Scottie Scheffler walked off the 18th green at Aronimink Golf Club on Friday with his world No. 1 ranking intact, his repeat bid still alive, and a notebook full of unusually pointed feedback about where the rules officials had decided to put the holes. Three over after four holes in a howling morning wind, the defending PGA Tour Player of the Year ground his way back to within striking range and then aired the kind of measured criticism that he almost never delivers.
"Most of the pins today were kind of absurd," Scheffler said in his post-round press conference. "They were just so far into the areas where we thought the pins were going to be — and then the one on 14 was probably the hardest pin that I've seen in a long time."
Scheffler described that 14th-hole flag in terms that read more like a punchline than a setup note.
"It wasn't your ball wasn't going to roll off like 50 yards away, but that was like they put the pin on like this microphone," he said, gesturing at the press conference table. "Like it was just like a high point. I hadn't seen anything like it."
The par he scrambled out of 14 — a three-and-a-half-footer that he said had to start "perfectly online" or it was not even going to touch the hole — was one of the saves that kept his round from getting away from him entirely. Playing partners Matt Fitzpatrick and Justin Rose, two of the better putters on the planet, both missed putts from inside 10 feet on the same green.
Scheffler's frustration was less about the wind, which he expected at a major, and more about what he sees as a creeping philosophy in the modern game.
"I love hard tests of golf, but it's also the hardest game in the world and we're trying to make it harder," he said. "A golf course like this, I truly believe they can have the winning score be whatever they would want it to be. It could be overpar if they want it to be just based purely upon pin locations. And is that the best test? Who knows?"
The World No. 1 was careful to draw a line between hard and unfair. Conditions only crossed into unfair, he said, when the wind starts physically moving the ball on the greens, and that had not yet happened this week.
"It's just sometimes it's just a matter of whether or not you want to take it on or if you want to play smart. There's spots where I would try to attack and there's other spots where it's like, yeah, I might want to be a little careful."
The two-putt strategy was on display all day. On the second hole, with the pin tucked deep and the wind cross-fighting him, Scheffler said he hit "what I felt was a pretty good shot there to 30 feet" — and gave himself a chance to two-putt and walk. Two holes later, with a near-identical number but different wind, he attacked.
"A lot of it's just kind of managing, I think, your way around the golf course," he said.
The back nine — the front nine for his group, given the morning two-tee start — finally settled, and Scheffler's mood with it. He birdied the 17th from a long iron approach into the breeze, called it "stealing at least a shot," and pieced together enough birdies on the back to get the round to one over.
His bid to become the first back-to-back PGA Championship winner in 16 years now hinges on a weekend where the wind is forecast to ease. Whether the pins will is the question Scheffler did not get a chance to answer.
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*Originally published on [Golf News Global](https://golfnews.global/article/scottie-scheffler-pga-championship-2026-round-2-absurd-pin-positions-aronimink). Visit for full coverage.*
