5-min read · 1098 words
HOT TAKES · MAJOR CHAMPIONSHIP CULTURE
There is a hierarchy among the four major championships that no one ever quite says out loud but that everyone who follows golf understands. The Masters is first. The Open Championship is second, by virtue of its history and its setting and the particular pleasures of links golf in summer. The US Open is third, the national open of the largest golf market in the world, with the heaviest setup and the most punishing identity. And then there is the PGA Championship, the major that goes fourth in almost every ranking, the major whose trophy is the largest and whose cultural footprint is somehow the smallest. This is an injustice. Aaron Rai’s win at Aronimink on Sunday makes the case for revisiting it.
What the Wanamaker Actually Is
The Wanamaker Trophy is the largest trophy in major championship golf, by a clear margin. It weighs 27 pounds. It is 28 inches tall. It is, by physical measurement, more visually impressive than the Claret Jug, the Masters trophy, or the US Open trophy. It is named after Rodman Wanamaker, the department-store heir who donated it in 1916 when the PGA of America was founded and who funded the prize money for the first PGA Championship that same year. It has been awarded every year since, with interruptions only for the World Wars. Every legendary player in the history of professional golf has either won it or wanted to. And yet, somehow, in the cultural hierarchy of the four majors, it comes last.
Part of the reason is structural. The PGA Championship was originally a match-play event until 1958, which gives it less cumulative stroke-play history than the other three majors. It moved from August to May in 2019, which scrambled its long-standing position in the calendar and disrupted the rhythm of fans who had organised their golf year around it for decades. It does not have a single iconic venue — the Masters has Augusta, the US Open has its rotation of historic American courses, the Open has the same group of links the British have been using for a century, and the PGA Championship moves to whatever American course is willing to host it that year. This means the PGA Championship does not, in the public mind, carry the same place-attachment that the other majors do.
“The Wanamaker Trophy is the most beautiful object in golf. It just happens to be carried home by players whose pictures get less wallpaper space than they deserve.” — A long-time major championship broadcaster
Why That Hierarchy Is Wrong
The PGA Championship is, by almost every objective measure, the strongest major championship field of the year. It includes the top 100 players in the world by ranking, the top 70 players on the PGA Tour, defending tour champions, LIV players who qualify through specific exemption criteria, and the entire field of working PGA professionals who teach the game at a club level — a hundred working teachers from across America who play their way through a qualifying tournament for one of the most spectacular Cinderella stages in professional sport. The depth of field is unmatched. The competitive density is unmatched. The number of players with a realistic chance to win is, in any given year, higher at the PGA Championship than at any of the other three majors.
Aaron Rai’s win at Aronimink is the proof of this. The PGA Championship is the major most likely to produce winners outside the obvious top tier — players in the world’s top 30 but outside the top 5, players whose specific games suit specific course setups, players who have prepared meticulously for the demands of a particular Donald Ross green complex or a particular Pete Dye fairway shape. The major championships that prize raw star power (the Masters) or raw setup difficulty (the US Open) or raw historical romance (the Open) tend to produce somewhat predictable winners. The PGA Championship, by contrast, often produces winners that demand we update our mental models of who the best players in the world actually are. That is a feature, not a bug.
The Aaron Rai Argument
Consider the win on its merits. Aaron Rai is not a player who would have been expected to win the Masters this year. The Masters tends to reward power off the tee and creativity around greens — qualities that Rai possesses without exceptionally. He is not a player who would have been expected to win the US Open at Shinnecock; the Long Island course rewards a different specific skill set than Rai’s. He is not a particularly likely Open champion; his game is more suited to American course shapes than to British links. He won the PGA Championship because the PGA Championship is the major that most reliably rewards the player whose game best suits the specific course in the specific week. At Aronimink in May 2026, that player was Aaron Rai.
This is, in fact, what a properly competitive major championship should look like. Not a predictable coronation of the player everyone already knows. A meritocratic test that produces winners we sometimes have to learn about for the first time on a Sunday afternoon in May. The Wanamaker Trophy has produced these stories more reliably than any other major over the last twenty years — Y.E. Yang’s win over Tiger in 2009, Jimmy Walker in 2016, Phil Mickelson at 50 in 2021, Mito Pereira’s improbable contention in 2022, Brooks Koepka’s defining 2023 win after his LIV-induced exile, Aaron Rai now. These are the stories that golf actually exists for. The Wanamaker has been the trophy that has produced them.
The Verdict
The hierarchy of the four majors is not going to change overnight. The Masters will continue to dominate the cultural conversation in April; the Open will continue to romance traditionalists in July; the US Open will continue to define the American golfing summer in June. But the PGA Championship deserves better than its current fourth-place ranking in the cultural hierarchy. It is a tougher field. It is a more meritocratic test. It produces more interesting winners. And as Aaron Rai’s name is now engraved on a 27-pound silver trophy that has carried every great player’s name in modern golf history, it is worth saying clearly: the Wanamaker is the most underrated prize in the sport. The next time someone tells you the PGA Championship is the least of the four majors, ask them to name the player who has it. If they can, you have your answer.