The 2027 PGA Professional Championship brings a national title, 20 major
championship berths and the ambitions of 312 PGA Professionals to Red and Blue.
When the Golf Professionals Get Their Turn at Streamsong
By Brendon R. Elliott, PGA
Golf Industry Veteran, Award Winning PGA Coach, Golf Writer & Storyteller
Three years before Jesse Droemer won the PGA Professional Championship, he missed nine putts from inside 3 feet in the same event.
That was in 2023 at Twin Warriors in New Mexico. Droemer would later recall the week for something beyond the strokes he had let slip away. He had hit the ball well enough to see a championship in his future.
“That was the week where I was like ‘I can win this,’” he told the PGA of America.
He finished second in 2025. This past April, the teaching professional from Riverbend Country Club in Texas won at Bandon Dunes, closing with a 70 in brisk wind to claim the Walter Hagen Cup by one shot.
It took several trips to this championship for his game, experience and belief to come together. Next April, another field of PGA Professionals will arrive at Streamsong carrying its own unfinished business.
From April 25-28, 2027, Streamsong Red and Streamsong Blue will host the 59th PGA Professional Championship. The 312-player field will compete over 72 holes for the national championship of their profession. The low 20 scorers will also earn places in the 2027 PGA Championship as members of the Corebridge Financial Team.
For Streamsong, it will be the first PGA of America Member Championship staged at the resort. For the players, the meaning of the week will depend on what they brought here, and how much of it they can deliver when the score counts.
The Player Behind the Profession
When Chris Gabriele traveled to Bandon Dunes for this year’s championship, his wife, Caitlin, stayed at Old Westbury Golf & Country Club in New York to oversee the golf shop they operate together. He had become the club’s head professional in March. By the end of April, he had earned his first appearance in a major.
The shop still needed to run while he pursued that opportunity. Caitlin’s work at home is an important part of his championship story, even though a results sheet has no place to record it.
My working life revolves around coaching and writing, which is part of the appeal this championship holds for me. I understand how readily the hours available for your own golf can disappear into the work you do for everyone else’s.
The job title beside a player’s name tells you where that person works. It cannot tell you how well the player will handle a downhill putt with a national championship at stake. Head professionals, assistants, teachers and golf facility leaders arrive with different responsibilities and different paths through the game. During the round, all of them have to solve the hole in front of them.
The field comes together through PGA Section Championships and exemptions, including past champions and the previous championship’s top 20 finishers and ties. Qualifying through the 41 Sections connects the national event to golf communities across the country.
Some of those places have already been decided under considerable pressure. In August, Dylan Newman secured the Metropolitan PGA’s last available qualifying position after a three-hole playoff against Paul Dickinson and Taylor Davis. His next stop in this championship’s qualifying path is Streamsong.
For golfers at a competitor’s home facility, following the event means watching someone whose work they know. The person who helps them prepare for a tournament now has a difficult wind or an uncomfortable putt to handle. That familiarity can make a name halfway down the leaderboard as interesting as the player leading it.
The course should make those decisions interesting. Streamsong has two very different ways to do it.
Red Rewards the Shot You Planned
Streamsong Red, designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, will serve as the championship’s primary course. Its opening hole climbs between dunes. Later, the long par-4 15th brings a massive bunker into the picture on the left. The par-3 16th presents a Biarritz green, with a pronounced swale separating portions of the putting surface.
Those features give the player things to consider well before the club is pulled. A yardage to the flag is useful. It is also an incomplete description of the shot.
On a green divided by a swale, the golfer has to think about which part of the surface the ball can reasonably reach and what happens if it finishes elsewhere. On a long par 4, the temptation to gain distance has to be measured against the position that distance will buy. These are decisions a player can understand perfectly and still struggle to make at the right moment.
Chad Helms, Streamsong’s PGA Director of Golf, put the priority plainly in the PGA of America’s course preview.
“Golfers have to play to the correct side of the fairway,” he said.
Red’s approach angles and green contours make that advice consequential. A drive can finish on short grass and still leave a difficult next shot. A player who chooses the right side has done some of the approach work before reaching the ball.
I played Red during a recent trip with my father and brother, Graham, and shot 78. There was no intensive preparation behind it. I chose targets, worked with the game I had and enjoyed competing again.
I wrote afterward about the satisfaction of that round. My working life now gives far more time to coaching and writing than to my own golf. An afternoon on Red brought the playing part back into focus.
A family round cannot replicate what these competitors will face. It did remind me how absorbing Red can be when you stop trying to manufacture a perfect swing and begin playing the course. I am interested to see which players can keep doing that when a difficult hole interrupts an otherwise promising championship round.
Blue and the Putt Still to Come
Tom Doak’s Streamsong Blue begins with a view from the property’s highest point. The landscape opens around the player, exposing the scale of the dunes and the movement in the ground. Its third hole, a cape-style par 4, offers an aggressive line that can shorten and simplify the approach. The seventh asks for a tee shot across water to a green surrounded by dunes, reached on foot by a bridge.
Blue gives golfers a great deal to look at. The challenge is deciding what deserves their attention when they are trying to post a score.
The third hole is a good example. The shorter approach is there to be earned. Before choosing the bolder line, the player has to weigh the benefit against the chance of executing it. Confidence is useful; it also needs an honest assessment of the shot available that day.
Blue’s wider fairways create opportunities from the tee, but its large, contoured greens demand precise approach placement. Helms identifies lag putting as a crucial skill when a player finishes in the wrong portion of a green.
As a coach, I would spend considerable preparation time on that first putt. Golfers often evaluate an approach by whether it found the putting surface. At Blue, I would want a player to be more exact: Where did it finish, and how difficult is the next shot?
A long putt moving through changes in contour requires more than a reliable stroke. The player must see the route, judge the pace and accept a sensible finishing area. Trying too hard to hole it can leave an unnecessarily demanding return putt. Playing too defensively can leave the same problem from the other direction.
Those choices become harder when the golfer is already unhappy with the approach. The discipline is to deal with the putt that remains, without allowing the previous shot to dictate its speed.
That is a valuable test for a field full of teachers and experienced players. They understand the principle. Streamsong Blue will ask them to apply it repeatedly.
Twenty Places, With Much More Attached
The championship has been a national showcase for PGA Professionals since 1968. Its connection to the PGA Championship gives the final round another layer of competition. A player can be well outside the title race and still face a shot that determines whether the week ends with a major championship berth.
The 2027 PGA Championship will be played May 20-23 at Fields Ranch East at PGA Frisco in Texas. The successful qualifiers at Streamsong will have only a few weeks between earning their places and competing in a major.
Michael Block showed in 2023 how far such an opportunity can reach. The PGA Professional from Arroyo Trabuco Golf Club in California tied for 15th at Oak Hill, making a hole-in-one on the 15th during the final round. Golf fans who had never taken a lesson from him, or even heard his name, suddenly had a professional to cheer for.
There is no way to schedule another week like that. The value of the qualifying opportunity exists before anyone knows what will come of it.
Gabriele’s finish at Bandon shows how narrow the opening can be. Five bogeys in seven holes on the back nine threatened his qualifying hopes. On the par-5 18th, he hit a 3-wood from 263 yards to inside 5 feet and made the eagle putt. He finished tied for 10th, one stroke clear of the qualifying line.
The putt sent a newly appointed head professional to his first major. His father, Paul, would carry his bag at Aronimink.
I do not want those possibilities to obscure the championship at Streamsong. Winning the Walter Hagen Cup matters in its own right. Droemer’s account of his earlier missed putts makes that clear. He could see himself winning this event, and he kept returning until he did.
There will also be players for whom a top-20 finish is the achievement they have spent years pursuing. The final leaderboard will contain both kinds of success, along with near misses that will stay with the golfers long after April.
A Championship Within Streamsong's Next Chapter
The timing is particularly good for Streamsong. Bone Valley, David McLay Kidd’s new course, is scheduled for its grand opening Jan. 26, 2027. Alongside Red, Blue and Black, it will give the resort four full-length courses, with The Chain providing its 19-hole short-course experience.
The April championship will focus on Red and Blue, the two courses around which Streamsong’s golf reputation first developed. As the resort expands, those original designs will be asked to examine some of the best players in the PGA Professional ranks.
“Streamsong Red and Blue were built to inspire golfers at the highest level,” General Manager Miles Blundell said in the PGA of America’s announcement of the host site.
The championship will give that statement a competitive setting. Golf Channel coverage will also bring the courses to people who have yet to visit, letting them see how the land influences actual tournament decisions.
Guests who have played here will have a different experience watching. They will recognize a tee, a bunker or a troublesome section of green. A hole remembered from a golf trip will become part of a player’s effort to reach Frisco or win a national title.
I would encourage golfers watching next April to follow a few of those players beyond the leaders. Look for the professional from your Section. Watch what happens around the final qualifying position. Pay attention when a player takes the longer route into a green or leaves an approach well away from the flag.
Red and Blue will give those choices context. Knowing the contours, the sand and the room available from the tee makes the competition easier to appreciate, particularly for anyone who has stood over a similar shot here.
Gabriele is already exempt into the 2027 championship through his finish at Bandon. Newman earned his place in that August playoff. They have reached Streamsong by different routes. Once play begins, both will have to find a way to turn that opportunity into four rounds good enough to keep going.
