The Wanamaker Trophy: All You Need To Know About The PGA Championship Prize

The Wanamaker Trophy - awarded to the winner of the PGA Championship every year - has been around since 1916, and its birth symbolised everything we now love about the professional game.

Early in 1916, a sportsman and heir to a department store empire called Rodman Wanamaker summoned some friends - including prominent golfers like Francis Ouimet and Walter Hagen - to New York to discuss the formation of a national organisation for professional golfers.

At the time, professional golfers were still considered hired help, and Wanamaker wanted to change that. His February 1916 meeting ultimately resulted in the formation of the PGA of America, which would host a professionals-only tournament later that year.

The first PGA Championship took place in October 1916 as a match-play competition at Siwanoy Country Club in Bronxville, New York. Wanamaker put up $2,500 of his own money for the prize fund and champion, Jim Barnes won $500 as well as a diamond-studded gold medal donated by the golfing visionary.

After a two-year hiatus due to World War I, the PGA Championship returned. Instead of a gold medal, though, Wanamaker ordered a grand silver cup which would go on to be named in his honor.

The original Wanamaker Trophy stands at 28 inches (2.5 feet/75cm) high, 10 and a half inches in diameter, 27 inches from handle to handle and weighs 27 pounds (12kg). It's still to this day one of the best trophies in golf.

However, the very first Wanamaker Trophy is not the one you now see on TV every year. The reason for this is down to Walter Hagen.

Jim Barnes won the first two PGA Championships and was the first to have his name etched on the Wanamaker Trophy. Then came Jock Hutchison, Hagen and Gene Sarazen before Hagen triumphed again. However, a mistake from Hagen in the aftermath of his second PGA Championship victory meant that the PGA of America changed its policy on allowing winners to possess the original trophy away from the course.

Hagen took home the Wanamaker Trophy for four straight years, from 1924-27, and its whereabouts seemed insignificant.

Hagen was asked at the 1926 award ceremony why he didn't have the trophy, and replied that he hadn't brought it with him because he had no intention of surrendering it. To his credit, he kept hold of it in 1927 as well.

But, the following year, the bullish American was forced to relinquish the Wanamaker Trophy after losing to eventual champion Leo Diegel in the quarter-finals. Except, there was a problem - Hagen didn't have it.

When the time came for Hagen to hand over the Wanamaker Trophy after his long reign as its custodian, he was forced to admit that he'd lost it.

The story around its disappearance is vague to say the least, but the gist is that Hagen went partying after winning his seventh Major at the 1925 PGA Championship at Olympia Fields in Chicago. During his celebrations, he jumped out of a cab to join some friends who were heading into a nightclub and left the Wanamaker Trophy behind.

Hagen claims he paid the taxi driver to deliver it to his hotel, but it never arrived. Instead, it somehow made its way from Chicago to Detroit, where it was found five years later in 1930 in an unmarked case in the basement of L.A. Young & Company, the firm that made Hagen's golf clubs.

Lost? Misplaced? Tucked away? No one knows for sure.

In its absence, the PGA of America had a duplicate of the Wanamaker Trophy made. Once the original was recovered, it was retired, and it is now on display at the PGA Historical Centre in Florida. Champions' names are still added annually to the original, but it is the more recent version that the PGA Championship winners now pose with.

The new trophy holds plenty of stories of its own, though, like the one about 1991 champion John Daly, who apparently turned it into a keg after his victory at Crooked Stick, but none could ever match the Hagen adventure of 1925.

Additionally there have been a couple of occasions where players have had accidents with the lid, the most recent of which was Collin Morikawa in 2020 at San Francisco's TPC Harding Park. Holding the trophy aloft resulted in the lid falling off and some comical reactions from the American.

Many of the greats of the men's game have their name on the Wanamaker. Hagen and Jack Nicklaus have each won five PGA Championships while Tiger Woods' name is on there four times and modern day great Brooks Koepka has his name on it three times. Rory McIlroy, Gary Player, Lee Trevino, Phil Mickelson are among multiple victors, too.

The tournament winner keeps the Wanamaker Trophy for a year, with one of the perks of winning the PGA Championship being that the champion then receives a replica - about 10% smaller - once the original trophy has been returned.

Xander Schauffele now has one at home after claiming his maiden Major at the 2024 PGA Championship and scooping a check for $3.33 million at the same time.