The 2019 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship will be held at historic Hazeltine National Golf Club, the PGA of America has announced. From the start, KPMG and the PGA of America have aimed to provide an elevated stage for the women’s game. Hosting an LPGA major at a recent Ryder Cup venue certainly meets that goal.

Lynne Doughtie, KPMG U.S. Chairman and CEO, attended the 2016 Ryder Cup at Hazeltine and said conversations began that week with the PGA of America about possibly hosting the women’s event there.

“They seem to be kind of one-upping themselves every year,” said Stacy Lewis, who has been an integral part of reinventing one of the LPGA’s five majors.

The first major hosted at Hazeltine National, located in Chaska, Minn., was the 1966 U.S. Women’s Open. The men followed four years later with Tony Jacklin winning the 1970 U.S. Open. The Robert Trent Jones layout has since hosted the 1977 U.S. Women’s Open (Hollis Stacy), 1983 U.S Senior Open (Billy Casper), 1991 U.S. Open (Payne Stewart), 2002 and 2009 PGA Championships (Rich Beem and Y.E. Yang) and 2016 Ryder Cup.

This year’s KPMG Women’s PGA will be held at Olympia Fields June 29-July 2. It will mark the first time a modern-day women’s major is held there. Two U.S Opens and a pair of PGA Championships have been contested on the 102-year-old course outside Chicago.

“You drive in and you can feel that it’s going to be a major,” said Lewis.

In addition to venue upgrades, the KPMG Women’s Leadership Summit has provided a unique outside-the-ropes experience for female executives. There’s a waiting list of high-achievers who are interested in attending a summit that’s dedicated to helping more women advance to C-suite positions. Many will be attending a professional golf tournament for the first time.

The first KPMG Women’s PGA Championship was held outside New York City in Westchester County. The championship then moved west to Seattle before coming to Chicago. Each move reached a new market of industry leaders. The 2018 championship will be conducted at Kemper Lakes Golf Club in Kildeer, Ill.

“Each year we have more demand for seats than we can accommodate,” said Doughtie. “It demonstrates that the next-generation women leaders from these Fortune 1,000 companies are keenly interested in hearing advice from our highly accomplished speakers who are leaders of industry that have teamed with us to ‘pay it forward.’ It also indicates that CEOs of the 70+ Fortune 1,000 companies who nominate these women support this effort to advance more women leaders.”

Annika Sorenstam, who last year was a keynote speaker at the Summit along with Condoleezza Rice, serves on the Summit’s advisory council along with Lewis. The legendary Swede won 10 majors on the LPGA and appreciates the importance of having women compete at venues, like Hazeltine, that are in the men’s rotation.

“I would love to see the women play at Pebble Beach and Merion at some point,” she said. “Classic ‘brand name’ venues with a rich history.”