Seamus Power qualified for this month’s PGA Championship at Quail Hollow after remaining inside the top-70 in the PGA Championship Points List despite a missed cut at the CJ Cup in Byron Nelson.
Power remained in 65th position which was good enough to book his third appearance at the PGA Championship.
The West Waterford man will bring the total number of Irish golfers teeing it up in Quail Hollow to four as he joins grand slam winner Rory McIlroy, Shane Lowry and 2008 PGA champion Pádraig Harrington.
Power missed out on last year’s edition at Valhalla but he did tie for ninth on his PGA Championship debut at Southern Hills in 2022 before missing the cut at Oak Hill in 2023.
It will be the world number 122’s first major appearance since last year’s US Open.
LIV Golf’s Tom McKibbin looked set to make the field before joining the Saudi backed tour. Now, the world number 115 would need a special exemption which seems highly unlikely.
McIlroy will be the hot favourite at Quail Hollow, a course he has won at four times in his career, he remains the only player to win the Wells Fargo Championship more than twice at that golf course and it is also the site of his first PGA Tour victory.
Talk of the calendar slam will be rife once McIlroy arrives on PGA Championship week which may quell some of the hype around Jordan Spieth’s grand slam bid as he looks to join McIlroy and co as only the seventh player to win all four major championships.
Spieth has found some consistency of late with three successive top-18 finishes followed by a fourth place showing last week and he is trying to take some grand slam inspiration from McIlroy into his bid for golfing immortality.
“Not only did he complete it,” Spieth told CBS’ Amanda Balionis after finishing fourth at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson. “But the time it took to complete it. It was obviously a very challenging week for him. It was harder than anybody maybe ever to win a Masters. To be that far form his most recent major as well, and then to go and do it, I mean, it was very inspiring.”
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