The 2026 PGA Championship is off and running from Aronimink Golf Club outside of Philadelphia. The preamble days to the actual tournament rounds can become interminable at these majors, but the press conferences often yield a few insightful, amusing, and maybe even legendary comments. It was about this time last year that we had no idea who Don Rea really was, and then he rumbled into our lives. 

As some of the notable names in the field, and eventually the PGA of America brass, take the dais, we’ll track some of the more interesting tidbits here as a quick cheat sheet to anything happening in Philly before the shots start to count on Thursday.

Monday, May 11

On the PGA Championship as a major 

Keegan Bradley: “I think what separates the PGA to other majors is they have no agenda at this tournament. Kerry Haigh does an unbelievable job setting up major championship golf courses. You go to the U.S. Open, you know their agenda is they are going to make this ridiculously hard to the point of being unfair.

“You know, at the British Open, the weather, and the Masters is the Masters. It's just going to be tough and stressful.

“PGA Championship could be 3-under could win. Could be 15-under. They just want to host a great tournament, and I think they do an incredible job of that.”

Brendan Porath: I think this is, by and large, a positive thing and a fine point by Keegan. It makes it flexible. But it could also be the first exhibit in a case made that the major suffers most from a lack of identity, thereby making it weak overall.

Garrett Morrison: I find what Keegan is saying here to be a complete (and unintentional) indictment of the tournament. The other majors at least believe in something.

On golf course setup and strategy

Keegan Bradley: “What's great about this golf course, and a lot of golf courses in the northeast, is the hole's going to be right there. You see it and you know what you've got to do. There's not a lot of hazard. It's right there and you have to deal with it…”

Brendan Porath: Is this the new, expanded version of “right in front of you?” I am glad the hole is not hidden. I still have trouble reading between the lines on this kind of commentary.

PJ Clark: Hand up: I have not played much golf outside of the northeastern United States. Is this a feature unique to this area of the country? I would say the overwhelming majority of golf holes that I’ve ever seen contain a hole that you can see and know what you’ve got to do on it. I kind of just assumed that thinking went for golf in every region of the world.

Garrett Morrison: Pure pablum. Just something to say when you have nothing to say.

Matt Fitzpatrick: “But the course setup already is one thing that – the greens at Brookline are a little smaller. Much more slope here. The fairway is just fairway and then rough, and Brookline was staggered. I always think – I'm very biased, but I think that is the best form of setup; that it penalizes wider tee shots but tee shots that would only just miss the fairway aren't really punished.”

Joseph LaMagna: Before you cue the fair police siren, I think Fitzpatrick’s viewpoint is quite reasonable. When wide misses aren’t penalized more significantly than narrow misses, the course becomes susceptible to mindless bombing it around off the tee. That’ll be something to watch this week: do wide misses meet a steep penalty, a difficult characteristic to achieve, especially on a tight property where wide misses may get relief from tournament infrastructure. 

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Odds, Ends, and Amusements 

Q: “You're a northeast guy. This is a northeast course. Do you get an extra energy from the crowd and from the venue being in a northeast course, having a tournament here?”

Keegan Bradley: “Definitely. Yeah, I even went out on my deck today when I was at my house and I could smell, like, the northeast. I could smell the grass. It was different.”

Garrett Morrison: Credit to Keegan for playing along, I guess.

Brendan Porath: I’ve included the question here because that is an insane reach and we must stop crowbarring Keegan as a son of just every locale in America. We’ve already anointed him as a Boston boy, Vermont native, New Englander, New York tough, Jupiter cool, and now he’s also a Philly guy? We need to settle down. I thought the Boston + New York double-dipping was too much last year. But now, based on smells, we’ll give him the whole northeast. Does that include Philadelphia? He did add, “Philly is a little bit south for me but I'll take it. It's northeast to me” while saying he felt a duty to represent the whole area.

Jordan Spieth: Doral Saturday afternoon was a very difficult time to be playing. It was pumping, and I actually hit some really nice shots finishing up. I doubled 18 without really missing a shot. 

Joseph LaMagna: Look, we know what he’s saying. You can run into big numbers without necessarily hitting a bad shot. But unfortunately this quote is a little on the nose for how Jordan Spieth has been playing. Some good stretches, a few big numbers mixed in, and not a whole lot of contending. 

Matt Fitzpatrick: “You can understand how top players have that curiosity to try and improve, and, all being well, you can continue to improve. The game of golf isn't necessarily that way. But I always enjoy looking at players’ graphs on Data Golf. Like you can see their career span, and there are very few, I would say, very, very few, that don't at least have a drop-off, and then obviously they go back up again. But that is the game of golf. You always have to take the rough with the smooth.”

Joseph LaMagna: A healthy perspective from Fitzpatrick who has done a remarkable job returning to an elite level after a drop-off in his own career. It can be easy to lose sight of the long term when you’re struggling — or succeeding — in this sport, but understanding the natural ups and downs of the game is an essential piece of never getting too high or too low. 

Garrett Morrison: I feel like Fitz will end up coming out of nowhere to win a major in his 50s. He just seems to love the process.

Q: Do you feel like you're bringing any off-the-course advantages with the familiarity of this being in your backyard?

Braden Shattuck: “I don't know if I have an advantage over other players in the field, considering they are all the best in the world.”

Brendan: This dose of #perspective from the club pro made me chuckle. Shattuck is the pro at nearby Rolling Green but said he’d played Aronimink only twice in some 31 years in the area.