NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — After shooting a two-under 68 in this PGA Championship’s first round, Xander Schauffele was asked a simple question: name your best shot of the day.
“You got me here,” Schauffele said. “I have no idea.”
The follow-up was fair, too. Did you hit any good shots as you played one of the best rounds of the day?
“Yeah, I did.” he said, contemplating. “I did … ESPN would never show this, but internally I hit it over the green on 8, was leaking some oil, and I was able to lag that to 2 feet up and over and around and down with a crosswind. So in my mind, that was a really big moment for me.”
From 60 feet to 2 feet for, on paper, the most unsexy of golf things: a two-putt par. But therein lies a few truths about this fantastic tournament, one of which is becoming a dominant theme: This PGA Championship is filled with things the average sports fan could never appreciate. This one is for the golf sickos. The ball-knowers. Those who understand what Damn Good Golf looks like even when it’s not in a highlight reel. Those folks who, if they squint hard enough, see the slopes of a tricky green through their flatscreen and tell you what “grain” is and why it matters. The people who can guess when a bunker shot might go in versus those that might barely stay on the green. This tournament is for the people who know a chippy 8-iron is not hitting a chip with your 8-iron.
The knowers who watched Friday morning (from the office, probably) had to chuckle at the welcome of ESPN analyst Andy North. Firstly, they probably know Andy North’s CV by heart. Secondly, they could appreciate his quip: “For those of you who just tuned in this morning, this is the PGA Championship, not the Open Championship.”
As cheeky as he really ever gets, what North was doing there is extremely important. His role is not so literally on-course reporter, as his title would suggest, but more inside-the-ropes contextualizer. And for how incredibly great pro golfers are, their brilliance is often flattened by 1.) soft greens; 2.) tame conditions; and 3.) how that is conveyed through the broadcast. We are trained as viewers to automatically appreciate the shots that finish close to the hole, much less the ones that curve to a specific location in a specific quadrant of these particularly firm greens. It happens at the Open Championship, to North’s point, but it hasn’t always been like that at the PGA.
Think back to 2024, at Valhalla in sweaty Kentucky, where Schauffele, oddly enough, hit a ton of great shots and won the tournament. But he, again, may not remember many of them because the setup was so directly similar to what pros see week to week. The ball was played high and through the sky, and all the “best” shots landed within five feet of the hole and stayed there. A similar experience played out last year at the PGA Tour-ified (and rather wet) Quail Hollow. But this week feels like a departure of PGA Championship form, and my guess is your golfiest golf friends love it.
Aronimink is asking players to be so, so patient. To do as Chris Gotterup — owner of the round of the week — has admittedly gotten better at: understanding that golf at its highest level shouldn’t be see ball, hit ball. But rather, visualize ball, see ball, hit ball, watch ball in the air, watch ball on the ground, wait until that ball comes to a stop. Thirty feet from the hole, as Gotterup said Friday, can be a very good shot. Your auntie who watches only the Masters might never understand.
But if she watched this year’s Masters champ play the 13th hole on Friday, who knows if she’d recognize how severely down downwind the hole played. Rory McIlroy bombed his drive through that fairway — a very good, not great shot — and then had to play a tasteful three-quarter wedge that flew halfway to the green and bounded along the ground until it finished hole-high. It may have been the links-iest shot played in Pennsylvania this decade. Auntie may not know what a links is.
Each year, the PGA of America has one of the more difficult jobs in sports. Organizing the next major after the Masters feels a bit like hosting a costume party two weeks after Halloween. Every year the standard is set in such a universally beloved way in its permanent, Eastery setting. But the PGA has to choose venues nearly a decade in advance, has to produce something harder than the PGA Tour would, but not so difficult that players deem it unfair, and hope Mother Nature treats them reasonably. Thus far, Aronimink is threading that needle, pissing no one off and bringing with it a style of Goldilocks golf the best players in the world (and those who consume their golf constantly) are decidedly not used to.
Pros have walked off the course exhausted by the test but not overly disgruntled. Even the quick-to-complain Shane Lowry, who had just shot 76 Friday, said he wasn’t going to air out his nitpicks because he knows a number of his peers are shooting great scores by hitting great shots, many of which aren’t appreciated like they should be.
“Fans have no idea,” Lowry said. “They have no idea. People sitting in the grandstands have no idea how difficult it is out there.”
How Aronimink and the PGA are doing it, on a shorter-than-most routing, is with perfectly tricky, rather slopey greens and hole locations that are decidedly toeing the line of fairness. Lowry said a number of them feel like they’re on the convex hood of a car. To get close requires an intricate understanding of how much a 54-degree wedge spins compared to its 50-degree brother. Dan Brown used the latter (a chippy 50) instead of the former (a soft 54) on Thursday, landed short of the hole and curled it in from 102 yards. Patrick Cantlay, hours earlier but on the same hole, misunderstood the assignment, landed 2 yards past the hole and ripped his ball 60 feet back.
Scottie Scheffler called this week’s assortment of hole locations the hardest bunch since he joined the PGA Tour, added they were “kind of absurd” but also said not one was unfair. He validated those thoughts via a couple of Tour-lifer caddies, and they both agreed, saying this has been the hardest set of holes they’ve seen besides Shinnecock Hills.
So go ahead — ask your buddies what they know about Shinnecock. Some will call it the next U.S. Open, out in the Hamptons. The golf nerds will tell you it was the course pushed so close to the edge in 2018 that it nearly caused chaos. What it offers is an unglamorous golf that is a bit esoteric. You only know how good it is … if you know how good it is. The challenge it presents results in a lot of pars, a lot of angst, a lack of patience and, almost always, a wearied and absolutely deserving champion. It’s the kind of test the golf-watchers in your life yearn for more than one week a year. In 2026, it’s arrived a month ahead of schedule.
