Saturday At The 2022 Senior PGA Championship

A view on the 7th at Harbor Shores at the 2022 KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship.

Saturday At The 2022 KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship

I spent Saturday at the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship at Harbor Shores Golf Club in Benton Harbor, Michigan.

At the end of the third day, Stephen Ames leads by two shots over Mike Weir and the ageless Bernhard Langer. Defending champion Alex Cejka is four shots behind in a tie for fifth.

Also lurking is PGA TOUR Champions rookie Brian Gay, who is looking for his first win on the senior circuit.

Charles Schwab Cup leader Steven Alker sits at T5 while he looks for his third win in five starts on the PGA TOUR Champions.

Miguel Angel Jimenez who sits in the second spot in the Charles Schwab Cup race is in a tie for eighth alongside Gene Saunders, Thongchai Jaidee, Shane Bertsch and Padraig Harrington.

Second round co-leader Scott McCarron posted a 3-over 74 to fall into a tie for eighteenth.

	Player	To Par	Scores
1	Stephen Ames	-12	68-66-67 – 201
T2	Mike Weir	-10	65-71-67 – 203
T2	Bernhard Langer	-10	68-68-67 – 203
4	Paul Goydos	-9	69-68-67 – 204
T5	Alex Cejka	-8	68-69-68 – 205
T5	Steven Alker	-8	64-72-69 – 205
T5	Brian Gay	-8	68-68-69 – 205

The midway at the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship.

Off the fairways and greens, the PGA of America and KitchenAid have put together a really nice event, with seemingly more than enough infrastructure to handle the spectators.

Wait times at the numerous food and drink venues seemed short; I saw no lines at the porta potties. A large fleet of trolleys and buses were employed to move spectators around the sprawling and somewhat disconnected course. Helpful volunteers were everywhere.

An interesting approach to the food and beverage distribution was the use of a fleet of small food vehicles. They weren’t full size food trucks of the sort you find in parking lots, but rather more like the love child of a golf course beverage cart and a small pickup. I suppose the advantage of those was that they could be quickly redeployed to where the crowds were. They also don’t require a fleet of vehicles to resupply them. When they run low, they can just drive back to the warehouse.

Still, they were selling those ridiculously overpriced Miller Ultras that gained such notoriety at last week’s PGA Championship.

A cooking demonstration in a pavilion on one end of the midway

Sponsor KitchenAid, which is headquartered in Benton Harbor (the media center is actually in a KitchenAid research building) not surprisingly makes its presence known everywhere.

The midway area near the clubhouse and driving range has a large pavilion that features celebrity chef cooking exhibitions and demonstrations of Kitchen Aid equipment.

A tower of KitchenAid appliances near the first tee.

Elsewhere, there were stations where patrons could trade their names and emails for a chance to win KitchenAid appliances and a large children’s playground with inflatables.

The weather on Saturday at the 2022 Senior PGA Championship could not have been more perfect. The temperatures topped out in the low 70s, with sunny skies and a light breeze. In the morning it was downright cool.

Sightlines at Harbor Shores are pretty good, even where the crowds were relatively dense following stars like Bernhard Langer and Ernie Els. I have an “inside the ropes” pass, but didn’t need to use it to get a good view; there always seemed to be a nearby hillock I could stand on to look over the other spectators and get a good photo.

I think that the best stretch to take in the tournament runs from the 15th to 18th holes. Those four are relatively close and offer a chance to see the end of the par five 15th, an interesting par four in the sixteenth, a short par 3 and the finishing eighteenth.

In particular, the lightly wooded between the sixteenth and seventeenth gives fairway and green views of both those holes.

Although the view are terrific, I think probably is best to avoid the stretch of holes seven through nine. They are a bit of a hike from the rest of the course, and a bottleneck forms at the top of the dune that stages the green for the seventh and tee box of the eighth.

However, that’s also where the large playground is located. If you need to go there, I suggest you catch a shuttle.