2026 PGA Championship updates: Scottie Scheffler ties lead in opening round

Cameron Smith has the flatstick working early. 

The 2022 Open Champion has missed his last six major cuts but recently made a coaching change and is showing signs of life early. He made a 25-footer for birdie on his first hole and then rolled in a 22-footer for birdie at No. 16, his seventh hole, to tie the early lead. 

Smith’s last top 10 in a major came at the 2024 Masters.

Bryson DeChambeau was the last man on the range on Wednesday night here at Aronomink. After playing nine holes, he spent at least two hours hitting balls while members of his team filmed him from multiple angles. He spent a lot of time working on his wedges, but was also working out different woods. 

That work has not paid off early here in Philadelphia. 

Bryson’s first approach came up well short of the flag when he tried to drive it in low. He flew his approach on No. 11, his second hole, over the flag and then nearly putted it off the green. Two holes later, he flew his approach shot over the green again and made another bogey. He’s 2 over early on and still trying to find something with his wedges and short irons.

SCORE UPDATE: 

Stephan Jaeger makes bogey to fall into a tie for first at three under with Xander Schauffele and Cameron Smith.

Rory McIlroy remains at even par, while Bryson DeChambeau has dropped another shot to fall to two over early.

One of the most interesting decisions players will have to make this week is at the short par-4 13th hole. GOLF’s Dylan Dethier broke down the challenge from Aronimink.

Rory McIlroy quickly bounced back from an opening bogey with a birdie at 11 to get back to even par. Bryson DeChambeau missed a birdie putt of his own at 12 to remain at one over.

Look out, Stephan Jaeger is on fire. The 36-year-old veteran just dropped another birdie at the 6th hole to reach four under early.

He has a two-shot lead over a group of players at two under that includes Xander Schauffele and Cameron Smith.

Bryson DeChambeau drops a shot at the 11th, his second hole of the day. DeChambeau’s approach shot went just long of the green, then he putted it 40 feet past the hole from there. Two putts later and Bryson had his first bogey of the tournament. He drops to one over.

He has company at that number with Rory McIlroy. McIroy couldn’t recover from a poor tee shot and approach, carding a bogey-5 at the 10th hole to fall to one over as well.

Stephan Jaeger holds the current lead at three under.

Rory McIlroy’s first shot of the 2026 PGA Championship didn’t go as planned. Neither did his second shot.

Starting on the 10th tee at 8:40 a.m. ET, McIlroy hit is drive wide right, where it hit a tree and deflected back toward the fairway. Unfortunately for Rory, his ball settled down into deep rough a foot from the short grass. He tried to hack it out from there, but the rough caused poor contact and he came up well short of the green.

An early look from Thursday morning at the 2026 PGA Championship via our team at Aronimink.

Bryson DeChambeau, playing with Rickie Fowler and Ludvig Aberg, is on the course at Aronimink, opening his day with a bomb off the 10th tee. DeChambeau has largely kept silent early this week, avoiding media interviews and press conferences. We’ll see if he can let his clubs do the talking on Thursday. Bryson has finished runner-up at the last two PGA Championships.

Welcome to the PGA Championship! The action is officially underway at Aronimink. A bunch of players are tied for the early lead at one under, including Alex Fitzpatrick, younger brother of Matt Fitzpatrick.

10 golfers to watch at PGA Championship (for various reasons)

NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — It’s Wednesday of the PGA Championship and everybody has gone home.

Almost everybody, that is.

There’s one golfer left on the driving range. He’s often the last golfer on the driving range at these events, bashing balls until dusk, running the roulette wheel of human emotion as he goes. That would be Bryson DeChambeau, whose range habits seem exhausting and counterintuitive when you consider how much energy he’ll need expend in the actual tournament over the next four days — until you remember that “exhausting” and “counterintuitive” and thousands of late-night range balls is exactly how he got to two major-championship victories plus a whole bunch else.

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Fear of Masters discipline? Snake fighting? Here are the PGA’s BEST quotes

Cam Young talked about his iPhone. 

And Xander Schauffele talked about trees. 

And Jesse Droemer talked about snakes. 

And Keegan Bradley talked about Bud Light and cereal. 

Talk, talk, talk, talk. It can be cheap, as the saying goes — but major championship press conferences are more than sessions full of other commonly spoken phrases. Maybe that’s due to what’s at stake. Maybe that’s because of the questions. But the answers are more than thoughts about the need to keep the ball in the fairway and the desire to make putts. There’s occasional gold spoken from the dais. 

After 15 press conferences over the past three days at the PGA Championship — should you be curious, the pressers lasted nearly five hours — here, then, are a few things that were spoken:

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PGA Champions Dinner offered new window into Scottie Scheffler’s greatness

EWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — Scottie Scheffler doesn’t like to talk about himself or his accomplishments. He talks about his faith and his family and how he always dreamed of competing on the PGA Tour and winning majors. But even after his major triumphs, Scheffler very rarely reveals his secrets.

You can analyze his Chipotle order or his existential dissertation before last year’s Open Championship about the “fleeting” nature of success, but you’re going to be doing most of the work. As Jordan Spieth would tell it, Scottie Scheffler is great because his focus is just on golf, his family and his faith. He’s uninterested in everything else that comes with being the world’s best player. It is more plausible that there is no grand secret that Scheffler is holding back.

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Cameron Young reportedly playing golf ball that would conform under rollback

One of the PGA Tour’s best players over the past eight months has apparently been playing with a ball that would be legal under the USGA and R&A’s proposed rollback.

As first reported by Golf Channel on Tuesday night, the Titleist prototype Pro V1x Double Dot ball Cameron Young began using last summer would conform under the USGA and R&A’s new ODS Test conditions.

Both Titleist and the USGA declined to comment for this story.

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As LIV Golf tension eases, a new civil war takes center stage

NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — It was about this time five years ago that pro golf’s five families, as they’re known — the four major-owning governing bodies and the PGA Tour — started acting like the cousins they really are. They agreed upon something with near-absolute unison: that LIV Golf and the audacious investments from Saudi Arabia were a threat to the status quo. 

“Some money is better than other money,” then-PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh said at Kiawah Island at the 2021 PGA Championship. From wherever PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan was watching, he had to be nodding along. And if he wasn’t, his actions and those of his cousins soon fell in line. It took years for the R&A and USGA to offer specific LIV exemptions into their championships. The World Golf Ranking board — comprised largely of representatives from these bodies — didn’t sanction LIV’s events until the beginning of this year. Fred Ridley, on behalf of the Masters, said the actions of 2022, when LIV launched with bigger purses than the sport has ever seen, “diminished the virtues of the game.” An anti-trust lawsuit filed by LIV players alleged that Augusta National members threatened to disinvite LIV pros from the Masters. 

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

How to watch the 2026 PGA Championship on Thursday

TV coverage for the opening round of the PGA Championship kicks off on ESPN at 12 p.m. ET and ends at 8 p.m. ET.

But you can watch the action much earlier than that. ESPN+ will carry streaming coverage starting on Thursday at 6:30 a.m. ET.

You can check out the complete TV coverage and streaming info for Round 1 here.