It occurred during the trophy presentation when Rai hoisted the Wanamaker Trophy. The prize, donated by department store heir Rodman Wanamaker for the inaugural championship in 1916, is among the largest in golf at more than 29 inches. It also might be the heaviest, weighing 27 pounds.

Rai wasn’t quite ready for the immensity of the moment.

“I had heard stories about it, but I still wasn’t prepared for quite how heavy that it was,” Rai said with a laugh on Tuesday at Muirfield Village Golf Club, where he was preparing for the Memorial Tournament, his first start since his PGA triumph. “I was pretty comfortable for probably the first minute or so [holding it for photographs] and then after that I definitely started to feel it burning.”

Fortunately, he won’t have quite as much trouble with the version of the Wanamaker the PGA is sending to his home in England. The replica is only 90 percent the size of the original.

Rai, 31, who is making his fourth start in the Memorial, is still coming to grips, so to speak, with other aspects of becoming a major champion. The victory was his second on the PGA Tour and eighth of his career worldwide, but nothing before he closed with a final-round 65 at Aronimink can compare. He needed some time for the win to sink in.

“I think it took a good few days, I think, for me to really get my head around it. I mean, I don’t think I still have fully. But the following morning it was just more of an excitement really. I only slept for four hours on the Sunday night. I slept really late and then I just couldn’t sleep in the morning either after I woke up. So I think just a lot of excitement. It was only really when my dad came to my house a few days later that we started to speak about it a little bit more that I started to kind of embrace it and let it sink in a little bit more. Yeah, it definitely took a few days to kind of get into that.”

Rai said he doesn’t feel different as a golfer, but being stopped by fellow shoppers in the grocery store was one clue that things had changed. Then there was another more significant clue.

“The royal family in England had posted on Twitter about the PGA Championship, which was a real surprise,” he said with wonder. “That definitely stood out.”

Now, so does Rai.

Follow Golf Digest Middle East on social media

Instagram

X

Facebook

YouTube

Main Image: David Cannon

The post Aaron Rai is still coming to grips with the ‘weight’ of his PGA Championship win appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

It would ultimately prove irrelevant, but, at the time, Rory McIlroy had a rather consequential shot at the par-5 16th on Sunday at Aronimink.

It came after the two-time Masters champ had made a long birdie putt at the 14th to keep his hopes alive, then a par the difficult 15th. Then came the 16th, a prime opportunity to grab another birdie and make one final push. McIlroy blasted a 350-yard drive into the right rough, then hit his second into the greenside rough, but shortsided himself.

He had to get cute with the third, and that’s exactly what he did. Too cute. It came up one yard short, ricocheting into the bunker and effectively ending his chances.

It wasn’t a fan’s fault, but McIlroy did seem to take out his anger on one. In fairness to McIlroy, the fan yelled almost immediately after impact, and McIlroy quickly pointed him out to security.

Here are screenshots of the full ordeal:

McIlroy, impressively, saved par, then went on to par the final two holes to tie for seventh at four under. Even if he had holed this shot for eagle and birdied the last two, he would have lost by one to Aaron Rai, who went scorched earth down the stretch. But at the time, McIlroy was understandably miffed, and he acted accordingly.

Follow Golf Digest Middle East on social media

X

Facebook

Instagram

YouTube

Main Image: Ben Jared

The post PGA Championship 2026: Rory McIlroy appears to point out fan to security following yell appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Last year at Quail Hollow, it was a stunning collapse that scuttled his bid. On Sunday at Aronimink Golf Club, Rahm just couldn’t get the ball in the hole fast enough. After starting his final round with two birdies, Rahm converted only two more the rest of the round, cancelled by a pair of bogeys. His closing 68 left him at six-under 274, tied with Alex Smalley for second place, three shots behind winner Aaron Rai.

The finish was both decidedly heartening and dyspeptic for the two-time major winner who posted his 16th top-10 finish in a major championship and ninth in the top five. He played well enough to forge a tie atop the leaderboard, but not well enough to keep it.

“I played really good golf. That’s the only way to look at it. Just wish I’d have done better with the speed of the greens,” said Rahm, 31, who hit 16 greens on Sunday but needed 33 putts, ranking in the bottom third in that category. “Just couldn’t seem to get it to the hole, and that’s the reason why I didn’t hole any more putts. Even so, what Aaron did today, catching him could have been very difficult. I don’t know if it could happen, but I would have liked a better chance playing the last two holes. I feel like I was still close on 16 until he made that long putt [at 17].”

Rahm, who entered the week ranked 20th in the world, assembled a dream start when he converted birdie putts of seven and 11 feet at the first two holes. But he bogeyed three from the middle of the fairway, finding a bunker from just 124 yards out, and another bogey at the seventh after a poor drive left him adrift in a large pack of contenders. His only birdies came on the par-5 holes, Nos. 9 and 16.

Emilee Chinn

One of the marquee names in the LIV Golf League since he joined the upstart circuit in late 2023, Rahm could certainly look upon his week as one of progress. Which he was inclined to do.

“As far as I’m concerned, to be in the mix again and hit it as good as I did and perform as well as I did this weekend, it’s been a great week,” he said after his fourth top-10 major finish as a LIV member. “Four rounds under par, even par, can’t really ask too much more of myself.”

Well, actually, he could. Rahm led the field in driving distance with a monster 350-yard average and was fourth in strokes gained/tee to green at plus-2.383. This was a winnable major for him, never mind how well Aaron Rai played. Rahm gave himself plenty of scoring chances, and not just on Sunday. He needed 31 putts or more the final three rounds after leading the field with only 26 on Thursday.

This autopsy seemed easier to digest than the one in Charlotte. But not by much. Last year he was in shock. This year, he was befuddled.

“I still need to give myself some time to think about what I could have done better this week,” Rahm said. “Right now I’m really still fresh on just today, but I did miss two putts from about four feet yesterday. So that’s two shots right there. It’s easy to focus on today because I’m sure I can find three shots that in the length of the week could have been better. I still need to assess the entire week to be able to pick and choose what I need to change or what I need to improve on.

“The margin,” he added, “even though it’s three shots, it can be so small, honestly. I feel like I’m playing really good golf and definitely played good enough this week to give myself a chance to win. So keep doing what I’ve been doing well.”

Nope, just do it a little bit better.

Follow Golf Digest Middle East on social media

X

Facebook

Instagram

YouTube

Main Image: Jamie Squire

The post PGA Championship 2026: Jon Rahm was so close to the Wanamaker Trophy for the second consecutive year appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Not surprisingly, then, when new PGA of America CEO Terry Clark met with the media for the first time on Wednesday ahead of the PGA Championship, he, too, was asked about purses and how much longer they could continue going up. The topic came with a subtle change in context given LIV Golf’s uncertain future now that the PIF won’t be funding them past this year and whether prize money payout had finally plateaued.

The specific question for Clark was what was his approach in general to making sure the PGA Championship continues competitive with its purse but staying financially responsible? Here’s his response:

“Yeah, it’s a balanced approach. … We’re really focused on all aspects of how do we improve and continue to look at improvement at the assets we have, including PGA Championships. This is a really important one. Obviously, it’s something we look at every year.”

Despite the cautious tone, the PGA of America announced on Saturday morning that this year’s prize money payout would be a record $20.5 million, a $1.5 million increase from a year ago, with the winner, Aaron Rai, earning $3.69 million. However, this still puts the PGA Championship third highest among the majors behind the U.S. Open ($21.5 million) and the Masters ($21.5 million last month 2026). The Open Championship paid out $17 million at Royal Portrush last July.

Clark, on the job since January, said the decision on prize money isn’t necessarily tied to what the other majors payout or what the PGA Tour does with its $20 million signature events and $25 million Players Championship payday.

“It’s not always in comparison to all of those,” Clark said. “It’s what are the factor that’s make sense. We do look at it as an annual focus around how do we get at competitive purses.”

For the curious, here’s a quick look at the history of the prize money payout at the PGA Championship:

Year: Winner’s Pay, Total Purse
1916: $500, $2,580 (first year of the event)
1931: $1,000, $7,200 (first year winner’s pay increased)
1953: $5,000, $20,700 (first year winner’s pay was $5K)
1958: $5,500, $39,388 (first year of stroke play, also the winner’s amount actually decreased that year)
1965: $25,000, $149,700
1978: $50,000, $300,240
1983: $100,000, $608,099
1988: $160,000, $1,000,000 (first year with a $1M total purse)
1993: $300,000, $1,702,750
1998: $540,000, $2,886,800
2000: $900,000, $5,031,100 (first year with a $5M total purse)
2003: $1,080,000, $5,938,300 (first year with $1M-plus to the winner)
2009: $1,350,000, $7,484,500
2014: $1,800,000, $9,913,000
2018: $1,980,000, $11 million
2021: $2,160,000, $12 million
2022: $2,700,000, $15 million
2023: $3,150,000, $17 million
2024: $3,300,000, $18 million
2025: $3,420,000, $19 million

Win: Aaron Rai, -9/271, $3.69 million

T-2 : Jon Rahm, -6/274, $1.804 million

T-2 : Alex Smalley, -6/274, $1.804 million

T-4: Justin Thomas, -5/275, $843,867

T-4: Ludvig Aberg, -5/275, $843,867

T-4: Matti Schmid, -5/275, $843,867

T-7: Cameron Smith, -4/276, $637,050

T-7: Rory McIlroy, -4/276, $637,050

T-7: Xander Schauffele, -4/276, $637,050

T-10: Kurt Kitayama, -3/277, $496,708

T-10: Chris Gotterup, -3/277, $496,708

T-10: Justin Rose, -3/277, $496,708

T-10: Patrick Reed, -3/277, $496,708

T-14: Matt Fitzpatrick, -2/278, $364,763

T-14: Scottie Scheffler, -2/278, $364,763

T-14: Max Greyserman, -2/278, $364,763

T-14: Ben Griffin, -2/278, $364,763

T-18: Maverick McNealy, -1/279, $229,129

T-18: Jordan Spieth, -1/279, $229,129

T-18: Stephan Jaeger, -1/279, $229,129

T-18: Padraig Harrington, -1/279, $229,129

T-18: David Puig, -1/279, $229,129

T-18: Harris English, -1/279, $229,129

T-18: Min Woo Lee, -1/279, $229,129

T-18: Joaquin Niemann, -1/279, $229,129

T-26: Nick Taylor, E/280, $125,523

T-26: Alex Noren, E/280, $125,523

T-26: Cameron Young, E/280, $125,523

T-26: Andrew Novak, E/280, $125,523

T-26: Daniel Hiller, E/280, $125,523

T-26: Tom Hoge, E/280, $125,523

T-26: Sam Burns, E/280, $125,523

T-26: Hideki Matsuyama, E/280, $125,523

T-26: Bud Cauley, E/280, $125,523

T-35: Christiaan Bezuidenhout, +1/281, $78,806

T-35: Patrick Cantlay, +1/281, $78,806

T-35: Ryo Hisatsune, +1/281, $78,806

T-35: Daniel Berger, +1/281, $78,806

T-35: Ryan Fox, +1/281, $78,806

T-35: Haotong Li, +1/281, $78,806

T-35: Aldrich Potgieter, +1/281, $78,806

T-35: Si Woo Kim, +1/281, $78,806

T-35: Martin Kaymer, +1/281, $78,806

T-44: Chris Kirk, +2/282, $50,348

T-44: Matt Wallace, +2/282, $50,348

T-44: Shane Lowry, +2/282, $50,348

T-44: Jhonattan Vegas, +2/282, $50,348

T-44: Denny McCarthy, +2/282, $50,348

T-44: Chandler Blachet, +2/282, $50,348

T-44: Taylor Pendrith, +2/282, $50,348

T-44: Dustin Johnson, +2/282, $50,348

T-44: Nicolai Hojgaard, +2/282, $50,348

T-44: Michael Kim, +2/282, $50,348

T-44: Kristoffer Reitan, +2/282, $50,348

T-55: Collin Morikawa, +3/283, $34,186

T-55: Corey Conners, +3/283, $34,186

T-55: Andrew Putnam, +3/283, $34,186

T-55: Brooks Koepka, +3/283, $34,186

T-55: Mikael Lindberg, +3/283, $34,186

T-60: Sami Valimaki, +4/284, $29,218

T-60: Sahith Theegala, +4/284, $29,218

T-60: Rico Hoey, +4/284, $29,218

T-60: Rickie Fowler, +4/284, $29,218

T-60: Brian Harman, +4/284, $29,218

T-65: Casey Jarvis, +6/286, $26,900

T-65: Jason Day, +6/286, $26,900

T-65: Rasmus Hojgaard, +6/286, $26,900

T-65: Keith Mitchell, +6/286, $26,900

T-65: Sam Stevens, +6/286, $26,900

T-70: Luke Donald, +7/287, $25,070

T-70: Ryan Gerard, +7/287, $25,070

T-70: John Parry, +7/287, $25,070

T-70: William Mouw, +7/287, $25,070

T-70: Kazuki Higa, +7/287, $25,070

T-75: Elvis Smylie, +8/288, $24,193

T-75: Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen, +8/288, $24,193

T-75: Alex Fitzpatrick, +8/288, $24,193

T-75: Daniel Brown, +8/288, $24,193

79: John Keefer, +9/289, $23,970

80: Ben Kern, +10/290, $23,930

81: Michael Brennan, +11/291, $23,910

82: Brian Campebell, +18/298, $23,900

Note: Players missing the cut and turning in a 36-hole score were be paid $4,300 each. Any player making the cut, but failing to submit a 72-hole score, was also paid $4,300.

Follow Golf Digest Middle East on social media

X

Facebook

Instagram

YouTube

Main Image: Ben Jared

The post PGA Championship 2026: Here’s the record prize money payout for each golfer at Aronimink appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Then Aaron Rai rolled in a 68-footer at the 17th, and the roar went up before the ball went down. Rai barely moved; a delayed fist pump, a flicker beneath the stillness, and who could blame the restraint? There is nothing harder than staying composed while the world around you loses its mind.

Against a field stuck in neutral, Rai found another gear. Four birdies and an eagle across a 10-hole stretch that was nothing short of lights-out, becoming the first Englishman in more than a century to lift the Wanamaker Trophy.

WHAT. A. PUTT!

UNBELIEVABLE FROM AARON RAI! pic.twitter.com/JxGSchnie1

— Golf on CBS (@GolfonCBS) May 17, 2026

“It’s been a bit of a frustrating season. So to be stood here is definitely outside of my wildest imagination,” Rai said after his final-round 65 earned a third-shot victory of Jon Rahm and Alex Smalley. “I think just really good consistency over the last few weeks in terms of practice, body’s been feeling great, and really enjoyed the course this week and continued to hold the rounds together as the week went on.”

Where to begin? Honestly, where, because until late Sunday, this PGA Championship felt like it never quite got started. A record 22 players entered the final round within four shots of the lead, and with that many names in contention, it was nearly impossible to settle on a favourite, let alone a narrative. The chaos only deepened when Kurt Kitayama went out in one of the early groups and shot 63, then Justin Thomas followed with a 65 to vault into second before the leaders had even reached the first tee. Aronimink had been exacting its toll all week, but suddenly this felt less like a major and more like a math problem, bodies accumulating on the leaderboard with no sign of separation. Which, in its own way, was reassuring—or so the logic went. Seventy-two holes has been the game’s great sorter for over a century, perfectly calibrated to produce a champion from the wreckage. Someone had to break through. It just wasn’t obvious, for a very long time, that it would be anyone.

Part of Aronimink’s genius is the patience it extorts. Don’t let the lag putt slide four feet past, don’t get seduced by the aggressive line at a tucked pin, don’t mistake boldness for stupidity. That is one kind of examination. But as the afternoon bled into evening, a curious thing was unfolding: everyone seemed to have the answer key. No one was making a charge, yet no one was unraveling either. The leaderboard sat motionless, a painting of a storm that refused to break. Birdies trickled in here and there, but nothing that rearranged the furniture. The galleries grew restless, the energy shifting from anticipation to frustration, the collective impatience of thousands willing those inside the ropes to seize the moment.

Rai heard them. He’d been patient all day—perhaps too patient—but patience has a breaking point and he found his at the par-5 ninth, where he made eagle to light the fuse. Birdies followed at 11 and 13, the latter courtesy of a bunker shot from 40 yards that had no business being as good as it was. But Rai couldn’t afford to admire his own handiwork. Matti Schmid and Rahm were breathing down his neck, and with a drivable par-4 and a reachable par-5 still ahead, this was not time to play it safe. He answered with a striped iron at the par-5 16th and a two-putt birdie, then stepped to the 17th and rolled in 68 feet of pure chaos. A putt that, by his own admission, was something of a happy accident.

“Definitely wasn’t trying to hole that put,” Rai admitted afterward. “The shadow of the pin gave a really nice line for probably the last 10 feet. So that definitely helped with the visual of the putts.

“But it was so long that it was just trying to put good speed on it and make a good putt, and it just tracked extremely well on the last half. Yeah, amazing to see that one go in.”

It didn’t matter. The lead was his, and no one was coming, as Rahm only mustered one birdie on the back and Smalley’s charge happened only when the issue was no longer in doubt, bestowing Rai a victory march up the 18th.

David Cannon

At tournaments of this magnitude, the temptation is to project, to extrapolate, to chart the arc of what comes next. At 31, Rai has time on his side, a long runway ahead. But what makes his story worth sitting with isn’t that he’s here, but the route he took.

He arrived here partly by accident. As a toddler, he took an errant hockey stick to the head, courtesy of his older brother. His mother, applying the eternal parental calculus of boys will be boys, went out to find plastic sticks so the damage couldn’t be repeated. She came home with golf clubs instead.

He arrived here because of sacrifice, the quiet, unglamorous kind that never makes the highlight reel. His mother immigrated to England from Kenya as a teenager and worked multiple jobs to hold the family together. His father, a community worker who knew nothing about golf, taught himself the swing from books once Aaron caught the bug. They were a working-class family, and proper equipment and entry fees were not small expenses. But his father looked at his son and saw his joy was worth the investment. It is a story that will be told and retold in the long shadow of a major championship, but repetition does not diminish it. Knowing the clubs had to last, his father cleaned them after every round with baby oil and tucked them away in iron covers. Aaron still does it today out of memory, an acknowledgement that this dream was never his alone to carry.

He’s here because he almost wasn’t. Rai bypassed college golf and turned professional at 17, convinced he was ready. He was not. Missed cuts piled up on the developmental EuroPro Tour. He lost what little status he had twice and had to claw it back each time at Q-School, that annual exercise in humiliation and hope. It took five years just to reach the Challenge Tour (HotelPlanner Tour), the feeder circuit for the DP World Tour, a timeline that would have broken most. He understood by then that going pro had been premature. But he refused to frame it as a mistake. The bet on himself was still sound, he believed. It would just take longer to cash. Aronimink, it turns out, was built for exactly that kind of grit. A course that punishes impatience, rewards restraint, and has no interest in rewarding anyone who hasn’t already learned to absorb punishment without flinching.

“It definitely feels like a journey. Everyone playing in the field this week has a great journey to be able to share, and I’m no exception to that,” Rai said.

“Yeah, so much goes into it from being a junior golfer to developing the game to have aspirations of turning professional. Then you realize once you turn professional how good some of these guys are and how strong the level of professional golf is.”

He’s here because he worked his tail off, and on that front we bring in Xander Schauffele: “Rarely do you feel like people work way harder than you … I feel like I’ve played a pretty good amount of time, and Aaron is always there. He’s always in the gym. He’s always on the range. At the Scottish, I’m staying right on site there. I thought it was fun for [caddie] Austin and I to go putt. Aaron is finishing up his little putting session at 9 p.m. and going to the gym at 9:45.

“This was three years ago. I think that’s what it’s about to be a major champion. You put the work in when nobody’s looking.”

Jamie Squire

And now that the work has paid off, the question turns outward: Who comes next? Rai became the first player of Indian heritage to win a major championship—a fact that will echo far beyond Aronimink, across continents and junior ranges and households where golf has always felt like someone else’s game. He had been laying that groundwork long before the Wanamaker was in his hands. He hosts junior clinics regularly in his hometown in England. PGA Tour officials say he is one of their first calls when they need a player to show up at a charitable function during tournament week—not because he has to, but because he does.

Champions are made on Sunday afternoons. What they stand for takes considerably longer to build.

“As I’ve continued to develop as a junior and an amateur and a professional, golf is an extremely humbling game,” Rai said. “There’s so much hard work and discipline that goes into acquiring the skills to become better. You also realize that nothing is ever given in this game at any point. Whether it’s a tournament, a practice round, even away from a tournament week. These things have to be done diligently and require focus. “It’s very humbling. The game requires the focus and attention, but the [personal] humility goes hand in hand with the game.”

The game should be proud of Rai, and perhaps a little embarrassed it took this long to notice him. To the casual fan, he has long stood out for wearing two black gloves, a habit born from grinding through England’s bitter winter months on ranges that don’t care about your comfort. Or that he’s married to a fellow professional golfer, Gaurika Bishnoi, who plays on the Ladies European Tour. That this qualified as exotic tells you something about professional golf’s appetite for sameness, its gravitational pull toward a certain kind of player with a certain kind of story. Rai is not that player. In personality and in origin, in the quiet labors when no one was looking, he represents what the game has long claimed to want and rarely stopped to cultivate. Proof that this sport can belong to anyone willing to endure what it demands.

Golf has a long history of coronating the expected. The familiar names, the familiar faces, the champions who feel inevitable in retrospect. But occasionally the sport surprises itself, and Sunday at Aronimink was one of those days. There will be those who dismiss Rai for his modest win total, or simply because they’d never bothered to learn his story. Let them. The roar that swallowed Philadelphia Sunday was the symphony of a lifetime of pain and hope and hardship, wondering if this would ever come. It cannot be unheard, and the man who made it—Aaron Rai, PGA champion—will not be forgotten.

Follow Golf Digest Middle East on social media

Instagram

X

Facebook

YouTube

Main Image: Andrew Redington

The post PGA Championship 2026: Golf needed a new hero. It has one in Aaron Rai, your new major champ appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Kurt Kitayama turned in a record round on Sunday. Now has must wait and see if it’s enough.

Kitayama, beginning his day outside the top 60 and teeing off six hours ahead of the final paring, made seven birdies—including at the 18th—and went bogey free for a final-round 63. If that sounds good, it is, as it tied the major championship record for the lowest score in a final round.

“I felt like the first three days I was playing in such windy conditions, and it was so tough to get anything close. And today it was nice, wind was down,” Kitayama said. “Just felt so much easier when the wind was down. And made it a little easier to score, because the first two days it was so windy, and where the pins were you had to play wind on your putts, and that makes it so difficult to play.

“Today you could just kind of read it out they were and didn’t have to worry about any wind affecting it.”

At the time of finishing, Kitayama had jumped 57 spots on the board into T-7 at three under, six three back of 54-hole leader Alex Smalley. With more than 20 players within four shots of the lead, it’s likely Kitayama’s round won’t hold up among the leaders.

However, as we witnessed on Saturday at Aronimink, the afternoon can bring stronger wind and higher scores. Smalley has never won a PGA Tour or DP World Tour title, and only Jon Rahm has won a major at the group at four under.”I think if the weather stays like this, the wind is pretty light, there might be another one. But I don’t know, final rounds are tough,” Kitayama said. “I’m one of the first few groups. Less pressure for sure. I think we’ll see some more under-par scores maybe, overall. ”

Kitayama only has one career major top 10, but he entered Philadelphia playing well with two top 10s in signature events in the past month.

It is the 21st round of 63 or better in the PGA Championship. The last player to shot at 63 in the final round of a major was Tommy Fleetwood, who did it twice (2023 U.S. Open, 2018 U.S. Open). Xander Schauffele and Shane Lowry hold the overall PGA record with 62.

Follow Golf Digest Middle East on social media

Instagram

X

Facebook

YouTube

Main Image: Andrew Redington

The post PGA Championship 2026: Kurt Kitayama ties major championship record to get into Sunday mix appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

After Friday’s pin placements stirred some strong emotions about set-up, Saturday’s course presentation at the PGA Championship seemed to meet the platonic ideal of facilitating fireworks but causing punishment for anything less than right. That doesn’t mean it was universally loved by the field, however. Most notably, Shane Lowry.

The former Open champ has never been shy about his feelings towards courses that don’t meet his standard. Following an even-par 70, Lowry didn’t hold his opinions back to Northern Ireland’s BBC Sport.

“Yeah I think it’s a great golf course, but I think it has been set up pretty poorly,” Lowry said on Saturday. “And I guess that people sitting at home on the couch can say, ‘Well, people are making birdies, some people are shooting good scores.’ That’s always going to happen, they’re the best players in the world.”

'I think it has been set-up pretty poorly'

Shane Lowry was speaking with BBC Sport NI's Stephen Watson following his third round at the US PGA Championship#BBCGolf #Golf #USPGA pic.twitter.com/1r0z8mXX2W

— BBC SPORT NI (@BBCSPORTNI) May 16, 2026

Lowry said he was happy that Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler weren’t thrilled with Friday’s set-up and that it wasn’t just him. “I feel like when you see the best players in the world struggling from 10 feet, you know that there’s something wrong somewhere,” Lowry explained. “So I think they got it wrong the first two days. It looks like they’ve… it was certainly a little bit easier today, and it looks like that’s kind of maybe a reaction to the first two days, which is not right either you know.”

In Lowry’s estimation, players want a similar course set-up ever day, with the course getting harder as the week progresses. “You look at the field so bunched, maybe that’s the reason for the setup the way it is.” A record 22 players are within four shots of the PGA lead with 18 holes to go.

To be fair, not everyone agreed with Lowry’s assessment. Following a 66 to get back into the mix, Lowry’s mate McIlroy felt the set-up wasn’t manipulated. “Look, when you have a set of greens like this, you can start to frustrate people pretty easily, I think. You heard it in me last night. You heard it in Scottie. I saw some of his comments. Shane. I think there was a lot of guys that were frustrated yesterday coming off the course,” McIlroy said. “Again, it’s frustrating to us, but at the same time, it creates a helluva entering championship. If I wasn’t playing this tournament, I’d love what’s going on this week, but watching and playing are two different things.”

Follow Golf Digest Middle East on social media

Instagram

X

Facebook

YouTube

Main Image: Andrew Redington

The post PGA Championship 2026: Shane Lowry isn’t thrilled with this week’s set-up appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

At a PGA Championship that has played like a U.S. Open, that’s the only thing keeping players upright. And with 18 holes remaining, Rahm is in contention to claim a much-anticipated third major title.

“It’s an extremely difficult golf course. Today is probably the easiest setup of the three, but still with the wind the way it’s going and the greens right now, you have to play really good golf to give yourself a chance out there,” Rahm said after a third-round 67 that leaves him a four under for the championship. “So not surprised the scores are a little bit harder to accomplish in the afternoon, especially the later tee times.

“As far as me is concerned, that was a fantastic round of golf and thrilled to be in a good position for tomorrow.”

It’s tempting to say Rahm has kept his cool this week, though that framing requires a small asterisk: he did accidentally catch a volunteer in the face with a divot after an angry swipe at the rough, a reminder that the embers are never fully out. But Aronimink has stress-tested everyone in its path, and against that standard, Rahm has been a model of relative composure, absorbing bad breaks, grinding through the difficult stretches and refusing to let one sour moment bleed into the next. The underlying numbers reflect it. He’s second in the field tee-to-green and first around the greens, a combination that suggests a player in command of his instrument even when the music gets difficult.

The putter hasn’t been a weapon; more a reliable foot soldier than a difference-maker. But it hasn’t cost him, either, which at this PGA qualifies as victory.

“They’re hard. The best way I can describe it is you’re going to be … you’re going to see very few major championship golf courses where, if you’re in the middle of the green, you’re going to have as hard a time to two-putt as you can on some of the holes out here, especially with the pin locations,” Rahm said. “Usually being in the middle is a safe haven. This week you need to think about where you’re going to leave the ball because the middle isn’t always the best option with how sloped those greens are. I think a little bit is where I leave myself, what putts I’m leaving myself, for those statistics to change. I didn’t feel like I putted badly on the first day. They just didn’t go in.”

Putting aside, he has looked like the Rahm of the past. Which, frankly, hasn’t been present for some time.

Rahm at majors was once a fixed coordinate on the leaderboard. Eight career top-fives before his departure to LIV, anchored by wins at the 2021 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines and the 2023 Masters. Since crossing over, he has approximately zero such finishes. Save for a brief Sunday charge in the PGA at Quail Hollow last year, he has been a non-factor every time the golf world convenes for something that actually counts. Playing in a league that has spent its existence batting away accusations of being a glorified exhibition, Rahm’s major no-shows have served as one of the prosecution’s most compelling talking points surrounding the competitive attrition that sets in when a player trades the pro golf grind for whatever LIV is supposed to be.

The cruelty of it all is what Rahm was before. After slipping on the green jacket at Augusta, he appeared to be on an all-time trajectory. Two majors and 20 wins before his 29th birthday, the first European to hold both the Masters and U.S. Open titles, a player whose gifts had finally caught up with their own promise. He carried, too, the particular weight of being cast as the spiritual heir to Seve Ballesteros, a designation that arrives with expectations no job description could fully prepare you for. For a player of that heft to dissolve into irrelevance at the only events that measure legacy, while running up scores against fields that couldn’t hold tour cards, teetered between disappointment and waste.

Emilee Chinn

Of course, the majors have only been part of the damage. In the non-Phil Mickelson division, no one has been a bigger self-inflicted casualty of golf’s civil war. Rahm was never beloved on the PGA Tour but he was universally respected, and respect, in the long economy of a career, is the more durable currency. He has, to put it mildly, burned through his tender. He denied interest in LIV repeatedly and on the record, then took the money anyway, a reversal that had less to do with principle than with the number of zeroes.

More recently he picked a gratuitous fight with the DP World Tour despite the circuit making concessions to preserve his Ryder Cup eligibility, a quarrel that served no strategic purpose and revealed something smaller than his talent. For a player who billed himself as a student of the game—someone who understood its history and what endures—the self-sabotage was especially hard to reconcile. Arguably, it explains the hollowness of the past three years. He knew what mattered. He chose otherwise. And the record across 10 major starts since then reads like a verdict.

Perhaps it is no coincidence, then, that as LIV’s collapse came into focus, something in Rahm has shifted. He has appeared visibly deflated when the subject arises in press conferences, acknowledging at various points that he feels essentially bound by the contract he signed. Less an employee than a man serving out a sentence. Even this week, when asked whether he would do it all again, Rahm did not offer anything resembling a ringing endorsement.

But the resignation—or the hope that he might have an out if the league folds—may also have loosened something. Freed from the weight of his game being read as a verdict on his choices, he has looked like himself again this week. When asked this week whether a strong finish might benefit LIV as the circuit scrambles for emergency funding, Rahm’s answer was blunt: “I’m thinking more about myself.” “I’m not going to take on anything outside what I can control when it comes to competing tomorrow,” Rahm continued. “If I do get it done and I sit here again tomorrow, then you can ask me the same question, and I’ll give you an answer. But what it would mean for Spain as well in the grand slam tally and being the last leg of the grand slam for us as well, there’s a lot of things that would mean a lot, but too much of it is out of my control.”

A victory wouldn’t necessarily rehabilitate his public standing overnight. That ledger has too many entries to be settled in a single week. But it would be a start. Sports fans are front-runners, after all. It would be a marker on the map back toward the player golf once believed he could become, and maybe, on some level, the player he still believes he is.

“As hard as it is to play, the challenge can also be kind of fun if you do well,” Rahm said Saturday. “That’s probably the reason why the leaderboard is so bunched up and it’s going to be such a good Sunday tomorrow.”

He’s right about both. Through three rounds, Aronimink has functioned less as a venue than an interrogator, a course that doesn’t merely expose your game but demands to know what you’ll do when it turns on you. Eighteen holes remain. For the first time in a long time, Rahm looks like he has the answers.

Follow Golf Digest Middle East on social media

X

Facebook

Instagram

YouTube

Main Image: Carl Recine

The post PGA Championship 2026: Joining LIV cost Jon Rahm’s legacy. He can start earning it back on Sunday appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

That’s not to be disrespectful. But Smalley, the 29-year-old from North Carolina who played college golf at Duke, is playing in only his fifth major championship. He did not qualify for the Masters. The last one he played was the PGA Championship last year at Quail Hollow. He has one top-10 finish in 12 starts this season on the PGA Tour.

So when Smalley bogeyed three of the first four holes Saturday to drop, that was it. He was no longer in the lead, out of his element and going to be an afterthought by the end of the week, right?

Nope.

Smalley regrouped and birdied seven of the last 12 holes, including four of the last six, to shoot 68 and take a two-shot lead into the final round. He’s the only man to record three sub-70 rounds and will play with Germany’s Matti Schmid in the final pairing. The likes of Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy and Xander Schauffele are not far behind.

“I had watched the coverage this morning before I arrived on property and saw there were scores out there, certainly at the beginning part of the golf course,” Smalley said. “Saw a lot of birdies being made. Then by the time that I teed off, the wind had picked up, and it became very difficult to hit a fairway, hit a green, even make a three- or four-footer.

“Hit a couple wayward shots early, didn’t make it easy on myself.”

Major resilience and determination

Alex Smalley started +3 through 4 but fought back to finish his round -2 and leading the PGA Championship by two shots pic.twitter.com/iF4eiiSjEJ

— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) May 16, 2026

In fact, when Smalley bogeyed the first two holes, his caddie came over to talk to him, settle him down.

“I told him I didn’t want to hear about it,” Smalley told Golf Channel. “I hope he didn’t take it the wrong way. I just didn’t want to hear it at that point.”

Guessing the caddie is just fine. His man went on an epic run with the golf world watching and is 18 holes away from putting his signature on an underdog story. Smalley is only the 10th player in the last 30 years to hold the third-round lead of a major without ever winning a PGA Tour event. Of the nine others to do so, only Louis Oosthuizen in the 2019 British Open went on to win.

That, however, is to worry about later. First, Smalley has a golf tournament to try to win. A big one.

“Anybody who wants to play golf for a living dreams of winning on the PGA Tour when they’re younger. I recognise that I have an opportunity to do that tomorrow,” he said. “I recognise that it’s on a stage that’s a little bit larger than most other tour events. I’m trying to downplay that as much as I possibly can just to make it seem like any other golf tournament, because essentially that’s all it really is.

“So, yeah, I obviously dreamed of this as a kid, and it’s funny, it’s the Wanamaker Trophy, and when I was in college, I stayed in the Wanamaker dorm for three years. So my parents and I have been joking that maybe this would be a tournament that I would win just because of that kind of fact. That’s just kind of something that we’ve joked about even before I made it out here.

“It would be pretty cool to actually pull it out tomorrow.”

Follow Golf Digest Middle East on social media

X

Facebook

Instagram

YouTube

Main Image: Emilee Chinn

The post PGA Championship 2026: Alex Smalley’s incredible resilience sets up the chance of a lifetime appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Justin Rose didn’t have his best stuff for the first two days at the PGA Championship, in large part, as our Shane Ryan writes, due to his struggles with those new irons. But the 2013 U.S. Open champ came up clutch when it mattered most.

Rose opened his second round with a double bogey and looked like he might not make the cut at Aronimink for much of the day. A bogey on the par-3 eighth, his penultimate hole of the day, put Rose at five over par. But after two good shots on the par-5 ninth to put himself around the green, the 45-year-old summoned the type of magic golf fans are used to seeing from him at the Ryder Cup. Have a look:

Justin Rose chips in for eagle to finish his round in style. #PGAChamp pic.twitter.com/kVoH39g7Fl

— PGA Championship (@PGAChampionship) May 15, 2026

The Day 2 walk-off eagle vaulted Rose to three over par, ensuring he’d have a weekend tee time at the year’s second major. It’s not quite the same drama as having the lead on the back nine of the Masters like he did last month, but that’s the heart of a champion on display right there.

Follow Golf Digest Middle East on social media

X

Facebook

Instagram

YouTube

Main Image: Hector Vivas

The post PGA Championship 2026: Watch Justin Rose make the cut in the most dramatic way possible appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.