Aaron Rai ends 107-year English drought with PGA Championship win

Never before has a PGA Championship featured such a crowded leaderboard. By Sunday morning, 21 players stood within four shots of the lead, including eight major champions. Every one of them, and several others, woke up believing they could claim the Wanamaker Trophy.

The list included six-time major champion Rory McIlroy, 2022 Open champion Cameron Smith, two-time PGA champion Justin Thomas, and the winner of the 2021 US Open and 2023 Masters, Jon Rahm. The contenders stretched deep into the field.

Then there was Aaron Rai, a 31-year-old from Wolverhampton ranked 44th in the world. Rai had won PGA Tour events before, but his top-20 finish in this tournament last year and a victory in the pre-Masters par-three contest were his most notable achievements in major golf.

Someone had to win, and by doing so, Rai ended one of golf’s longest-standing jinxes. No Englishman had captured the PGA Championship since Jim Barnes in 1919, when it was still a match-play event. The final four days, particularly the last four hours, were excruciatingly tense. Aronimink’s setup was so tough that Friday saw McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler, the top two players of their generation, complain about its difficulty.

But as McIlroy said a day later, the hardness made for a “helluva entertaining” Sunday. Nearly every player in the field fancied his chances. When Kurt Kitayama, who started the day tied for 64th, posted a 63 to jump into the top 10, it signaled that opportunities existed for those skilled enough to seize them. The flip side: in such a tightly bunched field, one mistake often proved costly, let alone two.

Jon Rahm, Alex Smalley and Matti Schmid learned that lesson the hard way. Each led at different points during the round, only to fall back after making a bogey at a critical moment. One dropped shot typically meant sliding three steps down the leaderboard. Remarkably, Rai made several small errors in his opening eight holes and appeared out of contention for much of his round.

The turning point came with an extraordinary eagle on the par-five ninth. Rai’s second shot landed in the heart of the green, setting up a 40-foot left-to-right putt. Rai once held the record for most consecutive putts from 10 feet — 207 in a row — but this putt was a brute, curling like the second hand of a clock as it dropped into the hole. Suddenly he was one under par for the round and back in the mix, walking off the green with renewed confidence.

Rai capitalized precisely when others in contention began to stumble. He split the fairway at the 11th, hit his approach to five feet and made birdie to take the lead.

He splashed out of a greenside bunker at the 13th for another five-foot birdie putt, reaching seven under par — one shot better than anyone else had managed all week — and opened a two-shot lead. McIlroy and Rahm tried to chase, but the harder they pushed, the further Rai pulled away. Aronimink does not yield to force; while his rivals took risks, Rai played with icy accuracy.

Rai added another birdie on the par-five 16th and delivered the knockout blow with a 68-foot birdie putt on the 17th green that brought fans to their feet, roaring in disbelief. The sound carried across the city.

Rai held a three-shot lead as he walked up the 18th fairway, knowing he was about to become a major champion. His final round of 65 included three bogeys, six birdies and that eagle, covering Aronimink’s ferociously difficult back nine in just 31 shots. He finished three ahead of Rahm and Smalley, who tied for second at six under, four clear of Thomas, and five ahead of McIlroy, Smith and Xander Schauffele. He had bested the strongest field in golf.