NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — Major championships are supposed to be difficult. The mental examination required to hoist one of golf’s four prizes is supposed to be grueling and exacting. The challenge for tournament organizers is that it’s also supposed to be fair.
The question is: Where’s the line? And have we found it during the first two rounds of the 2026 PGA Championship at Aronimink Golf Club?
“I love hard tests of golf, but it’s also the hardest game in the world, and we’re trying to make it harder, and there’s different ways you can do that,” World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler said after his second round on Friday, mulling where that line sits. “You can do that on a golf course like this where, I mean, I truly believe they could have the winning score be whatever they want it to be. It could be over par if they want it to be, just based purely upon pin locations. Is that the best test? Who knows. It’s a different test.”
Entering the week, there was talk that the world’s best would pulverize the Donald Ross gem on the outskirts of Philadelphia. Rory McIlroy bemoaned the “nonexistent” driver strategy required to dissect the course. The assumption was that low scores would be in the forecast.
Instead, Kerry Haigh and the PGA of America gave Scheffler, McIlroy and the rest of golf’s stars a heavy dose of diabolical pin locations, many set on spines or paces from severe slopes. Friday morning also brought winds gusting up to 30 miles per hour, plus firming greens. That combination led to several stars exiting the PGA Championship on Friday afternoon after being battered by an opponent that was expected to wilt. Even those who were lucky enough to book a weekend tee time walked off the course looking shellshocked, having spent hours trying to decide how best to attack the near-unattackable.
“Most of the pins today were, I mean, kind of absurd,” Scheffler said after posting 2 under through 36 holes. “They were just so far into the areas where we thought the pins were going to be, — like the one on 14 was probably the hardest pin that I’ve seen in a long time, just because, I mean, there’s literally just like 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.’ And just you know, just challenging.
“This is the hardest set of pin locations that I’ve seen since I’ve been on tour, and that includes U.S. Opens, that includes Oakmont.”
Shane Lowry fired a second-round 76 to fall on the cut line at 4 over par. The 2019 Open Champion chuckled at how tough the pins were on the heavily sloped greens at Aronimink. Lowry made it clear: he was not “moaning” about a hard setup. He has seen plenty of tricky pins before. But their relentlessness at Aronimink was unusual. He called a left pin on No. 5 at Augusta National “borderline,” for instance, but noted that Augusta normally follows that pin by putting the pin at No. 6 in the bowl. There’s no let-up so far this week at Aronimink.
“The people in the grandstands have no idea how difficult it is out there,” Lowry told several reporters while chuckling. “Like, I just got to the 10th hole today, and I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ By the way, it’s a really tough hole. It’s not like it’s a wedge hole. It’s a really tough hole, and with that pin position, it’s like, I don’t know. I don’t know. This is a great golf course. There’s no point in trying to trick it up.
“There wasn’t one pin in a bowl out there today. I felt like every pin was on the bonnet of a car.”
Lowry rubbed his face and said he was just hoping he got a weekend tee time to get two more cracks at the golden-age design.
“I’ve never had so many 15-footers that I felt like I could putt off the green, genuinely,” Lowry said. “Every putt, every time I hit a good shot in the pin was like on a crown, kind of up and over, into the grain, down grain. So tricky, with gusts up to 20 miles per hour. I haven’t had that since Pinehurst. That’s what it feels like when you’re at Pinehurst.”
Next came Patrick Reed, who shot 2 over on Friday and will make the weekend at even par. It was a day in which Reed didn’t have his best, and his weaknesses were exposed by an exacting setup that demanded control.
“The pins are brutal,” Reed told GOLF and the Philadelphia Inquirer after his round. “There’s none in bowls. There’s only crowns here and they put every pin on a crown. Couple of the pins are dicey to say the least, but at the same time, it’s kind of one of those were you kind of expect it to be that way.”
Reed jabbed the par-3 eighth hole, which played at 243 yards in Round 1 and caused play to grind to a halt, calling it a “dumb hole.” But long par-3 aside, Reed felt the first 36 holes were major championship quality. The test is as it’s supposed to be. If you hit a great shot, the reward is there. Good won’t get it done.
“Pin locations are hard, but if you hit a quality iron shot, you have a chance to get it close,” Reed said
That was the overwhelming sentiment from players on Friday at Aronimink. The pin locations are on the edge, yes. They are demanding. But if you pull off the shot required, you can still score. You just must be precise. There is almost no room for error.
“I’m going to try to answer this properly. I don’t think it’s unfair,” Chris Gotterup, who shot 5 under on Friday, said. “Fourteen today is probably aggressive, I will say. You’re hitting a 4-iron to a 10-foot circle, and if it doesn’t go there, it’s off the green, and if you hit it 40 feet left, you have a very hard two-putt. [Robert MacIntyre] made a birdie in my group, and he hit a great shot. So is it unfair, probably not.”
Scheffler played his first two rounds with Justin Rose and Matthew Fitzpatrick. Scheffler said he asked both his caddie, Ted Scott, and Rose’s caddie, Mark Fulcher, if they had ever seen pins like this before. They both said that only Shinnecock, which hosts the U.S. Open next month, measures up. Even last year’s U.S. Open host, Oakmont, isn’t at this level because the slopes on those greens are different than how Ross designed those at Aronimink.
“It’s different in a sense on this golf course, because Oakmont, their greens are extremely severe, but they’re extremely severe in one direction,” Scheffler said. “Here, it’s like the green may slope all this way [gestures right to left] and then we put the pin down here {points on top of slope] and then there’s also a slope this way [gestures left to right]. And like it’s not as, how would you say, natural to the slopes that are there. There’s a bit more, I think, that’s manufactured into the greens, and it’s just very difficult.
“It’s difficult to get the ball close to the hole. It’s difficult to hole putts, especially when you have big slopes and wind, and I think that’s why you see the scores so close to par.”
Reed did note one silver lining as he walked to the parking lot and prepared to mount a weekend charge in the affluent Philadelphia suburb of Newtown Square. The pin locations should, in theory, get easier.
“I feel like they knew what pins were going to be really, really dicey and they got those out of the way when the greens were the softest,” Reed said.
For those who survived to make the weekend, that’s something to hope for.
