6-min read · 1153 words
TOUR LIFE · MAY 2026
On Thursday morning, the world’s best golfers will walk onto a Donald Ross course in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, for the first time in 64 years. The PGA Championship is back at Aronimink Golf Club, and it has brought with it the most compelling field and the most loaded set of storylines of any major in recent memory. Rory McIlroy, the reigning Masters champion, has a chance to become only the third player in history to hold multiple major titles simultaneously across the modern era. Scottie Scheffler, the world number one, wants his title back. And a course that last hosted a major when Gary Player was at his peak is ready to make its case as one of the finest tests in the game.
The Course Nobody Talks About (But Should)
Aronimink has existed in a strange limbo for most of the last half-century. It is universally regarded by architects and serious course collectors as one of the finest Donald Ross designs in existence — the Scotsman himself called it his masterpiece — yet it sat largely off the major championship radar from 1962 until now. There was a PGA here in 1962, when Gary Player shot 278 to win. And then nothing. For sixty-four years, Aronimink hosted club championships, member events, and the occasional PGA Tour stop, while its reputation among those in the know grew quietly to legendary status.
The course opened for play on Memorial Day 1928. Ross designed it on 300 acres of terrain in Newtown Square, just outside Philadelphia, and by most accounts he considered the finished product his finest single achievement. The greens, in particular, carry that signature Ross fingerprint: crowned, contoured, fiendishly positioned. Miss the correct section of a green here and you’re not chipping uphill; you’re chipping from a slope that seems almost mathematically designed to induce three-putts. The course plays to around 7,200 yards for this week’s championship, which sounds manageable until you stand on the first tee and appreciate that distance here is the least of your problems.
“This is the most characterful course I’ve played in America in years. The greens are unlike anything else. You have to think two shots ahead, sometimes three.” — Collin Morikawa, on his practice rounds at Aronimink
Rory’s Moment — If He Can Take It
The conversation this week begins and ends with Rory McIlroy. He arrives at Aronimink as the defending Masters champion — his second consecutive Augusta title, a performance of such consistency and nerve that it has moved the needle on how we talk about his legacy. McIlroy now has five major championships. He’s 36 years old and playing the best golf of his life. Were he to win here, he would become only the second player in the modern era to hold two major titles concurrently, adding the Wanamaker Trophy to the green jacket he’s currently the custodian of.
The case against him is familiar but worth stating. The PGA Championship has not historically been kind to back-to-back major chasers. The pressure of arriving as the favourite, with the full weight of the narrative bearing down, has a way of doing strange things to the best players’ swings on Thursday morning. McIlroy shot a T-19 at Quail Hollow a few weeks back, knocking off the rust after a planned break. It was, by his own description, “fine but not inspired.” He’ll need something closer to inspired this week.
Scheffler and the Defence
Scottie Scheffler arrives as defending champion, having won here in dominant fashion twelve months ago at Quail Hollow. His 2026 season has been another study in improbable consistency: a win at the American Express to open the year (his 20th PGA Tour title, earned before his 30th birthday), a bogey-free final two rounds at Augusta where he finished one stroke behind McIlroy, and five top-10 finishes across a year that already feels like the finest of his career. Scheffler comes to Aronimink at 480 on the odds boards — the shortest price on any defending major champion in recent years.
Whether he can translate that form to a Donald Ross canvas remains the week’s central technical question. Scheffler is, above all else, an iron player — his ball-striking statistics are so far ahead of the field that statisticians have started running out of new ways to describe them. At Aronimink, that should be an advantage. The course rewards players who can flight their irons and hold them on green complexes that are fiercely resistant to approaches from the wrong angle. Scheffler approaches every green from the right angle. He is, in all probability, exactly what this course is built to reward.
“I just try to hit good shots and let the scorecard sort itself out. Aronimink is one of those courses where the scorecard will definitely sort itself out.” — Scottie Scheffler
The Rest of the Field
Below Scheffler and McIlroy, the field is deeper and more interesting than any recent major. Cameron Young, at 1200, has assembled a CV of near-misses so extensive that it has become its own kind of story — he arrives in Pennsylvania with more second-place finishes in his last twelve starts than most players collect in a career. Jon Rahm, eligible as a LIV member via his world ranking, brings a game that suits Aronimink almost perfectly; the Spaniard is a ferocious iron player with the putting touch to take advantage of these greens when he’s reading them well. Xander Schauffele needs only a major to complete the set of achievements that would push him into the top tier of his generation’s conversation.
The notable absences: Tiger Woods, who is continuing his recovery in Switzerland following a car incident earlier this year, will not play. Phil Mickelson has withdrawn for personal reasons, replaced by Max Homa. The LIV contingent — DeChambeau, Rahm, Dustin Johnson — is largely present and fully motivated, with each of them aware that the major championships represent the only stage left where they can still change the terms of the debate about what their decision to leave the Tour actually cost them.
The Prediction
The easy call is Scheffler. The interesting call is McIlroy, for reasons that have as much to do with narrative momentum as with ball-striking data. But the name worth watching, the one that feels like it might be writing its own story this week regardless of the other two, is Cameron Young. He has the game. He has the form. He has the kind of motivational backstory — the nearly man who finally stops being nearly — that major championships seem almost contractually obliged to honour eventually.
One of them will lift the Wanamaker Trophy on Sunday. We’ll be watching every shot.