Professional golfers are, as a rule, reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them. Two decades ago, Dave Hill did suggest that one US Open site, Haseltine National in Minnesota, might be improved if it were plowed back into the farmland from whence it had come ("They ruined a perfectly good cornfield when they built this place," said Hill), and some weeks ago David Duval candidly noted that Valhalla, in Louisville, might be better suited to a minor league buy.com Tour event than to staging a major championship.

Duval, having withdrawn Tuesday with an injured back, will not be around to sample his misgivings, but the fact remains that, when grouped with the other sites of the millennium majors - Augusta National, Pebble Beach, and St Andrews Old Course - Valhalla, the site of the PGA Championship, which starts today, sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb.

It's not just that it is new, although as USA Today's Jerry Potter noted a couple of days ago, St Andrews has the tradition of 600 years, and Augusta National has a wine cellar older than Valhalla. Even Jack Nicklaus, its creator, concedes that Valhalla does not rank among his masterpieces, and that, were he given the same raw materials today, he might have designed a far different course.

"It isn't one of the traditional courses, and it's not the same style of course we usually play majors on," Jim Furyk said diplomatically. "But it is a major, and we'd all like to win it."

The argument here isn't so much with the selection of this year's venue, but with what appears to be an alarming trend. It has been just four years since Valhalla last staged the PGA Championship, but here we are, back again. The venue has also been tapped to stage the same tournament in 2004, and the Ryder Cup a year later.

In no analysis does Valhalla qualify as a venue worthy of staging four of golf's most distinguished events in the space of 11 years (at least one more than will, for instance, St Andrews in the same time-frame), and the simple explanation is pure, unadulterated greed.

Both the PGA Championship and the Ryder Cup are administered by the PGA of America, an entity distinctly separate from the US PGA Tour. The latter, it may be noted, owns its share of golf courses, the so-called Tournament Players Clubs scattered around the country, but the tradition of the event beginning this morning has its roots in a broader-based constituency made up of the nation's club and teaching professionals, some 25 of whom annually play their way into the field.

In an effort to eliminate the middleman, the PGA of America had, after the 1996 US PGA Championship, acquired a 50 per cent interest in Valhalla, and, at the conclusion of the 82nd staging of the event this week, will exercise its option to buy the other half. In other words, when the 2006 PGA and the 2007 Ryder Cup roll around, the organisation won't have to split the profits with the host venue: they will own it.

When the PGA Championship was contested at Valhalla four years ago, Mark Brooks defeated Kenny Perry in a play-off. Neither man has been heard from again: the point is that the less distinguished the golf course, the better the chance that anyone in the field can win it. Personally, I've never been a great fan of Nicklaus designs. A friend of mine (and a friend of Nicklaus'), Dave Anderson, once observed that "Jack builds courses no one can play but himself", but in the case of Valhalla you'd have to say he painted the best portrait he could, given the flawed canvas he was handed.

The course was constructed in the rolling, bluegrass farmlands east of Louisville. The site lies on a low flood-plain, and 650,000 cubic yards of earth were trucked in to raise the fairways above the flood level of the Ohio River's tributary system.

In contrast to the links-like feel of the first nine holes, the back nine is cut from an entirely different cloth, winding through woodland. Valhalla also suffers from the intrusion of gigantic towers and electrical lines running through the course. These obstructions are far enough from the fairways that one doubts that this week's pros will find any of them with a wayward shot (although you and I certainly could), but imagine the embarrassment of the PGA should one of this week's golfers have to replay a shot because his ball had been knocked down by an electric wire.

But the more significant aspect of the design is that strange courses produce strange champions, which is why you're more likely to see another Mark Brooks or Kenny Perry still standing on Sunday than you are Tiger Woods.

The lasting memory of the 1996 PGA, incidentally, is not so much the winner coming out of the anonymous pack, but the short-pants controversy. In the opening round, it was so hot that caddie Andy Martinez went out with Tom Lehman's bag on his back and wearing a pair of shorts. On the third tee, they were intercepted by tournament officials, who informed them that unless Martinez changed into trousers, Lehman would be disqualified.

Martinez complied, but the tour caddies subsequently unionised, and one of the first concessions they gained was permission to wear shorts in specified climactic conditions.

The US PGA is not alone in its avarice, of course. The same financial motives underlie the repeated stagings of the Ryder Cup at the Belfry - a venue wholly owned by the British PGA and a course originally constructed to provide the home side experience in playing "American-style" courses.

And with all the great links available in Ireland, if someone can suggest a reason beyond money why the nation's first Ryder Cup will be staged on an Arnold Palmer course in Kildare, I have yet to hear it.

Woods, the 6 to 4 betting favourite, didn't arrive at Valhalla until Tuesday, but a week earlier he had jetted into Louisville to play a quick practice round. He then bolted back to Michigan to play in last weekend's Buick Open at Warwick Hills.

Woods usually sits out the week preceding a major - he prepared for the British Open with a week of fishing and golfing in Ireland - but his decision in this case was perhaps influenced by the fact that Buick pays him handsomely to carry its name on his bag.