The PGA of America hosted their annual news conference Wednesday at the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits and right at the conclusion of President Derek Sprague’s comments on stage, he made an announcement that wasn’t at all related to the PGA Championship going on around him.

Spragued announced that the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship will head to Olympia Fields Country Club in 2017 and Kemper Lakes Golf Club in 2018.

The announcement encompassed everything Stacy Lewis said that the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship needed to be about from the start – a major championship that’s on par with the men’s when it comes to the courses it’s played on.

Wednesday’s announcement embodied every piece of that. Not only was women’s golf making news at a major championship, but the announcement that Olympia Fields, host of the 2003 U.S. Open, and Kemper Lakes, host of the 1989 PGA Championship, are on board as future hosts of this major championship says everything about how big this major is becoming.

“It’s a big day for us to, one, to get those announcements,” Lewis said, “but to do it at the men’s PGA Championship like we did this week, it’s always good for that tournament and for our Tour.”

That now marks three consecutive venues – Sahalee in 2016 and the new Chicago area courses, Olympia Fields and Kemper Lakes – that will have hosted previous men’s major championships. It also means that for the next three years, if there’s a center of the women’s golfing universe, it’s Chicago.

“I’ve kind of known that this has been coming here for a few months,” Lewis said. “You look at those two venues, one, you’ve got the Chicago area, where we got some of our biggest crowds from Solheim Cup (2009) and International Crown will be there.”

Chicago’s a golfing town, and their support of the 2009 Solheim Cup was nearly unprecedented. The crowds Chicago will bring has Lewis excited for sure, but it’s more about the contined elevation of the women’s game to the biggest stages on the planet. It was no coincidence that one of the greatest U.S. Women’s Opens in history came on Pinehurst No. 2 the week after the men played it too for their national championship.

It’s no secret to Lewis - with the biggest stages comes the game’s biggest moments.

It’s at Olympia Fields, annually ranked among the top 100 greatest courses in the country by Golf Digest, that Jim Furyk tied a U.S. Open record for lowest 72-hole score (272) in winning his first and only major championship.

It’s at Kemper Lakes where in 1989 Payne Stewart issued one of the most remarkable comebacks in major championship history with a rally from a six-shot deficit entering the day to win his first major championship on the strength of a back-nine 31.

“I think the crowds will be huge, and then you take the courses that have hosted men’s majors and big events of the year, that’s where we should be playing,” Lewis said. “We should be playing these big tournaments and these big sites.”

Stages like Wednesdays are what Lewis envisioned when this concept was broached with her two years ago. Now everything she saw then is coming to fruition.

Classic Venues for the 2017 and 2018 KPMG Women's PGA Championship

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