How Aaron Rai Won the PGA Championship On His Own Terms

Finding good advice online these days is a little like finding a needle in a haystack. Social media feeds are flooded with threads of 10 ways you can change your life: meditate every morning and night, sauna five times a week, book that trip across the world you’ve always wanted to take. Ah yes, why have I not just simply done all of these things?

But amidst all the thirsty, pie-in-the-sky garbage that clutters feeds and transforms the reader for all of about six seconds, it is still possible to come across the occasional message that resonates. Earlier this week, I stumbled upon a podcast clip about the modern obsession with money featuring someone I’ve long found to be a purveyor of consistently good advice, Jerry Seinfeld. I decided to listen to the full episode, which contained a nugget that struck a chord with me. Seinfeld recalled advice David Letterman gave him when Jerry was embarking on a new project: “Make sure you fail doing it exactly the way you want to do it.” Whether success or failure follows, Seinfeld went on to say, you can live with either outcome knowing that it happened on your own terms.

As I’ve reflected on Aaron Rai’s PGA Championship win on Sunday, I keep returning to the wisdom of Seinfeld’s perspective and how applicable it is to Rai’s success story, or really to any career path. Rai doesn’t really fit the profile of a professional golfer. He is not physically imposing, hits the ball short off the tee, wears two gloves, and keeps covers on all of his irons. Despite being a short hitter, Rai was among the few players to pull less than driver on the 530-yard par-4 15th on Sunday. On No. 12, his decision to chip instead of putt from behind the green took Trevor Immelman by surprise. Every decision reflected a player fully committed to winning or losing on his own terms.

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Major championship golf demands a player’s full suite of tools, but near the top of the list is conviction. You can succeed hitting the wrong shot with conviction. You will not succeed hitting the right shot without it.

Rai didn’t reach the heights he’s reached in the game by trying to imitate other, more accomplished golfers. He got here by understanding his own golf DNA and leaning into his strengths with complete conviction.

On Sunday, Aaron Rai was either going to win or lose playing exactly the way he wanted to play. Had he wavered in his self-belief or conformed to others’ ideas of how he should play at any stage of his golf journey, a different champion would have left Philadelphia with the Wanamaker Trophy.

The power of Aaron Rai’s Sunday was that he remained true to himself and won on his own terms.