Key Points
Bullet point summary by AI
- Aaron Rai won the 2026 PGA Championship at Aronimink, becoming the first Englishman to claim the title in over 100 years.
- Rai entered the final round trailing by two shots but delivered his best major performance with steady accuracy and clutch putting.
- The victory ends a historic drought for English golfers and marks a breakthrough moment for the 31-year-old in his major championship career.
Aaron Rai entered the final round of the 2026 PGA Championship trailing the lead by two shots and in a loaded chase pack behind him. He was among Ludvig Åberg, Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm and other heavy hitters who were all trying to track down 54-hole leader Alex Smalley. And when Smalley fell back to the field, it then became about who would separate. And Rai might've been among the more unlikely contenders to do so, but that didn't stop him from running away with the Wanamaker Trophy, winning the PGA Championship.
In what was his 13th start in a major championship, Rai captured the crown at Aronimink in a wild PGA Championship. When the pressure was on, he was cool as a cucumber to stay atop the field and never really even seemed close to wavering. He's a major champion now, but in doing so, he also made some history in the golf world and at this major in particular. It's something that England, specifically, won't soon forget.
Aaron Rai is the first Englishman to win the PGA Championship in more than 100 years
Not Tommy Fleetwood or Justin Rose, to speak to contemporaries. Not Nick Faldo or Luke Donald or any of the great English golfers of the previous generation. Aaron Rai became the first Englishman to win the PGA Championship since 1919. Jim Barnes was the last to do so, back when the tournament was still decided by match play instead of stroke play (Barnes actually won the first two PGA Championships in 1916 and 1919) and it had been 107 years since.
But now Rai has bucked the trend and undone whatever voodoo curse or dark magic had been put upon Englishmen in the PGA Championship. And the way that he did it was even more impressive.
With the setup at Aronimink making scoring incredibly challenging throughout the week, it was Rai who stayed steady and took advantage. His elite accuracy was on full display, and he found some magic with the putter (he was eighth in SG: Tee-to-Green and sixth in SG: Putting for the week). When you have those two things working in tandem, it's going to be a good week. However, to be able to do that amidst all of the big names contending with him was even more impressive. Rai rose to the occasion, quite literally shooting the best two rounds of his major championship career in the third and fourth rounds at the PGA Championship.
You have to think that his place in history will make him a legend among English golfers, especially if this is just a true jump-off point for Rai in the 31-year-old's career to this point.
Aaron Rai's major championship ascension was hard to see coming
Obviously, winning a major is going to dwarf any other accomplishments in Rai's career to this point. Having said that, this was a pretty shocking winner for any major championship given the Englishman's history in such tournaments in his career, and even his modicum of success on the PGA Tour, where he's only a one-time winner — though he does have three victories on the DP World Tour as well.
In majors, though, Rai had previously payed in 12 championships, but had started to play his way into the field consistently in recent years. This was his ninth-straight start in a major championship. At the same time, though, the finishes had been nothing to write home about. A T19 at both the 2024 U.S. Open and the 2025 PGA Championship were the best finishes of his major career (along with another T19, coincidentally, at the 2021 Open Championship), though he had made eight straight cuts before this week's PGA Championship.
At the same time, Rai's game on the PGA Tour has long been one about fit and where he can take advantage of his game. He's one of the shortest hitters off the tee in professional golf, but he's deadly accurate, good on approach, and hot-and-cold with the putter. If there's a place he can use that skill set and find a good putting week, that can change the math.
And the math certainly changed at Aronimink. Rai breaking through to win a major is big news in its own right. But it's even more important that he broke the Englishman's curse at the PGA Championship, though he probably wouldn't have been many people's pick to do so prior to this week.
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