The 2026 PGA Championship at Aronimink has produced fairway-by-fairway analysis of Donald Ross routing, 174 restored bunkers, and a pin sheet that on certain mornings appears to have been compiled out of spite. It has also produced the most publicly split locker room of any major in recent memory.
Shane Lowry, who opened the week with a 2-under 68 at Aronimink and was within range of the lead through 36 holes, was the most direct.
'I think it has been set up pretty poorly,' Lowry said to reporters mid-tournament, a line that has now travelled the major's coverage cycle for three days.
Lowry was not alone. Scottie Scheffler called several Saturday pin positions 'absurd' and 'the toughest he has seen on tour'. Rory McIlroy, whose driver issues have already cost him in his last two majors, used Friday's press scrum to argue that a leaderboard as bunched as the one Aronimink produced was 'a sign of not a great setup' rather than the championship-defining drama the PGA of America has spent the week marketing. McIlroy also took the opportunity to revisit a debate the championship's calendar has tried to leave behind, calling for the PGA Championship to return to its traditional August scheduling, when warmer, drier conditions produce firmer, faster surfaces of the kind he believes reward better players.
Not every voice in the locker room agreed. Justin Rose, whose third-round 65 from outside the leader's wave produced one of Saturday's two best scores, defended the setup in his post-round comments. The PGA of America, Rose argued, was being asked to produce a championship at a course where the bunkering and the green complexes invite caddie-on-caddie debate every time a pin is cut — and the resulting test, he said, was what a major was supposed to deliver.
Jon Rahm, on his way to the second-best major finish of his year-and-a-bit on LIV Golf, sided with the defenders. The Spaniard, who has been within two shots of the lead since the first round, pointed out that the championship's bunched leaderboard contained eight players who had won majors before — hardly the field profile of a course that had got the setup wrong.
The split divides cleanly along a familiar line. The players who lost shots they felt they should not have lost — Scheffler to four-putt territory on the 15th green, McIlroy to mishit drives into rough that swallowed his second shots, DeChambeau to the worst PGA Championship round of his career — have argued the setup overplayed its hand. The players who navigated the same course in the same wave and posted scores — Rose 65, Schmid 65, Aaron Rai 67-67-67 to start, Aldrich Potgieter's opening 67 — have, on the whole, argued the test is fair.
The debate is one Aronimink's restoration architects, Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner, anticipated. The 174 reinstated bunkers were designed to reward angle of attack and shape of approach; the green complexes were rebuilt to receive shots from the right side of the fairway in a way the old Aronimink had lost over decades of revisions. The result, on a calm Friday afternoon, plays as the most rewarding modern restoration of any Ross-era club in the northeast. On a windy Saturday morning, with pins cut three paces from the front edge, it can play like a US Open setup that has slipped its leash.
What the championship has produced is, in its own way, an answer to a question the major game has been asking for a decade. Players want firmer, faster surfaces, but they also want green complexes they can trust. They want a leaderboard that rewards driving, but they also want a setup that does not over-penalise small misses. At Aronimink this week, both halves of that wish list have been on display — and the locker room has split exactly along the seam.
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*Originally published on [Golf News Global](https://golfnews.global/article/aronimink-setup-divides-players-pga-championship-2026-shane-lowry-justin-rose). Visit for full coverage.*
