PHILADELPHIA, HERE WE come for the second major of the year.
While the PGA Championship is rather awkwardly wedged into May and between the Masters and the US Open, it is nonetheless one of the events by which careers and legacies are measured and at which this lamentably riven and turbulent sport comes back together for the sake of competition.
The scene this week is Aronimink Golf Club, last host to this championship in 1962, having had its hosting privileges for 1993 withdrawn for saying they would not expedite admission policies to permit some African-American members.
Now itself a member of the 21st century, Aronimink has lately hosted events on the PGA Tour and the women’s PGA Championship in 2020 partly by going back to the future, hiring Gil Hanse to try and restore some of Donald Ross’s original design. Ross, in a flourish of immodesty, said when it opened that the course was intended to be his “masterpiece, but not until today did I realise that I built better than I knew”.
It’s the shortest course to host the PGA Championship since 2020, with generously wide fairways and rough made less penal by the area’s cold, frosty and extended winter, so its chief defences this week will be its extreme bunkering – 180 of them in total – and its green complexes, with their slopes and contouring putting a premium on players’ approach play.
Rory McIlroy has likened Aronimink to Philadelphia Cricket Club, the course at which Shane Lowry finished an agonising second to Sepp Straka at last year’s Truist Championship, so this week’s set-up should suit him, and Lowry skipped last week’s Truist to get to this course as early as last Friday.
Shane Lowry. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
But which version of Lowry will we get this week? If we get the patient and composed Lowry we saw through across the first three days of the Masters, then he will contend to win his second major title this week; if we get the harried, hurried Lowry of Sunday, then he will not remotely feature in the final shake-up. His recent struggles to convert from winning positions, allied to an awareness that his window at the top of the game is narrowing while his hard work is going unrewarded, has bred a pressure with which it is hard for any golfer to remain on good terms. More opportunities have slipped by than now lie ahead.
Rory McIlroy once dwelt in a similar headspace, breaking out of it in such extreme style at last year’s Masters. Rather than feeling liberated, however, he felt lost, and rocked up at the following PGA Championship in a funk, surly at the media over a mild driver controversy; instantly out of sorts and quickly out of contention. This year’s Masters victory was altogether less exuberant and McIlroy spoke instantly after it of being confident he would not lapse into the same sort of angst.
“I came in uncertain as to my future,” McIlroy told the press on Tuesday, throwing back to last year’s event at Quail Hollow. “I still hadn’t really reset goals, it probably took me a good few months to get to that point. Coming into this tournament feels a lot different than last year.”
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McIlroy has remained picky with his scheduling – last week’s appearance at Quail Hollow was his first since the Masters, declining to play at Doral when he snagged an invite to King Charles’ State dinner at the White House – and he cut a pretty relaxed figure having fallen out of contention on Saturday last week, saying he has figured a way around a left miss that has been rearing its head since Augusta. It will be important to fix that miss: while the fairways are wide and generous at Aronimink in the main, McIlroy likely won’t be able to resist driving the shortened par-four 13th, where the risk is an out-of-bounds stake to the left of the green.
McIlroy’s newly-found Zen state at the majors and the reliably high floor of his all-round game means someone in the 156-person field is going to have to come out and beat him, unless his foot blister persists and worsens. The principal candidate here is of course Scottie Scheffler, given himself and McIlroy have lately carved up the majors between them.
McIlroy attends to the blister on his foot. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
Scheffler has finished second in all of his last three starts and if he tightens up his approach play this week, he may be nigh-unbeatable: where that aspect of his game was absurdly strong last year, it has lately regressed to being merely elite, hence why his wins have dried up.
The other prime contender is Cam Young, whom McIlroy fended off at the Masters but has been hoovering up titles. This week may be his breakthrough to a long-deserved maiden major title.
McIlroy meanwhile revealed on Tuesday that he heard rumours of the Saudis’ withdrawal of funding from the LIV tour as early as March of this year, saying he believed the LIV players were among the last to know. This is the first major since confirmation that the Saudis’ largesse of the breakaway tour is ending, which will naturally shine a light on the frame of mind of their leading players.
Bryson DeChambeau has options in front of him given he is in the final year of his LIV deal, and so Jon Rahm is the most interesting figure amid all of this, admitting recently that his contract is water-tight. His move to LIV has been a professional disaster: his late run for this title last year has been his only respectable major showing since defecting. Perhaps all of this awkward spotlight will provoke his true form this week.
Rahm’s LIV teammate Tom McKibbin is in the field having clung onto 100th place in the world rankings, while Pádraig Harrington is back again under his exemption for lifting this giant cup in 2008.
The tier below McIlroy, Scheffler, and Young is stuffed with contenders and storylines. Can Justin Rose finally win his second major title, or has he compromised himself with a mid-season equipment change? Can Matt Fitzpatrick maintain his remarkable run all the way to his second major?
And what of those still vying for their maiden title? Tyrrell Hatton has been threatening to break through for some time, and has the long iron game to conquer the trio of lengthy par-threes at Aronimink. What of Tommy Fleetwood, who has long found that winning comes less naturally to him than excelling at the game, and Ludvig Aberg, who appears to be learning the same painful lesson? And what of Jordan Spieth, as he seeks to win the sole major left to complete his Grand Slam?
And can anyone break the Americans’ stranglehold of this competition, with Jason Day the last non-American winner back in 2015?
The week of a golf major is a novel stuffed with plot and subplots; Aronimink 2026 is no different.
Thursday’s selected tee times (all times Irish)
12.40pm: Tom McKibbin, Lucas Glover, Stephan Jaeger
1.18pm: Bryson DeChambeau, Ludvig Aberg, Rickie Fowler
1.24pm: Pádraig Harrington, Maverick McNealy, Thomas Detry
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PGA Championship preview: course set-up will present major opportunities for McIlroy and Lowry this week
PHILADELPHIA, HERE WE come for the second major of the year.
While the PGA Championship is rather awkwardly wedged into May and between the Masters and the US Open, it is nonetheless one of the events by which careers and legacies are measured and at which this lamentably riven and turbulent sport comes back together for the sake of competition.
The scene this week is Aronimink Golf Club, last host to this championship in 1962, having had its hosting privileges for 1993 withdrawn for saying they would not expedite admission policies to permit some African-American members.
Now itself a member of the 21st century, Aronimink has lately hosted events on the PGA Tour and the women’s PGA Championship in 2020 partly by going back to the future, hiring Gil Hanse to try and restore some of Donald Ross’s original design. Ross, in a flourish of immodesty, said when it opened that the course was intended to be his “masterpiece, but not until today did I realise that I built better than I knew”.
It’s the shortest course to host the PGA Championship since 2020, with generously wide fairways and rough made less penal by the area’s cold, frosty and extended winter, so its chief defences this week will be its extreme bunkering – 180 of them in total – and its green complexes, with their slopes and contouring putting a premium on players’ approach play.
Rory McIlroy has likened Aronimink to Philadelphia Cricket Club, the course at which Shane Lowry finished an agonising second to Sepp Straka at last year’s Truist Championship, so this week’s set-up should suit him, and Lowry skipped last week’s Truist to get to this course as early as last Friday.
But which version of Lowry will we get this week? If we get the patient and composed Lowry we saw through across the first three days of the Masters, then he will contend to win his second major title this week; if we get the harried, hurried Lowry of Sunday, then he will not remotely feature in the final shake-up. His recent struggles to convert from winning positions, allied to an awareness that his window at the top of the game is narrowing while his hard work is going unrewarded, has bred a pressure with which it is hard for any golfer to remain on good terms. More opportunities have slipped by than now lie ahead.
Rory McIlroy once dwelt in a similar headspace, breaking out of it in such extreme style at last year’s Masters. Rather than feeling liberated, however, he felt lost, and rocked up at the following PGA Championship in a funk, surly at the media over a mild driver controversy; instantly out of sorts and quickly out of contention. This year’s Masters victory was altogether less exuberant and McIlroy spoke instantly after it of being confident he would not lapse into the same sort of angst.
“I came in uncertain as to my future,” McIlroy told the press on Tuesday, throwing back to last year’s event at Quail Hollow. “I still hadn’t really reset goals, it probably took me a good few months to get to that point. Coming into this tournament feels a lot different than last year.”
McIlroy has remained picky with his scheduling – last week’s appearance at Quail Hollow was his first since the Masters, declining to play at Doral when he snagged an invite to King Charles’ State dinner at the White House – and he cut a pretty relaxed figure having fallen out of contention on Saturday last week, saying he has figured a way around a left miss that has been rearing its head since Augusta. It will be important to fix that miss: while the fairways are wide and generous at Aronimink in the main, McIlroy likely won’t be able to resist driving the shortened par-four 13th, where the risk is an out-of-bounds stake to the left of the green.
McIlroy’s newly-found Zen state at the majors and the reliably high floor of his all-round game means someone in the 156-person field is going to have to come out and beat him, unless his foot blister persists and worsens. The principal candidate here is of course Scottie Scheffler, given himself and McIlroy have lately carved up the majors between them.
Scheffler has finished second in all of his last three starts and if he tightens up his approach play this week, he may be nigh-unbeatable: where that aspect of his game was absurdly strong last year, it has lately regressed to being merely elite, hence why his wins have dried up.
The other prime contender is Cam Young, whom McIlroy fended off at the Masters but has been hoovering up titles. This week may be his breakthrough to a long-deserved maiden major title.
McIlroy meanwhile revealed on Tuesday that he heard rumours of the Saudis’ withdrawal of funding from the LIV tour as early as March of this year, saying he believed the LIV players were among the last to know. This is the first major since confirmation that the Saudis’ largesse of the breakaway tour is ending, which will naturally shine a light on the frame of mind of their leading players.
Bryson DeChambeau has options in front of him given he is in the final year of his LIV deal, and so Jon Rahm is the most interesting figure amid all of this, admitting recently that his contract is water-tight. His move to LIV has been a professional disaster: his late run for this title last year has been his only respectable major showing since defecting. Perhaps all of this awkward spotlight will provoke his true form this week.
Rahm’s LIV teammate Tom McKibbin is in the field having clung onto 100th place in the world rankings, while Pádraig Harrington is back again under his exemption for lifting this giant cup in 2008.
The tier below McIlroy, Scheffler, and Young is stuffed with contenders and storylines. Can Justin Rose finally win his second major title, or has he compromised himself with a mid-season equipment change? Can Matt Fitzpatrick maintain his remarkable run all the way to his second major?
And what of those still vying for their maiden title? Tyrrell Hatton has been threatening to break through for some time, and has the long iron game to conquer the trio of lengthy par-threes at Aronimink. What of Tommy Fleetwood, who has long found that winning comes less naturally to him than excelling at the game, and Ludvig Aberg, who appears to be learning the same painful lesson? And what of Jordan Spieth, as he seeks to win the sole major left to complete his Grand Slam?
And can anyone break the Americans’ stranglehold of this competition, with Jason Day the last non-American winner back in 2015?
The week of a golf major is a novel stuffed with plot and subplots; Aronimink 2026 is no different.
Thursday’s selected tee times (all times Irish)
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2026 pga championship Golf Preview tee-up