PGA Championship uses a 3-hole aggregate playoff format

Sunday’s round could come down to the wire.

The PGA Championship uses a three-hole aggregate playoff to break any ties atop the leaderboard after 72 holes. If two or more players are tied at the top of the leaderboard, they will then replay holes there will be a three-hole aggregate score playoff on Holes 16, 17, and 18.

If the score is still even after that, an epic sudden-death playoff begins on No. 18, and it will keep going onto the 10th, 16th, 17th, and 18th, and so on until someone finally wins. Whoever comes out on top takes the Wanamaker Trophy and the championship. A playoff is certainly possible, and it looked like it would go between Brooks Koepka, Tiger Woods, or Adam Scott at the end of the day Sunday.

Here’s Alex Kirshner on why this playoff format makes a lot of sense for the PGA Championship:

It’s a good way to decide a championship. A sudden-death playoff, while nominally fair, can be an awfully cruel and random way to decide a championship that’s gone on for four days. An 18-hole match, like at the U.S. Open, is so long that it threatens to get viewers to tune out. Major Sundays are better than major Mondays. But the way the PGA and The Open do it, there’s a happy middle ground: not too long, not too volatile.

The PGA previously used an 18-hole playoff a la the U.S. Open, but it abandoned that setup after the 1976 championship. It then went to a sudden-death look, and the next three tournaments were decided in that fashion. The tournament later cut that down to the three-hole decider that it still uses today.

However Sundays round ends up, it’ll cap off one heck of a day at Bellervie.