Aaron Rai just shocked the world by winning the PGA Championship, outclassing the best players on the planet in his final round.
As the likes of Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, and Jon Rahm were grinding out pars, Aaron Rai looked completely comfortable on the fairways of Aronimink, throwing darts down the stretch before sinking the dagger on the 17th green.
If you’d never watched golf before, you’d have been forgiven for assuming that Rai was a multiple-time major winner, so unfazed by the moment that he was. He showed no signs of buckling under the mounting pressure on the back nine and cruised to the finish line.
But the real reason Rai won the PGA Championship over the best players in the world was that he figured out something about Aronimink that no one else did.
Aaron Rai learned the key to winning the PGA Championship
Before the tournament, Aronimink was labeled a bomb-and-gouge course. It was dubbed a place with no strategy, just long drives and wedges to the greens. And even when that was proven wrong, everybody still insisted that this was the case.
After day one, it became blatantly obvious that Aronimink was a different task than expected. The pins were tucked away on the undulating greens designed by Donald Ross. The fairways were narrow and cambered, sending every long drive into the thick, ensnaring rough.
But still, players continued to try their luck with the driver, merely hoping that they’d find the short grass and have a look at birdie. If their drive found the rough, as it almost always did, they’d hack onto the green and make par, but if they got lucky, then it was game on.
All the way down the stretch, every player opted for this strategy and stalled on the leaderboard. Every player but one.
After a slow start to his final round, Rai quickly unlocked the key to this historic course: only by hitting the fairway can you make birdie. So he put his big stick back in the bag and instead opted for his three-wood, or whatever club would keep him out of the rough.
He hit a four-iron on the par-five 15th after finding the fairway on his way to four birdies on the back nine, and on each one, he made sure to avoid the rough to give himself a chance of holding the green.
It was an old-school approach by a man surrounded by those attempting to wrestle Aronimink into submission. Instead, Rai respected Aronimink, respected Donald Ross, and respected the challenge the PGA of America had laid out for him.
That made him a deserving winner of the Wanamaker Trophy.
Rory McIlroy’s refusal to adapt cost him the PGA Championship
McIlroy was the loudest voice on the supposed ease of Aronimink, and perhaps the biggest culprit in the bomb-and-gouge mentality that plagued the players down the stretch.
Before the tournament even began, he said, “Strategy off the tee is pretty nonexistent.
“It’s basically bash driver down there and then figure it out from there, which I think is a lot of these newer — newly renovated — I think about Oak Hill in 2023, here. When these traditional golf courses take a lot of trees out, it makes strategy not as much of a concern off the tee.”
That was clearly wrong, and that’s okay. McIlroy’s mistake wasn’t underestimating Aronimink before he even teed off. His mistake was not recognizing it at all during the tournament.
He insisted on hitting his driver, and more often than not, he found the rough, not giving himself a chance to make a birdie. That stopped him from climbing the leaderboard and giving himself a shot at winning the tournament.
Meanwhile, Rai, who ranks 160th in driving distance on the PGA Tour, plotted his way around and rose to the top, proving that even in the modern day of bombers, there is still a place for the laser-accurate strategists.