The PGA Championship (sometimes referred to as the U.S. PGA Championship outside of the United States) is an annual golf tournament conducted by the Professional Golfers Association of America. It is one of the four major championships in professional golf, and is the golf season's final major, usually played in mid-August, customarily four weeks after The Open Championship. (It was advanced a week in 2007 and 2008 because of local scheduling conflicts.) Due to its distinction as the season's final major, the PGA Championship is nicknamed "Glory's Last Shot". It is an official money event on the PGA Tour, the European Tour, and the Japan Golf Tour, with a purse of $8 million in 2011. The 2012 edition will be the 94th PGA Championship.

In line with the other majors, winning "The PGA" gives a golfer several privileges which make his career much more secure, if he is not already one of the elite players of the sport. PGA champions are automatically invited to play in the other three majors (Masters, U.S. Open, and the Open Championship) for the next five years, and are exempt from qualifying for the PGA Championship for life. They also receive membership on the PGA and European Tours for the following five seasons and invitations to The Players Championship for five years. The PGA Championship has been held at a large number of venues, some of the early ones now quite obscure, but currently it is usually staged by one of a small group of celebrated courses, each of which has also hosted several other leading events.

Eldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods (born December 30, 1975) is an American professional golfer whose achievements to date rank him among the most successful golfers of all time. Formerly the World No. 1, he is the highest-paid professional athlete in the world, having earned an estimated US$90.5 million from winnings and endorsements in 2010.

Woods turned professional in 1996, and by April 1997 he had already won his first major, the 1997 Masters. He first reached the number one position in the world rankings in June 1997. Through the 2000s, Woods was the dominant force in golf, spending 264 weeks from August 1999 to September 2004 and 281 weeks from June 2005 to October 2010 as world number one. From December 2009 to early April 2010, Woods took leave from professional golf to focus on his marriage after he admitted infidelity. His multiple infidelities were revealed by several different women, through many worldwide media sources. This was followed by a loss of form, and his ranking gradually fell to a low of #58 in November 2011. He snapped a career-long winless streak of 107 weeks when he captured the Chevron World Challenge in December 2011. As of April 8, 2012, he is ranked #8.

Jason Christopher Dufner (born March 24, 1977) is an American professional golfer who currently plays on the PGA Tour. His most notable moment came at the 2011 PGA Championship where he lost a four hole playoff to Keegan Bradley, having held a five stroke advantage with four holes to play.

Dufner was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He moved to the Washington, D.C. area when he was 11 years old, and then to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida when he was 14. It was there that he started playing golf, and played for St. Thomas Aquinas High School during his sophomore, junior and senior years.

Dufner was a walk-on at Auburn University, where he won three times in his college career and was an Honorable Mention All-American in 1997. He graduated from Auburn in 2000 with a degree in economics.

In 1998 Dufner played in the finals of the U.S. Amateur Public Links at Torrey Pines, falling to Trevor Immelman, 3 and 2.

In his early career, Dufner struggled to hold down a place on the PGA Tour. He was a member of the PGA Tour in 2004 and the Nationwide Tour in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2006. Dufner won two events during his time on the Nationwide Tour, the BUY.COM Wichita Open in 2001 and the LaSalle Bank Open in 2006. He finished in 8th place on the Nationwide Tour money list in 2006 to earn his PGA Tour card for 2007. He finished 127th in the FedEx Cup standings in 2007, and failed to qualify at the PGA Tour Q-School, where he finished T149. He retained conditional status for the 2008 PGA Tour season, and then finished T11 at the Q-School that year to earn his card for 2009. He has been a member of the PGA Tour every year since. In 2009, Dufner finished in the top-10 on six occasions, including a third place finish at the RBC Canadian Open, and a runner up place at the Deutsche Bank Championship, part of the FedEx Cup playoffs. As a result, Dufner went on to finish the year 11th in the FedEx Cup standings and 33rd on the year's money list.

Martin Kaymer (born 28 December 1984) is a German professional golfer. He became the No. 1 ranked golfer in the Official World Golf Rankings on 27 February 2011 after his runner-up finish in the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship, but lost the top spot to Lee Westwood eight weeks later.

Kaymer was born in Düsseldorf, Germany. He turned professional in 2005 and is a member of the European Tour. He has won ten tournaments on the tour including four in 2010 to win the Race to Dubai, formerly the Order of Merit, for the first time. Among those wins was the 2010 PGA Championship, a victory which made him only the second German to win a major championship, after Bernhard Langer. He also won the 2011 WGC-HSBC Champions, which made him only the tenth player to have won both a major championship and a World Golf Championship event.

Kaymer picked up his first professional win at the age of 20 as an amateur at the Central German Classic in 2005 on the third-tier EPD Tour. He shot a −19 (67–64–66=197) to win the tournament by a margin of five strokes.

Gerry Lester "Bubba" Watson, Jr. (born November 5, 1978) is an American professional golfer on the PGA Tour. One of the few left-handed golfers on tour, he is a major champion, the winner of the Masters Tournament in 2012. Among the longest drivers on the PGA Tour, in 2007 he had an average drive of 315.2 yards (288.2 m) and can hit a ball over 350 yards (320 m), capable of generating a ball speed up to 194 mph (312 km/h)]. Watson won the 2012 Masters Tournament after defeating Louis Oosthuizen in a sudden death playoff. The win elevated Watson to a career-high fourth place in the Official World Golf Ranking.

Watson was born and raised in Bagdad, Florida, near Pensacola. He played on the golf team at Milton High School, which had featured future PGA Tour members Heath Slocum and Boo Weekley just before he attended. Watson played golf for Faulkner State Community College in nearby Baldwin County, Alabama, where he was a junior college All-American. He transferred to the University of Georgia, the defending NCAA champions, and played for the Bulldogs in 2000 and 2001. As a junior, Watson helped lead the Bulldogs to the SEC title in 2000.