2026 PGA Championship takeaways: Justin Thomas wins without winning, Ludvig Åberg deserves patience

Aronimink Golf Club shone as a host, while Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler found some areas to improve their games

Patrick McDonald

May 18, 2026

6:05 pm ET

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9 min read

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The front desk worker's week was over. On a shuttle ride from Aronimink Golf Club to a nearby parking lot, she was already reminiscing. Answering phone calls that ranged from viewers at home complaining about a smudge on their televisions to young teens pranking her with requests for a tee time the following day, she could not believe the week that passed.

The site for the 2026 PGA Championship, selected eight years earlier, saw workers spend months preparing Aronimink not only for the second major of the season but also for the throngs of fans who would invade the grounds. Constructing grandstands, buildouts, hospitality tents and merchandise mansions, the work was thought to be stalled due to a snowstorm two months ago, but instead the shovels came out, and the piecing together of the property continued.

Members at Aronimink will get their club back this week, but for the past handful of months, it was a pseudo-construction zone, and for the past seven days, it was the grounds on which history was made.

The 2026 major championship season is officially 50% complete with Aaron Rai's impressive victory at the PGA Championship. Only two opportunities remain for players, with summer still technically ahead on the calendar.

The front desk worker may not have realized it, but she summed up the nature of professional golf. The buildup is almost half the fun. Players get to see new golf courses, media members get to debate and excitement mounts as the event draws nearer. But once tees are pegged and balls start flying Thursday morning, it comes and goes so quickly. Four days is the event's showtime -- four days after years of planning and months of building. And just like that, the 2026 PGA Championship no longer is but rather was.

Let's dive into some of the biggest takeaways from the last week in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania.

Why the PGA rocked

What makes major championships so special is that everyone is so different, and that anyone could theoretically win one. The historical implications of wins by the likes of Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy or Jon Rahm would have been fun to celebrate, but a champion like Rai brings out the true essence of the game.

In a sport dominated by length, he remains one of the shortest players on the PGA Tour. In a world where people buy things in order to show off status, Rai wears two gloves, uses iron covers, brings out a TaylorMade driver no longer on the shelves at your local sporting goods store and sticks plastic tees in the ground so that his ball is the same height with each swing of the driver.

There is a respect, humility and good-natured spirit to Rai's game, and he showcased it at a golf course with a setup bemoaned by some of the best in the game. Aronimink was the most exact PGA Championship test since Southern Hills in 2022. Every aspect of one's game was examined, both seen and unseen, and it was the man who had the will and the shots who reigned supreme.

Were some pin locations sketchy? Sure. Was the par-3 8th a bad hole? Probably! Should wider misses be penalized more than those closer to the fairway? Yes! But every player in the field had to deal with these factors.

Who knows whether Rai will knock down another major championship in his career? Last week, he was playing in the PGA Tour's alternate-field event in Myrtle Beach -- Brian Rolapp, if you are reading, you need to expand the fields in signature events to 120 players -- and had never finished in the top 10 at a major. What we do know is that Rai's win was more than well-deserved as, among a sea of titans, he became one for this week at least.

Three of a kind

Through two major championships, only three players have finished inside the top 10 in the Masters and PGA Championship: McIlroy (win, T7), Xander Schauffele (T9, T7) and Justin Rose (T3, T10). McIlroy and Rose duked it out at the Masters, while McIlroy and Schauffele had their chances Sunday at the PGA Championship.

Schauffele's consistency in these tournaments continues to go under the radar as he now has 19 top-20 finishes in his 36 career major appearances. Of those 36 starts, he has finished inside the top 20 in 27 of them as well. Rose's record at Augusta National tends to make the headlines, but the Englishman now has six top-15 finishes in his last seven PGA Championships.

As for McIlroy, he leads the world on major leaderboards relative to par through the first eight major rounds. His consistency in majors waned during his drought, but with a couple green jackets in tow, his ability to factor has continued to improve as that is now four straight top 20 results dating back to last year's U.S. Open.

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