The front desk worker’s week was over. On a shuttle ride from Aronimink Golf Club to a nearby parking lot, she was already reminiscing. Answering phone calls that ranged from viewers at home complaining about a smudge on their televisions to young teens pranking her with requests for a tee time the following day, she could not believe the week that passed.
The site for the 2026 PGA Championship, selected eight years earlier, saw workers spend months preparing Aronimink not only for the second major of the season but also for the throngs of fans who would invade the grounds. Constructing grandstands, buildouts, hospitality tents and merchandise mansions, the work was thought to be stalled due to a snowstorm two months ago, but instead the shovels came out, and the piecing together of the property continued.
Members at Aronimink will get their club back this week, but for the past handful of months, it was a pseudo-construction zone, and for the past seven days, it was the grounds on which history was made.
The 2026 major championship season is officially 50% complete with Aaron Rai’s impressive victory at the PGA Championship. Only two opportunities remain for players, with summer still technically ahead on the calendar.
The front desk worker may not have realized it, but she summed up the nature of professional golf. The buildup is almost half the fun. Players get to see new golf courses, media members get to debate and excitement mounts as the event draws nearer. But once tees are pegged and balls start flying Thursday morning, it comes and goes so quickly. Four days is the event’s showtime — four days after years of planning and months of building. And just like that, the 2026 PGA Championship no longer is but rather was.
Let’s dive into some of the biggest takeaways from the last week in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania.
Why the PGA rocked
What makes major championships so special is that everyone is so different, and that anyone could theoretically win one. The historical implications of wins by the likes of Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy or Jon Rahm would have been fun to celebrate, but a champion like Rai brings out the true essence of the game.
In a sport dominated by length, he remains one of the shortest players on the PGA Tour. In a world where people buy things in order to show off status, Rai wears two gloves, uses iron covers, brings out a TaylorMade driver no longer on the shelves at your local sporting goods store and sticks plastic tees in the ground so that his ball is the same height with each swing of the driver.
There is a respect, humility and good-natured spirit to Rai’s game, and he showcased it at a golf course with a setup bemoaned by some of the best in the game. Aronimink was the most exact PGA Championship test since Southern Hills in 2022. Every aspect of one’s game was examined, both seen and unseen, and it was the man who had the will and the shots who reigned supreme.
Were some pin locations sketchy? Sure. Was the par-3 8th a bad hole? Probably! Should wider misses be penalized more than those closer to the fairway? Yes! But every player in the field had to deal with these factors.
Who knows whether Rai will knock down another major championship in his career? Last week, he was playing in the PGA Tour’s alternate-field event in Myrtle Beach — Brian Rolapp, if you are reading, you need to expand the fields in signature events to 120 players — and had never finished in the top 10 at a major. What we do know is that Rai’s win was more than well-deserved as, among a sea of titans, he became one for this week at least.
Three of a kind
Through two major championships, only three players have finished inside the top 10 in the Masters and PGA Championship: McIlroy (win, T7), Xander Schauffele (T9, T7) and Justin Rose (T3, T10). McIlroy and Rose duked it out at the Masters, while McIlroy and Schauffele had their chances Sunday at the PGA Championship.
Schauffele’s consistency in these tournaments continues to go under the radar as he now has 19 top-20 finishes in his 36 career major appearances. Of those 36 starts, he has finished inside the top 20 in 27 of them as well. Rose’s record at Augusta National tends to make the headlines, but the Englishman now has six top-15 finishes in his last seven PGA Championships.
As for McIlroy, he leads the world on major leaderboards relative to par through the first eight major rounds. His consistency in majors waned during his drought, but with a couple green jackets in tow, his ability to factor has continued to improve as that is now four straight top 20 results dating back to last year’s U.S. Open.
Showing human tendencies
Let’s all just slow down. Perhaps this is a reflection of the instant gratification needed in society today, but take a breath, look at the long-term perspective and come to terms with the fact that Ludvig Åberg is not behind schedule but right on it.
Two things can be true regarding the Swedish superstar: (1) He had another great opportunity to win a major championship and did not come through; (2) he is still extremely early in his major championship career.
Åberg’s start at Aronimink marked just his third PGA Championship appearance and the 10th major appearance of his entire career. In those 10 starts, the robotic right-hander has six top-25 finishes, including his T4 alongside Rai on Sunday.
Attempts needed to win first major championship
| Rory McIlroy |
11th |
|
Scottie Scheffler
|
10th
|
|
Justin Thomas
|
10th
|
|
Jordan Spieth
|
9th
|
The players listed above were used because Åberg’s ascension has generated similar noise. All four were can’t-miss kids. Whether he likes it or not, that is exactly how he was described after he finished first in the PGA Tour University rankings, played for the European Ryder Cup team and claimed victories on both the PGA Tour and DP World Tour in 2023.
Åberg has plenty to clean up in his game, especially when the heat gets turned up on Sunday. Tendencies have surfaced, such as speeding up his process, misjudging feely wedge shots and playing himself out of some tournaments before the final stretch presents itself.
All of this to say: R-E-L-A-X. There was more than one Aaron R. making headlines in the commonwealth this weekend, and it is the Steelers quarterback’s advice, many moons ago, that seems appropriate for some to heed regarding Åberg.
Winners who didn’t win
Only one player of the 156 in the field can raise the Wanamaker Trophy, but that doesn’t mean everyone walks away from the second major championship as a loser. In fact, some can claim legitimate moral victories with Cameron Smith immediately coming to mind.
The 2022 Open winner was the lone player to miss the cut in every single major championship last year. After a missed cut at the Masters to kick off his 2026 major campaign, the wild right-hander made a switch with his swing coach and moved to working with Claude Harmon. The decision proved fruitful at Aronimink. Despite some waywardness on Sunday, Smith showed his game can still stack up with the world’s best after a few disappointing years.
“It feels great to play nice,” Smith stated. “You don’t work hard to play crap, and it’s frustrating, and the last couple of years have been frustrating. I feel like I’ve been putting in the work and not really getting anything out of it.
“I made a swing coach switch a couple weeks ago now to Claude, and we’ve just managed to clean up a few things that were perhaps a little bit off, and I feel like I’ve got a lot more confidence in my swing. Even out there today, under the pressure, I felt like I was able to trust it already. So lots of positive signs.”
Justin Thomas falls in a similar bucket as Smith. Also a major winner in 2022, the two-time PGA champion has since struggled at legitimate major setups. Before this week, his lone top-10 finish in a major since Southern Hills came at Valhalla. Enough stated.
Thomas, however, threatened on Sunday with a final-round 65 that followed a Moving Day during which he moved in the wrong direction. The setup at Aronimink played into Thomas’ hands as there was little trouble for big misses off the tee, and the heavy diet of wedges emphasized his strength in that department. Even though he has inconsistencies on the greens, Thomas is one of those players who, with the game on the line on the 72nd, you would want in your corner to hole a putt.
Rahm may well be one of those players, too, acquitting himself nicely in the throngs of weekend contention. Some scoring chances slipped away, and he was unable to hole enough putts late, but the performance felt like a step in the right direction toward returning to the major force seen in 2023.
The last two winners who did not win (and have never won) are Alex Smalley and Matti Schmid. Everyone wrote them off, but they contended nearly all the way to the finish. They may not have lifted the Wanamaker Trophy, but they did earn invites into the first major of 2027 with their respective finishes.
Where it went wrong for the top two
The worst post-major talking points: (1) “If Rory just played the par 5s better, he would have won;” (2) “If Scottie just putted normally, he would have gone back-to-back.” If they could have, well, they would have. Such sentiments attempt to diminish the accomplishments of the actual champion.
Still, where did go wrong for McIlroy and Scheffler? McIlroy’s issues were multi-faceted as he played the par 5s in even par for the week (T77), largely because he failed to find the fairway on those holes (T75 in driving accuracy). Meanwhile, Scheffler ranked first in terms of driving accuracy but near the bottom of the field in strokes gained putting (72nd). For the week, the world No. 1 had 125 putts, two more than his previous career high in a major championship, which came at the 2023 Masters and 2024 U.S. Open.
What’s next?
It’s funny how players march to the beat of their own drum. Everyone is different, and when it works, it is celebrated (as it has been with Rai), and when it doesn’t, it is scrutinized like it is with Bryson DeChambeau. The two-time U.S. Open champion has been a non-factor in the last four majors, missing three of his last four cuts and falling behind the eight ball in the first round of his lone weekend appearance in a major this past year.
Many point to the iron play and the short game as the problem areas. DeChambeau has large gaps between his clubs and has shown himself incapable of managing distances on shots with less than 100% accuracy. The single-length irons handcuff him around the green and in bunkers, as well as on fairways that may be uneven.
The equipment is the culprit for many, but it is also part of what made DeChambeau, well, DeChambeau. It has worked before, whether you want to admit it or not, and it worked as recently as 2025, when he was leading the Masters with 16 holes to play.
It wouldn’t be surprising if he makes some changes with this clubs. In fact, it would be surprising if he didn’t in some capacity. Ultimately, DeChambeau needs to decide what is most important to him. He is pulled in all these different directions with his various responsibilities and … passions … that are not exactly professional golf.
