[Photo: Richard Heathcote]
With club professionals in the field, it would be easy to think of the PGA Championship as the everyman’s major. So it was fitting that Aaron Rai, about as everyman as you can get on the PGA Tour, lifted the Wanamaker Trophy at Aronimink Golf Club, outlasting one of the most crowded major championship leaderboards in recent memory.
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Wearing a pair of rain gloves and hiding his TaylorMade P7TW irons under iron covers would be enough to mistake Rai, who battled back and neck injuries earlier this year, for a guy at the local public course. However, a peek inside his bag only reinforces the persona. Although most tour pros opt for the latest and greatest in equipment, Rai relies on venerable and familiar, with just one of his 14 clubs introduced in the past 12 months with some several years old.
Regardless, they worked well for Rai. On a course that demands you hit fairways, Rai ranked fourth in driving accuracy with a 9-degree TaylorMade M6 – a model that debuted more than seven years ago, making it a fossil by tour standards but giving TaylorMade drivers its fifth major out of the past six.
That put him in position to rank ninth in greens in regulation and first in strokes gained/approach. Among the more notable shots was a 6-iron from 197 metres on the par-5 16th that found the green, leading to a two-putt birdie that provided some breathing room.
His TaylorMade Spider Tour V mallet putter, however, was the true difference-maker. Standing three shots in arrears playing the par-5 ninth, Rai rolled in a 40-footer for eagle, a 10-footer for par at 10, a seven-footer for birdie at 13 and then went full J.J. Spaun, dropping a 68-foot birdie bomb at 17 to essentially end things. In all, Rai holed an astounding 182 feet of putts on the final day alone.
Not exactly the kind of on-course fireworks one would expect of an everyman.
What Aaron Rai had in the bag at the 2026 PGA Championship:
Ball: Titleist Pro V1
Driver: TaylorMade M6 (Aldila Synergy Blue 70X), 9 degrees
3-wood: TaylorMade Qi10, 15 degrees
5-wood: TaylorMade Qi10, 18 degrees
Hybrid: Titleist GT2, 24 degrees
Irons (5-9): TaylorMade P7TW
Wedges: Titleist Vokey SM9 (44, 49 degrees); Titleist Vokey SM11 (54 degrees); Titleist Vokey WedgeWorks (60 degrees)
Putter: TaylorMade Spider Tour V
