NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — Aaron Rai sat in his parked rental car Saturday night for 30 additional minutes, hashing out the day’s events. Before retiring for the evening, before letting his head hit the pillow on the eve of what would become the most consequential round of his life, he turned to his wife, Gaurika Bishnoi. The soon-to-be PGA champion expressed a worry that she’d never heard before.
“Sometimes, I feel that the things around me are going to change too much if I do something too crazy,” Rai told Bishnoi, a professional golfer on the Ladies European Tour herself.
Rai feared the summit. When the journeyman pro from the English Midlands envisioned his climactic career moment, he saw not just a trophy but also the newfound fame, attention and demands on his time. The things that come with the pinnacle of this profession scared him, because he worried that in the process of it all, he might lose himself.
But right then and there, sitting in a dark hotel parking lot, Bishnoi reassured him she would not let that happen. It wasn’t an option. Because Aaron Rai is not Aaron Rai without a steadfast resistance to change. It is instilled in his being, both as a golfer with a deep respect for the game and as a human who appreciates where he came from.
“We’re going to lead our lives the same way,” she said. “And that is a choice we are going to consciously make. He can still be true to himself because that is what makes Aaron so unique.”
So as the No. 44-ranked player in the world charged to a breakaway victory from a historically crowded PGA Championship leaderboard Sunday, creating a shock to Aronimink’s system with his final-round 65, he thought back to Bishnoi’s words. And hours later, sitting in the player interview room as the first Englishman to lift the Wanamaker Trophy in 107 years, he set the tone for what’s to come. He doubled down on the rituals that turned him from a 17-year-old trying to make it on the European developmental tours to a 31-year-old major champion.
“I felt like I was strong enough in why I did certain things to be able to continue to move that forward. I knew the reasons why I do them. I believe in the reasons why I do them. So I had no reason to really shift from that as I got older,” Rai said.
Rai is referring to a well-documented set of quirks that distinguish him as a professional. But they also define who he is as a person.
Rai is the only player on the PGA Tour who wears two black weatherproof rain gloves, rain or shine, May or November, instead of one traditional white leather glove on the nondominant hand. It’s because he grew up practicing for hours during England’s harsh, damp winters, and the sensation of having both hands covered became comfortable. So Rai stuck with it.
Before he swings his 7-year-old TaylorMade M6 driver, he places the ball on a thick plastic tee. The sometimes neon-colored “castle” tees you can buy off the shelf at Dick’s Sporting Goods help him maintain the same tee height every time he steps up to a drive. And the unusually dated driver? It just works. Rai is short off the tee, but he’s ranked No. 4 on the PGA Tour in accuracy. He’s a free agent in the equipment space, meaning he doesn’t get paid to use a single club brand. He prefers what feels right.
Then there are the iron covers. Rai uses headcovers on his driver, woods and putter, like everyone else, but he also has protective sleeves on his irons. Rai’s father, Amrik Singh, bought his son a set of Titleist 690 MB irons when the latter was still a child, worth nearly 1,000 pounds — money that the working-class Rai family didn’t exactly have. So Amrik taught Rai to cherish his tools and treat them with the utmost care. His father would sit in a chair and clean them with baby oil and a pin to scrape the grime from every last groove. Then, they’d be returned to their individual headcovers after long days on the range. Rai uses iron covers to this day.
“I’ve pretty much had iron covers on all of my sets ever since to kind of appreciate the value of what I have,” Rai once told SiriusXM radio. “Although I’m on the PGA Tour and we get given equipment and anything we need, it’s more out of principle. It’s more out of the value of not losing perspective of what I have and where I am. So the covers are going to stay, I’m sorry.”
Aaron Rai climbed the ranks of professional golf steadily, refusing to be spoiled by its excesses. (Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
Rai doesn’t have to apologize now. The game’s newest major champion represents a refreshing and unchanging sense of self, bred by memories like those back in Wolverhampton, England.
Existing within a game often tied to status symbols of all kinds, Aaron remains Aaron. Everything you wear and everything you do in the sport says something about you to someone. The fat tees and the iron covers — only high-handicappers use them. The double rain gloves? It’s an unorthodox aesthetic. Golf’s elite spaces and long-standing rules don’t always make room for those who don’t abide by norms. But that didn’t stop Rai.
Rai doesn’t have a social media presence. He drives the same Honda Integra that he’s been perfectly content with for the past several years. He has a house in Jacksonville, Fla., that’s spacious enough for him and his wife without being ostentatious. At the 2023 Genesis Invitational, Rai ditched his own practice regimen to watch his idol, Tiger Woods, play in the pro-am, not caring what others would think about the choice. But Rai doesn’t throw passionate fist pumps in competition as Woods did, out of respect for his playing partners.
“If you can learn how to just purely play golf, this is where you can end up,” Bishnoi says. “With two gloves, with iron covers, with castle tees — things like that do not always get you the best attention. You get heckled a bit because of those things as well. But that is exactly why he doesn’t get heckled, because he’s just here to play the game. He’s just not here to market himself as anybody that he’s not. So just stay true to yourself, and that can never stop you from achieving your potential.”
There was not a gradual build to this moment, allowing Rai to adjust over time to a changing reality. Rai played the opposite-field Myrtle Beach Classic last week because he didn’t qualify for the PGA Tour’s main event, the Truist Championship. And before this win, Rai was expecting to have to compete on the PGA Tour’s fall schedule to work his way up the FedEx Cup rankings. The signature event series and the tour’s points system won’t concern Rai anymore.
The winner of the PGA Championship receives a lifetime exemption into the championship, five years of exemptions into the four majors, a five-year PGA Tour membership, and a seven-year DP World Tour membership. All things considered, Rai’s future in the sport will become a lot less worrisome than it was when he teed it up at Aronimink on Thursday.
He has time to brace for the opportunities that lie ahead.
The kind of change that Rai will welcome.
