played at the iconic Augusta course, while the US Open is probably the toughest, and therefore most prestigious, of the Majors. The PGA Championship, however, has no real claim at any of those statuses.

This is partly because the PGA Championship changes location every year, making it difficult for a special character to build up. This is something that players have commented upon, too, as Jon Rahm did ahead of this year’s competition.

“Yeah, you get different things every time you come,” Rahm explained. “It’s very difficult to say that two of them are the same. You can have somewhere you go into a playoff at 5-under and then last year where 21-under wins it.”

“A Whistling Straits, [Jason Day] got to 20 because Jordan [Speith] was 17. Jason got to 20 at Whistling Straits, which even in a Ryder Cup setup, I wouldn’t in a million years think anyone would get to 20-under there. It’s quite interesting.

“Then you have a Bethpage where you have single digits again. US Opens, for the most part, you know what you’re getting and so on. It definitely has a character of having that different character each time you come.”

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