Success at Aronimink Will Require Every Club in the Bag

NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — Three days into practice and preparations at Aronimink Golf Club for the 108th PGA Championship, and the host venue still seems like a riddle that even some of the world’s best players haven’t quite solved.

Such as Masters champion Rory McIlroy, who finished T-5 here at the 2018 BMW Championship: “Very wide playing corridors; still got to get the ball on the fairway,” he explained. “The rough is sort of hit-and-miss, but you can get some bad lies.”

This, too, is also from McIlroy, just a minute later: “It’s basically bash driver down there and then figure it out from there. … When these traditional golf courses take a lot of trees out, it makes strategy not as much of a concern off the tee.”

And this, from Justin Rose, who won that BMW eight years ago: “There’s definitely some bunkers at 310 or 305 [yards] that if you can carry those the fairway does get much wider. So from that point of view, I think if you have that gear – [and] I think there’s a lot of players in the field that that is the case; it’s not just a going to suit particularly Rory — it’s going to suit a lot of guys that can carry the ball 300-plus.”

But also this from Rose: “The rough’s definitely creeping up though to the point where you’ve got to be respectful. … I think there’s a little bit of respect needed to make sure you are hitting the fairways. The fairways are generous, but you still need to be on them.”

So, what we’ve resolved so far is that it’s better to be long than short and better to be straight than crooked. To that respect, Aronimink is just like, well, every other championship golf course in the world.

Perhaps defending champion Scottie Scheffler best analyzed this conundrum, clarifying that it’s not just the course that dictates these strategies, but how the course is playing.

“A lot of it depends on the conditions,” he said. “If you look at this golf course specifically, between it being soft and firm, I think is two totally different tests. If you’re looking at this golf course when it’s soft, I think there’s a lot of stuff you can kind of get away with in terms of like you can hit it pretty far offline. There’s not many things to block you. And if you hit it really far offline when there’s no trees, you can just get to the crowd and you have a cleaner lie than if you’re a yard or two off the fairway.

“But if you look at this golf course when it’s firm, the fairways are hard to hit. Then if you want to get the ball close to a lot of these pins, you have to control your spin and control your distance really well, which is not that easy to do out of the rough. It’s easy to take off spin, but it’s not easy to control the spin, if that makes sense. There’s certain spots on this golf course where I think it can get really challenging if it’s firm and fast. A lot of it depends on conditions and golf course setup.”

Therein lies the real secret to playing Aronimink this week – it’s less about formulating a plan during the practice rounds, then sticking with it for the next four days and more about having the ability to adjust this approach as the conditions dictate.

All of this, though, might also just lead to a buried lede, as the one thing competitors have agreed upon this week is that deciphering the green complexes on this Donald Ross design will be paramount to success.

“Greens are the biggest protection this week,” Xander Schauffele said. “They’re going to hold up, for sure. I think they’re going to cause some problems and make it really tricky on little pitch shots or two-putting or things of that nature. That’s the biggest protection the course has.”

Rory McIlroy agreed, adding: “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.”

There you have it, folks: Hit the ball long and straight off the tee, massage those approach shots into the right sections of these greens and, oh right, don’t forget to make some putts along the way.

That isn’t exactly a new recipe for winning a major championship, but it does help to explain the recent winners’ list at this one, with four straight champions who started the week at 20/1 or shorter and an average winner of shorter than 14/1 during this time.

Essentially, what it takes to win a PGA Championship is excelling in all aspects of the game, which is why we so often see the cream rise to the top. That should be the biggest factor in separating the contenders from the pretenders once again this week.

As obvious as it might sound, those who do everything well should also be those who have the best chance to lift the Wanamaker Trophy this weekend.