Six Takeaways from the 2026 PGA Championship at Aronimink

‍1. The overwhelming majority of golf fans were probably unsatisfied seeing Aaron Rai’s name atop the leaderboard on Sunday evening. He hadn’t finished better than T-19 in 12 career major starts entering the 2026 PGA Championship, and all due respect to Rai, it’s very possible we won’t see his name near the top of many future major championship leaderboards. But the beauty of professional golf is that expectations don’t matter. Past results don’t matter, nor does the future, at least not today. Winning, however, does matter. It is the entire point of why they play and why we watch. Complaints about the golf course and how this championship played out will be voiced by fans and players alike, but you can only take the test in front of you. Aaron Rai left no doubt about who did that best over the past four days.

Much of Sunday’s action wasn’t particularly enthralling, but Rai buckled down and played a closing 10 holes of gritty, major championship-winning golf. His 70-foot putt on No. 17 will get the most replays in future promotional materials, but his 40-yard bunker shot on No. 13 and brilliant long irons into Nos. 15 and 16 are what decided the golf tournament. On the drivable par-4 13th, Rai found the front-right greenside bunker, a location from which players struggled to get up and down all day. Sixteen players found that bunker on Sunday; only four made birdie. The other three birdies were all holed from outside 10 feet and had all been left short of the hole out of the bunker. But Rai squared the club face, flew the shot all the way up on top of the ridge where the hole was cut, and the ball grabbed and checked up to seven feet pin high. He admitted afterwards that it came out a little hotter than he expected, but it was a championship-winning golf shot, one that other players failed to convert from the same spot.

We may or may not ever hear from Rai again in a high-profile event, but we heard from him in one of the four that count.

2. After four rounds, what is to make of the test Aronimink Golf Club presented? Any conversation about the golf course or the setup must start here: the sport is currently completely out of scale. There is no greater evidence of that than Aaron Rai clubbing down to 3-wood off the tee on No. 15, a 527-yard par 4, to find the widest section of the fairway, while many of the longest players in the field were consistently bailed out by errant drives finding trampled-down areas where spectators trod throughout the week.

Those are symptoms of a game that is not in scale, one that would benefit from being shrunk back to the dimensions of golf courses, so that a 5’11, 170-pound player with below-average clubhead speed is hitting driver on 530-yard par 4s. And so that long players with wide misses aren’t rewarded by finding areas of the property never intended to be part of the course, or tournament infrastructure that results in a free drop. A scaled-back version of the game would allow more accurate tee shots to find the fairway, while wide misses would settle between gallery ropes and the fairway.

If somebody cannot review the shots we’re seeing from professional golfers and acknowledge that the sport has lost the plot with modern technology, there is no constructive way to move the sport forward. Before vilifying tree-removal programs or advocating for thicker rough, we need to have a more nuanced conversation about what is actually happening on the golf course. Bring dispersion patterns back in line with the game board on which the sport is played. That is a vision for a more strategic, balanced, and well-rounded version of the sport. It is also a more responsible one.

3. Ok, but given the scale, was Aronimink a good test? It was somewhere between fine and good. You could build a case — and I would — that hitting approach shots close to many of the flags was effectively impossible with the speed and firmness of the greens. If you watched the tournament and felt like players simply weren’t hitting good shots, I believe this was a case where many of those shots weren’t truly available.

PGA CHAMPIONSHIP HUB: Course insights, tournament coverage, and more from Aronimink

It is extraordinarily difficult to hit shots into firm, wildly contoured greens in windy conditions while also making sure you don’t leave yourself in a bad position around the greens. From my perspective, the biggest lesson from this PGA is that when greens feature as many slopes, often in competing directions, as the greens at Aronimink, putts become so difficult to hole that birdies are scarce. Players mostly make pars and bogeys, and the leaderboard compresses.

I cannot recall a tournament in which players struggled so consistently to read greens and control speed on putts. Nor do I believe it was due to a lack of preparation. These are simply uniquely styled and shaped greens that inherently create variance. Putting was essentially a guessing game.

4. Was a bunched leaderboard with multiple longshots in contention throughout the weekend a function of the setup and Kerry Haigh choosing treacherous hole locations that muted skill? I would argue no. It was a function of the nature of the golf course, as described above, and the setup was completely fine. Perceived friendlier hole locations, like the ones we saw on Saturday, did not produce more separation in the field.

I believe if the PGA of America returned to Aronimink, we would see players struggle to hole putts yet again, and another compressed leaderboard would emerge. The alternative would be to chop down the rough, apply water to the greens, and let the course get torn apart while likely producing a more “skilled” leaderboard. That is certainly an option — and one many people may even prefer — but we should not be in a place where a course like Aronimink cannot defend itself without compressing the leaderboard. Rescale the damn game.

5. If I were the PGA of America, would I return to Aronimink? Sure! Philadelphia deserves to host a championship. Have you gone through the exercise of identifying golf courses capable of hosting major championships? It is a short list. Let me know what options you find!

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6. In other non-Aaron Rai player notes: Jon Rahm looked excellent across four days of play. He missed a few scoring opportunities on Sunday — as did nearly everyone in the field — but he demonstrated command of the golf ball in both directions and looks primed to contend in the season’s two remaining major championships after his T-2 finish.

Ludvig Aberg, on the other hand, was a disappointment. He finished T-4, only one shot behind Rahm, but made several tentative, uncommitted putting strokes over the weekend with a prime opportunity to grab his first major. I remain extremely bullish on the 26-year-old’s future, but if Ludvig wants to be considered one of the best five golfers in the world, we need to see a little more conviction and moxie at Shinnecock and Royal Birkdale.