Rory McIlroy arrived on site at Aronimink Golf Club in Philadelphia for the 2026 PGA Championship on Monday evening and hadn’t yet been out on the course for a tournament week practice session when he spoke to the media at his pre-tournament press conference, but he’d seen enough on his recent scouting trip to know that the Donald Ross-designed golf course’s greens will play a major part in determining the eventual champion.
“I only got up here last night,” he said. “I played two Fridays ago, I guess it was. Yeah, we played here back in 2018 at the BMW. I don’t think the course necessarily played the way it will play this week. It was a very wet that week. It looks like there’s going to be a little bit of rain Thursday night into Friday morning.
“For the most part, it should be a bit drier, which really brings out the character of the greens. The greens seem to be the big defense and the big talking point of the golf course.”
McIlroy, a two-time PGA Championship winner having triumphed at Kiawah Island in 2012 and again at Valhalla in 2014, saw some similarities with neighbouring Philadelphia Cricket Club which played host to the PGA Tour’s Truist Championship last year with the PGA Championship going to Quail Hollow – the Trusit Championship’s traditional venue – the following week.
“Yeah, it reminds me, we played Philly Cricket Club last year for a PGA Tour event,” he said. “It reminds me a little of that, very wide playing corridors. Still got to get the ball on the fairway. The rough is sort of hit-and-miss, but you can get some bad lies. It’s all about — you know, they can really tuck the pins away with some of these slopes on the greens and just really being aware of that.
“I think from 2018 to then playing a couple weeks ago — and sort of, I don’t know if I’d forgotten or the course didn’t play this way, but if you get yourself above the hole or you start to short-side yourself, you can get yourself in some tricky spots.
“But keeping the ball below the hole — yeah, it’s a course where you can be super aggressive off the tee, and then there’s a little more strategy and a little more thought going into the greens.”
While the back-to-back Masters winner may not have driven the ball the way he typically does enroute to his second victory at Augusta National, he feels that driver is a club that he’ll lean on heavily in the tournament rounds this week.
“I like the style of golf,” he explained. “I like the bunkering. There’s a lot of bunkers. I think it provides quite a nice bit of variety with shorter par-4s, a couple of longer par-4s. The par-3s, there’s three pretty long ones and a shorter one.
“I think in this day and age I’m not sure if it’s going to test all aspects of your bag. There’s going to be a lot of — again, as I said, strategy off the tee is pretty nonexistent.
“It’s, basically, bash driver down there and then figure it out from there, which I think is a lot of these newer — newly renovated — I think about Oak Hill in 2023, here. When these traditional golf courses take a lot of trees out, it makes strategy not as much of a concern off the tee.
“But the greens are — as I said at the start, the greens are the main focus this week, and I think getting yourself in the right sections of the greens, making sure you leave yourself below the hole for the most part. That’s the key this week.
“Again, I’ve only played four competitive rounds here. I don’t know the place that well to give you a great answer on what I like about it, but Philadelphia’s a wonderful golfing city, a lot of great golf courses, and this is certainly one of them.”
Leave a comment