PGA Championship: Winning will require survivin...

NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — The greens, the greens, the greens. You want to know the secret to Aronimink Golf Club, home of the 108th PGA Championship this week? Look no further than the greens. Turtlebacked, sloping, with vicious swales and card-killing breaks, the greens will test the best. “The greens get really crazy, and they are really mounded and hilly,” Keegan Bradley said this week. “I can think of several holes here where you can land it and be close to the flag, four or five feet, and it's going to roll.” “It's a course where you can be super aggressive off the tee,” Rory McIlroy said, “and then there's a little more strategy and a little more thought going into the greens.” Those lethal greens have been Aronimink’s hallmark ever since the legendary architect Donald Ross built this course in its present location nearly a century ago. Named for a Lenape chief who (allegedly) lived on what would become the course’s property, Aronimink Golf Club arose from one of those classic turn-of-the-century Eastern-establishment athletic clubs — in this case, the Belmont Golf Club, which itself broke off in 1896 from the Belmont Cricket Club. Aronimink, officially incorporated by name in 1900, spent the first quarter of the 20th century bouncing from spot to spot in an inexorable march westward from Philadelphia. The club settled in its current location in 1928, and brought in Ross — designer of such notable courses as Pinehurst No. 2 — to work his Scotland links-inspired magic. “I intended to make this my masterpiece,” Ross said in a 1948 quote you’re likely to hear often this week, “but not until today did I realize I built it better than I knew.” Aronimink hosted its first — and, until this week, only — men’s major in 1962, when Gary Player won the PGA Championship. Scenes from that week are remarkable for how similar the course and clubhouse look to today’s version … minus the massive corporate hospitality tents, of course: While the course hasn’t hosted a men’s major since 1962, its most recent regular-season tournament came in 2018, when Bradley outplayed Justin Rose in a playoff during a heavily rain-soaked week. Aronimink pitched the PGA of America on hosting the 2026 edition of the tournament, appropriate given that this year is the 250th anniversary of the founding of America in Philadelphia. (Patriotic swag is omnipresent in the PGA Championship merch tents.) In order to prepare the course, Aronimink officials and architects sought to restore Ross’ original vision for the course, which meant clearing out trees and re-contouring the greens. Architect Gil Hanse took on the challenge in 2016, subdividing bunkers all over the course — there are now somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 — plus widening fairways, expanding greens and removing trees. The overall effect is more of a parkland feel, with options off the tee … perhaps too many options to sufficiently challenge today’s players. “Strategy off the tee is pretty nonexistent,” McIlroy said with some stark candor on Tuesday. “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.” “I see a lot of golf courses coming in saying, Look, 100 years ago, this golf course was like this, there was no trees.” Jon Rahm said Tuesday. “ I'm like, well, in the back of my mind, they planted those trees with the future vision of having those trees in play, and now you're taking them all out.” (He conceded that the trends of the current game, and the overall health of the course, probably warranted the trees’ removal.) Getting off the tee, trees or no, at Aronimink is one thing. Figuring out what to do with the green in your sights … well, that’s another challenge entirely. “The greens seem to be the big defense and the big talking point of the golf course,” McIlroy said. “If you get yourself above the hole or you start to short-side yourself, you can get yourself in some tricky spots.” Bradley elaborated: “The 11th hole is a really wild green, and if you miss it and it comes down off the green, it's coming like 50, 60 yards down the front. So you have to be really accurate and precise with where you're hitting the ball on the green.” Player’s winning score in 1962 was 2-under. Bradley’s in 2018, with rain-softened greens, was minus-20. The winning score will likely end up somewhere between those two, and whoever has it will have conquered, or at least survived, Aronimink’s fearsome greens.

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PGA Championship: Winning will require surviving Aronimink's 'crazy' greens