For the first time since 1962, the PGA Championship has returned to Aronimink Golf Club just outside of Philadelphia.
The men’s game is amidst a top-heavy era when it comes to winning majors. Eight of the last nine champions have been among the top-five pre-tournament betting favorites, J.J. Spaun’s breakthrough last summer at Oakmont being the exception. Six of the last seven have been won by players who already had a major victory to his name, the longest streak with either one or no first-time winners since a stretch from 1999 to 2001.
Not too long ago, this championship was prone to producing surprise winners. John Daly famously won the 1991 PGA Championship as the ninth alternate. Shaun Micheel was ranked 169th in the world when he won his only PGA Tour title in 2003 at Oak Hill. Neither Y.E. Yang nor Keegan Bradley were in the top 100 of the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) when they claimed major wins in 2009 and 2011.
Will the run of the game’s biggest stars picking off majors continue this week? Will an unexpected character take a star turn? Here are the top numbers and notes to know ahead of the 108th PGA Championship.
1. Aronimink is part of a concentrated collection of elite courses across the Philadelphia metropolitan area. Justin Rose won the 2013 U.S. Open at Merion, less than an eight-mile drive away. The bunkers at Aronimink are numerous — more than 170 in all — with several added during a Gil Hanse-led redesign about a decade ago. Heavy fairway sloping and large, varying green complexes are among the course’s most prominent features.
While the PGA Championship hasn’t been played here in 64 years, Aronimink hosted PGA Tour events in 2010, 2011 and 2018. Keegan Bradley took home the victory at the 2018 BMW Championship, but the week featured a bevy of stars going low. Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods and Tommy Fleetwood were among those to tie the course record of 62, with Fleetwood doing so in both Rounds 2 and 3. Six years ago, Sei Young Kim won the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship here, carding a Sunday 63 to run away by five strokes over Inbee Park.
2. While the PGA Championship has featured the off-the-board winners in the past, more recently chalk has ruled the week. Seven of the last nine PGA champions entered the week ranked in the top-15 of the OWGR. The two exceptions weren’t exactly no-names: six-time major winner Phil Mickelson in 2021 and five-time major champ Brooks Koepka two years later.
These weeks have become stiff ball striking tests since the tournament moved to May in 2019. Four of the last five PGA champions ranked either first or second in the field that week in strokes gained tee to green. The last seven winners of the PGA Championship have gained 65 percent of their strokes against the field with ball striking. The week-to-week PGA Tour average for the past decade is 54 percent.
3. Rory McIlroy returned to action last week at the Truist Championship, making his first start since winning the Masters. While some facets of his game were in full flight (he led the field in strokes gained off the tee), his short game was unsurprisingly squirrelly considering the competitive layoff. He finished the week on a high note, carding six birdies in a final round 67 that featured his best putting numbers of the week.
The six-time major winner has been open about his post-Masters lull a year ago and a renewed focus to ensure it doesn’t happen again this summer. From a statistical perspective, McIlroy is leading the tour in strokes gained tee to green but is outside the top 100 in putting for the season. Last year, he ranked a career-best ninth in that metric.
McIlroy had two wins and a pair of other T3 finishes in his first six career PGA Championship starts, but he hasn’t finished better than seventh since his victory at Valhalla in 2014. No player has won the Masters and PGA Championship in the same season since Jack Nicklaus in 1975.
4. Scottie Scheffler enters the week with a healthy mix of form and frustration. He’s finished runner-up in each of his last three starts, beaten only by the men ranked Nos. 2-4 in the world: McIlroy at Augusta National, Matt Fitzpatrick at Harbour Town and Cameron Young at Doral. That specific cocktail of animus might be the recipe for another monster Scheffler week. Since the beginning of 2024, there have been three men’s majors won by four strokes or more. All three belong to Scheffler.
Scheffler’s iron play superpower has drifted this season from otherworldly (first in strokes gained in 2023, 2024 and 2025) to just good (42nd this season). Despite that, he again leads the PGA Tour in birdie average, scoring average and strokes gained total. It’s a frightening proposition that Scheffler is comfortably perched at world No. 1 without his best approach game, but it’s the truth.
Since the beginning of 2022, Scheffler is 96 under par in the majors, 30 strokes better than any other player (McIlroy at 66 under). The last man to win the PGA in back-to-back fashion was Brooks Koepka (2018-19).
Cameron Young is a strong contender to win his first major championship this week. (Emilee Chinn / Getty Images)
5. Cameron Young’s putting has caught up to his titanic tee-to-green talent, and it’s been a sight to behold. From 2022 through 2024, Young ranked 135th on the PGA Tour in strokes gained putting per round, losing 0.13 strokes on average. Since the beginning of last season, though, Young is gaining more than half a stroke on the greens every 18 holes (+0.52), the 10th-best rate among qualified players.
While his putting improvement has been justifiably praised, don’t miss out on another significant statistical development for Young in 2026. After ranking well outside the top 120 on the PGA Tour last year in both greens in regulation and strokes gained approach, he’s in the top 25 in both metrics this season. Young held a share of the 54-hole lead last month at the Masters before ultimately finishing in a tie for third, two strokes behind McIlroy. It doesn’t seem like an if at the majors for Young now, but when.
6. The only three-time winner on the PGA Tour this season, Matt Fitzpatrick, has a different air about him these days. Coach Mark Blackburn worked with Fitzpatrick on a swing change — watch for his pre-shot shoulder blade retraction this week — that has borne fruit never before seen in the ever-analytical Fitzpatrick’s statistical profile. The 2022 U.S. Open champ is fifth on tour this season in strokes gained approach, a metric he ranked 127th in just two years ago.
Consider this: two seasons ago, Fitzpatrick ranked 166th in proximity to the hole on approach shots under 100 yards — 2 feet, 9 inches worse than the PGA Tour average. Now? He’s third — 4 feet, 4 inches better than the tour mean. He’s a top-five player in the world, expectant father-to-be, and his brother, Alex, is teeing it up with him in the game’s biggest events. It’s a good time to be Mr. Fitzpatrick.
7. There aren’t many LIV Golf statistics Jon Rahm isn’t currently leading in 2026. He’s the circuit’s leader in birdie average, strokes gained total, strokes gained tee to green, greens in regulation and most other performance metrics you can find.
Since moving to LIV three years ago, Rahm has had a slight downtick in performance in the majors. From 2019 to 2023, the two-time major winner averaged 2.09 strokes gained total per round in majors with a top-10 rate of 52 percent. In eight starts since, that’s down a bit to 1.38 strokes gained, with three top-10 finishes.
Can Bryson DeChambeau bounce back from a disappointing Masters missed cut? He has finished runner-up each of the last two years at the PGA Championship, something done only two other times in the stroke play era (Nicklaus, Dustin Johnson). His career scoring average at this championship is 69.79, the best all-time for a player with 20 or more rounds played and no victories.
Bryson DeChambeau swings from the rough during a practice round at Aronimink. (Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
Tyrrell Hatton is coming off a tie for third at the Masters last month, the best finish of his major championship career to date. Joaquin Niemann trails only Rahm and DeChambeau this season on LIV in strokes gained ball striking — he had a career-best major finish at last year’s PGA Championship (T8).
Pre-championship press conferences this week featured a smattering of PIF-related discussion, a continuance of the subplot that permeates professional golf for at least three days per week. Six men’s majors have been played since DeChambeau won his second U.S. Open title, the last instance of an active LIV player winning a major.
8. Jordan Spieth will make his ninth PGA Championship start since winning the third leg of the career Grand Slam at the 2017 Open Championship. The three-time major winner finished tied for third at Bethpage in 2019, but truthfully he hasn’t been a factor on a Sunday with the slam in play. The smallest 54-hole deficit he has had in that time span is seven shots, in both 2021 and 2024.
Spieth has some better underlying statistics in 2026 but is yet to put it all together over the course of 72 holes. The Texan doesn’t have a top-10 finish on the PGA Tour in 11 months, his best results this year coming in Florida at the Valspar Championship and Arnold Palmer Invitational (tied for 11th in both).
Spieth has played all 28 major championships held since the beginning of 2019. He has been within five shots of the lead entering the final round just once in that span.
9. There’s reason to be bullish about three-time PGA champion Brooks Koepka. He talked last week about re-discovering happiness in playing the game, something he shared after a red-hot Saturday 64 at Myrtle Beach. He’s currently the PGA Tour season leader in the all-important strokes gained approach statistic. At the Masters he shot par or better in all four rounds, something he had not done in a major since 2020.
And in recent weeks, his putting has improved from abysmal to… less so. Through 14 rounds this season, Koepka was losing 0.87 strokes on the greens per round. In his last 14, that number is -0.31 per round, an improvement that adds up to more than two strokes every 72 holes. Koepka has been spotted on the grounds this week trying out a different putter. If he can get field-average performance out of it, expect his name on the leaderboard.
10. Looking for more possible contenders? Fleetwood has seven top-five finishes in majors since the beginning of 2017, most of any player in that span without a win. We mentioned his back-to-back 62s here in 2018. Xander Schauffele is healthy again and resembling his old self statistically. He entered last year’s PGA Championship ranked 85th on Tour in strokes gained tee to green. He’s 15th this season.
Looking a little further down the board? How about Si Woo Kim: the tour leader in birdies this season ranks in the top five in strokes gained tee to green, strokes gained approach and driving accuracy. He finished tied for eighth at the PGA Championship last year, his best career finish in a major to date.
The PGA Championship begins Thursday at 6:45 a.m. ET.
