[Photo: Michael Reaves]
You are forgiven if you’re indifferent about Aaron Rai’s win in the PGA Championship. I was at first, too. An obscure Englishman who wears two gloves, has covers on his irons and plays the ball in the middle of his stance with his driver doesn’t fit the mould of what we expect from a major champion.
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It turns out, that is Rai’s appeal. The more you listen to the 31-year-old golfer speak and read about his story, the more he represents the part of golf that isn’t emphasised enough.
“Golf is an amazing game,” Rai said after his win at Aronimink. “It teaches you so many things, and it teaches you so much humility and discipline and absolute hard work because nothing is ever given in this game no matter what level you’re playing, no matter what course you’re playing on.”
The money line here – nothing is ever given in this game – might seem in contrast with tour players who appear devoid of self-doubt. Yet one of the paradoxes of golf says the better you are, the less you know you can control.
Here was Rai on Saturday night, where he stood two strokes off the lead heading into the final round.
“There’s such a long way to go,” he said. “A lot of things can and will change tomorrow. So, yeah, amazing to be here, but trying not to get too far ahead of myself also.”
This is what humility sounds like, and the mistake is confusing it with a lack of confidence. Almost everything Rai has done in golf – learning to play when no one else in his family knew how, turning pro at 17, languishing and losing his card multiple times on the lowly EuroPro Tour – speaks to a player who believed in himself. But the belief was always tempered by an understanding he could only deal with what was right in front of him.
This was Rai’s superpower at Aronimink. A golf course that featured punishing rough and sloping greens required, as Golf Digest’s Luke Kerr-Dineen said, “the best kind of boring golf,” and it underscored a lesson many of us overlook: the less energy you spend dwelling on what you think should happen, the more energy you have to solve for what needs to happen in the moment.
“Focusing on the past is ego,” the NBA superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo said during the 2021 NBA Finals. “Focusing on the future is pride. Focusing on the present is humility.”
Consider two of Rai’s Sunday “highlights”: Choosing a fairway wood off the tee on the 482-metre par-4 15th and making par, then his near-70-foot birdie putt on the 17th that he was just trying to get close. Lag putting and layups don’t usually make for viral content, but they do speak to a golfer humbly willing to take what the game will give and expect nothing else.
“My dad has tried to enforce that this is great and I should enjoy it, but still just get back to doing what you’ve been doing and see where it takes you,” Rai said. “I get so much enjoyment from seeing myself progress and improve. The successes will follow if you do the right things.”
