At major championships, the course ends up as big a story as the competition itself. The hubbub surrounding conditions at Augusta National following this year’s Masters settled to a quiet murmur in the summer while the question of Oakmont’s severity — was it merely stiff or just plain absurd? — will still be asked a hundred years from now. At Carnoustie, venue for this year’s Open Championship, the focus was on the R&A and the good sense it showed in allowing James Braid’s sound design and the subdued easterly breezes to defend the par of 71, rather than the 1999–style rough that most considered too high and too thick to border narrow fairways.

Showing a sagacity that eludes the United States Golf Association every year, the PGA of America has picked up where the R&A left off by presenting Southern Hills in Tulsa, Okla., the venue for the 89th PGA Championship and the first course to host the tournament four times, in a way that should guarantee much excitement this weekend. Players will be going for flags, albeit cautiously, rather than seeking a flat part of the putting surface, 40 feet from the hole, in an effort to avoid falling off the green or taking four putts. In short, Southern Hills will be tough, like any major championship venue should be, but it won’t stifle players, and will at least offer the golfer needing 32 on the back nine on Sunday to win the chance of glory.

At just 7,131 yards — that’s considered short nowadays — with five par 4s under 400 yards and a par 5 (the 13th) that some players will hit with a drive and a midiron, Southern Hills might appear rather submissive on the scorecard. But designer Perry Maxwell added the equivalent number of potential disaster holes to make the course anything but a pushover. There are five par 4s over 450 yards and two par 3s that measure in excess of 220. The first par 5, the fifth, extends to 653 yards and possesses two large, staggered fairway bunkers that narrow the landing area off the tee. Thanks to a decision to mow areas around fairway bunkers, balls on a direct line for the sand won’t stop short in the rough, but continue on into the bunker. Now, instead of having to chop out onto the fairway — a shot that neither gives the better player any advantage nor interests the spectator — the skillful golfer will be able to make good progress down the course.

The Bermuda rough will be 2 inches long – high and thick enough to penalize the wayward half a shot or so, but not so punishing as to force that tedious sideways hack. And the well-contoured, typically quick bent-grass greens will roll consistently this year thanks to alterations that designer Keith Foster made in 2004 following the bizarre events of 2001 when Retief Goosen and Stewart Cink both three-putted from inside 15 feet at the 72nd hole of the US Open. Because of severe slopes at the front of those greens, the grass was cut higher to prevent balls that pitched in the first third of the green from rolling back down the fairway. No one is suggesting the tiddlers both players missed that year were anything but terrible putts, but irregularity in green speeds couldn’t have helped.

With a permanent greenstaff of 52, the course is in immaculate shape and Phil Mickelson has already called it the most complete test ever devised for a major championship. The winner is unlikely to go as low as Tiger Woods did at Medinah last year when, aided by heavy rain and soft greens, the world number one shot 270, 18-under, for four rounds, but he will surely will need to go well south of even par.

Woods is, of course, the man expected to go the lowest. After his superb display on Sunday at the WGC Bridgestone Invitational, he is clearly in the sort of form necessary to win a fourth Wanamaker Trophy. He didn’t excel here at the 2001 U.S. Open, but that won’t bother him in the slightest.

Nor will the hot Tulsa sun. A decade ago, temperatures in the high 90s might have precluded a European victory, but as Open champion Padraig Harrington said yesterday, the Euros play in Malaysia, Thailand, and other hot and sweaty places often enough to make Oklahoma seem comfortable by comparison. The sight of Colin Montgomerie or Ian Woosnam staggering up the last with a wet towel around his neck and large damp patches under his armpits is a thing of the past.

In winning the Open Championship, Harrington believes he may have opened the floodgates and that European golfers, who went from July 1999 to July 2007 without a major win, will now scoop them up. Indeed, Paul Casey, Luke Donald, Henrik Stenson, Justin Rose, Sergio Garcia, and a handful of others look capable of becoming the first European-born champion since Tommy Armour (who emigrated to America in 1925) won at Fresh Meadows in New York in 1930.

Existing major title-holders such as Mickelson, Vijay Singh, and the now-healthy Jim Furyk will likely contend, but it would be appropriate in this year of first-time winners for any of the young Europeans to join Zach Johnson, Angel Cabrera, and Harrington among the game’s major champions. They will have to get past a large group of potential first-time winners from elsewhere around the world, however, most notably Australia and, America. From Down Under, Adam Scott, Stuart Appleby, Rod Pampling, Aaron Baddeley, and Robert Allenby have the game, and, thanks to a number of years on the PGA Tour, the experience to emerge victorious. From this side of the Pacific, Cink, Chris Di-Marco, Kenny Perry, Lucas Glover, and Hunter Mahan are playing well enough to land their first major. But with three first-timers at the majors already this year, who’s to say one of the 20 club pros in the field can’t win?

Well, Tiger Woods for starters.