PGA Championship: Players Struggle with Tough Conditions and Pin Placements

“Golf should be a pleasure,” wrote Donald Ross, the man who designed Aronimink, “not a penance”. And a fine sentiment it is, too, even if it wasn’t immediately clear that any of the many men competing here for the PGA Championship was having very much fun doing it. Shane Lowry didn’t seem to be when he shanked the ball into the water at 17, nor did Scottie Scheffler when he threatened to slam down his wedge after hitting one thick on the 6th, and Justin Thomas and Keegan Bradley didn’t look too enthused when they were busy ranting at the rules officials who put them on the clock for slow play.

The pleasure, such as it was, seemed to be mostly in purists’ appreciation of the high standard of lag putting on show, and everyone else’s schadenfreude at watching the world’s best golfers endure the same sort of frustrations amateur hackers suffer every weekend.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It’s been over 60 years since they held a major here, and there was a lot of talk that the modern-day players were going to take the place to pieces. The bookmakers reckoned the winning score would be 14 under par, and there were suggestions that someone might even take a run at the major record set by Xander Schauffele when the tournament was held at Valhalla in 2022. Halfway through the tournament, a score of two under was enough to put a man in contention, and anyone who has made it all the way to three under counts as a red-hot favourite heading into the weekend.

Some said it was all down to the stiff wind, others said it was the sharp temperature. The one thing everybody blamed were the pin positions picked by the tournament committee. “Most of the pins today were kind of absurd,” Scheffler said after his round of 71, which included three bogeys in his first four holes. “This is the hardest set of pin locations that I’ve seen since I’ve been on tour, and that includes US Opens.” Aronimink’s greens are vast, fast and rippled, and the pins, Scheffler explained, have been set in unnatural positions on the top of the swells. “It’s very difficult to get the ball close to the hole, and it’s very difficult to hole putts.”

He singled out the 14th as the toughest pin he’s ever played. “I mean, there’s literally just a spine and they’re like, ‘Oh, we’ll just put the pin right on top of it.’ And you’re like, ‘All right, well, I’ll see what I can do.’” A two-putt par from 80ft, as it turned out.

Scheffler scored bogeys on three of his first four holes and somehow still made 71 to finish on two under. He wouldn’t be the player he is if he spent too much time complaining, but he did ask whether all this grinding was really the best test of golf. “It’s the hardest game in the world and we’re trying to make it harder.” It was a fair question. The field has been squeezed tight together by all the two putts taken that the most skilful players have struggled to separate themselves from everyone else.

Alex Smalley, 29, was right up at the top of the leaderboard on four under, alongside Maverick McNealy, 30. Smalley has never won a tournament in seven years as a professional, McNealy has won one, the RSM Classic in 2024, but is nevertheless reckoned to be the richest man on tour because his father is a multi-billionaire. For a lot of the day, South Africa’s Aldrich Potgieter, 21, who is playing in just his fifth major championship, was right up there with them. He had been five under until things took a turn for the worse on 17 and 18, where he made back-to-back bogeys. Potgieter was a champion wrestler before he took up golf, and it shows. He is the longest driver on the tour and belts the ball like it just insulted his mother.