Twenty-two players began the final round of the 108th PGA Championship within four shots of the lead. It was one of the most congested 54-hole leaderboard in the tournament's history, and it produced the kind of Sunday that the game rarely delivers: not a battle between two players trading blows, but a slow, grinding filter that eliminated the field one mistake at a time. The last man standing was Aaron Rai, a 31-year-old Englishman from Wolverhampton who grew up wearing Ferrari shirts at junior golf tournaments because he wanted to be a Formula 1 driver.
He closed with a 5-under 65, finished at 9-under, and won the Wanamaker Trophy by three shots from Jon Rahm and Alex Smalley. It was his first major title and, more pointedly, the first time an Englishman had won the PGA Championship since Jim Barnes in 1919; a gap of 107 years.
The significance of that number is easy to understate. England has produced major champions of genuine greatness: Nick Faldo, Tony Jacklin, Justin Rose, Lee Westwood. None of them won this one. For more than a century, the Wanamaker Trophy went elsewhere. Rai's name is now inscribed alongside Gary Player, who won at Aronimink in 1962 the last time the PGA Championship visited this course, and joins Vijay Singh as one of two major champions of Indian descent in men's golf.
The round turned on the par-5 ninth. Rai had battled bogeys on the front nine and was three shots off the pace approaching the turn when he reached the green in two and drained a 40-foot putt for eagle; the shot that started a stretch of seven consecutive one-putts. He birdied the 11th from four feet, blasted from a bunker on the drivable 13th to six feet and converted that, then reached the par-5 16th in two for another birdie. On the par-3 17th, with the tournament in the balance, he rolled in a putt from approximately 68 to 70 feet for birdie to move three clear. He played his final ten holes in six-under without a blemish on the scorecard, signing for a 65; his lowest score in a major championship by two shots. It was, by any measure, a back nine built for a winner.
The field around him was genuinely elite, and genuinely unable to separate itself. Jon Rahm, seeking his third major title, shot 68 and shared second at 6-under alongside overnight leader Alex Smalley, who had played himself into contention all week before a double bogey at the sixth on Sunday began his retreat. Justin Thomas closed with a 65 but finished tied for fourth at 5-under, four shots adrift. McIlroy, Schauffele and Cameron Smith all finished the week at 7-under, two shots further back. The list covers multiple major champions and the best players in the current game; on Sunday at Aronimink, none of them could match what Rai was producing on the back nine.
What makes Rai a compelling figure beyond the result is the degree to which he operates outside the conventions of modern professional golf. He wears two gloves; has since he was eight years old, when he was given a pair and got so used to them that the one time his father forgot to pack them, he couldn't play. He has no social media presence and, for much of his career, no agent either. He came to golf through an unlikely route: as a toddler, he hurt himself playing with his brother's hockey sticks, and his mother went out to buy plastic replacements; she came home with plastic golf clubs instead. He turned professional in 2012, spent years building his game across the EuroPro Tour, the Challenge Tour and the DP World Tour, earned his PGA Tour card through the Korn Ferry Tour Finals in 2021 and entered this week with one PGA Tour title to his name, the 2024 Wyndham Championship. He had made nine cuts from 12 major appearances before Aronimink but had never finished better than tied for 19th. The 2026 PGA Championship was his 13th.
He is married to Gaurika Bishnoi, a professional golfer from India who competes on the Ladies European Tour and holds eight career wins on the Hero Women's Pro Golf Tour. The two caddie for each other; she was on his bag at the Masters Par 3 Contest in both 2025 and 2026, and he returned the favour at a Ladies European Tour event in India last October. At his post-championship press conference, Rai said he wouldn't be at Aronimink without her. The detail matters not because it is decorative but because it completes the picture of someone whose relationship with the sport is genuinely different from most players at his level; quieter, more internally driven and, on Sunday at Aronimink, considerably more effective.
Up next is the third major of 2026: the US Open, held June 18-21 at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southampton, New York, organized by the USGA. Shinnecock last hosted in 2018, when Brooks Koepka won at 1-over 281 in conditions so severe that players openly criticised the setup, with the USGA acknowledging the course had been too aggressively prepared. Eight years later, the venue returns as one of the most demanding tests in major golf; a William Flynn design completed in 1931 that sits exposed on Long Island's South Fork and punishes imprecise.
ball-striking more consistently than almost any course in the rotation. For Rai, a player whose entire game is built on accuracy and controlled aggression, Shinnecock Hills figures to suit. For McIlroy, who won his only US Open title at Congressional in 2011 and has since added five more majors including back-to-back Masters titles, it offers another opportunity to add to what is already one of the great collections in the modern game.
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