Aronimink: What It Takes to Win the Wanamaker Trophy
One week. The major season's first month belonged to Augusta and Rory McIlroy's back-to-back green jackets. Now the caravan moves to Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, and a Donald Ross masterpiece that is hosting a major championship for the first time since Gary Player lifted the Wanamaker Trophy here in 1962. Aronimink Golf Club does not do easy. It rewards craft, precision and patience. The bomber who sprays it into the Pennsylvania trees will be booking his flight home by Friday afternoon.
This is a different test entirely from Augusta. There is no iconic back nine mythology here, no 12th hole that breaks hearts in quite the same way, no fairways wide enough to fire irons from any angle you like. Aronimink asks specific questions. This piece is about which players have the answers.
Know the Course
Aronimink was designed by Donald Ross in 1926 and has aged into one of the finest parkland layouts on the eastern seaboard. At par-70 and pushing 7,400 yards from the championship tees, it is not the longest course in the major rota, but length is almost beside the point here. What matters is what Ross built into those greens.
Ross was obsessed with the short game. His greens are crowned, canted and frequently elevated, with collection areas and runoffs engineered to punish anything but a precise approach from the correct angle. Miss the green on the wrong side and you are chipping from a tight lie on a downhill slope, or from deep swales where clean contact is anything but guaranteed. This is not the Open rota, where bump-and-run is your friend. This is target golf that demands precision with the approach iron and execution around the greens.
The course winds through mature hardwood forest. The fairways are reasonably generous off the tee by modern major standards, but the rough on either side is punishing, and the angles into Ross's greens become considerably trickier from the trees. Driving is about placement, not distance. The player who finds the fairway in the right spot to open up the green earns his opportunities. The player who bombs it 320 yards into the rough earns bogeys.
With only two par-5s on the card, birdie chances are premium. The par-5 18th will be the most-watched hole of the week — a reachable finisher that will decide more than one tournament position across the four days. Eagle here is in play for the longer hitters, and birdies are expected from the elite. The player who makes a mess of 18 at a critical moment will regret it all summer.
The 1962 PGA Championship
The last time a major was held at Aronimink, Gary Player won his second major title with a 278 total, beating Bob Goalby by a single shot. Player was, above all else, a relentless competitor with elite course management and an extraordinary short game. The parallels with what the course demands today are not coincidental — Ross's design has barely changed.
The Six Things That Win Here
The player who wins this week will not necessarily be the longest driver in the field. They will be the player who consistently finds fairways, hits their approach iron to the correct quadrant of the green, and makes their pars when the short game is called into action. Think of it this way: Aronimink is a ball-striker's course with a short game examination bolted on. You need both.
Who Arrives in Form
Four weeks since Augusta. The dust has settled on Rory McIlroy's historic defence, and the form picture coming into Pennsylvania is unusually clear. The top of the world ranking has been remarkably stable, but there are compelling cases for several players beyond the obvious two.
What Scheffler produced at Augusta was quietly astonishing. Bogey-free across the final 36 holes — the first player to manage that at the Masters since 1942. His closing 68 brought him from nowhere into a tie for second, one shot off McIlroy's winning total. The fact he did not win at Augusta is almost the least interesting thing about his performance.
Aronimink suits Scheffler's game better than almost any venue on the major rota. He is the best iron player in the world by a wide margin and his strokes gained approach figures are in a different stratosphere from the rest of the field. The premium this course puts on iron play into complex greens is practically a brief written specifically for his skill set. He drives the ball consistently long and straight, he is relentlessly patient, and he has already won two majors — he knows how to close.
The bookmakers have him at the head of the market and they are right to. The only credible argument against him is that elite ball-strikers of his profile occasionally find ways to grind out a title elsewhere while Aronimink produces a winner from the mid-card. Scheffler himself would dispute that logic. He is the right pick at the right course.
You cannot ignore him. He has just become one of four players in history to defend the Masters title. He held his nerve on the most pressurised Sunday in golf while the field threw everything at him. Whatever questions existed about his ability to win when it mattered most have been comprehensively answered — twice over.
His PGA Championship record is also worth revisiting. He won it in 2012 at Kiawah Island with one of the most dominant major performances of the modern era — eight shots clear of the field. He has been in contention at this tournament multiple times since. He arrives in Pennsylvania as arguably the hottest golfer in the world on the back of a performance that proved once and for all he is a man for the biggest stages.
The possible knock is a post-Augusta comedown. History shows that players who win a major under extreme emotional weight sometimes take a few weeks to recalibrate. McIlroy has never shown that fragility, but the bookmakers will have priced in his red-hot form and he is unlikely to be the value he was at the Masters. Back him if you believe he is genuinely in a different gear to the field right now. There is a reasonable case that he is.
If there is a player beyond the top two deserving serious attention this week, it is Cameron Young. He was tied for the lead going into the final round at Augusta and finished T3. He won the Players Championship earlier in the year. He has now placed in the top five of two of the biggest events on the calendar in 2026 and he is only getting sharper.
Young's game was built for a course like Aronimink. He is long off the tee but crucially is not a sprayer — he finds fairways at a better rate than his distance figures might suggest. His iron play is elite, he works the ball both ways, and he has the kind of nerve around greens that comes from growing up playing parkland golf in the north-east of America. These are courses he has been playing his whole life.
His PGA Championship record already includes a runner-up at Southern Hills in 2022, losing by a shot to Justin Thomas in a playoff. He has been close before in this specific tournament. The case for Young to go one better at a course that suits every element of his game is compelling. The price should be interesting given how much of his form is baked into the market post-Augusta.
If you are building an identikit of the Aronimink winner — drives it accurately, elite with mid and short irons, outstanding short game, comfortable on parkland — Tommy Fleetwood's name writes itself. He consistently sits in the top five on tour for strokes gained approach. He is not a bomber. He has never needed to be.
Fleetwood has been one of the most consistent players in the world for the past three seasons, and his T3 at Augusta in 2024 confirmed what his ball-striking numbers had been saying for years. He belongs on major championship leaderboards. The PGA Championship, oddly, remains one of the few majors where he has not fully converted his game into a result. Aronimink could change that.
The European tour background means he has played on a very wide variety of parkland courses under major championship conditions throughout his career. He does not get rattled by tight trees, by demanding approach angles or by greens that require local knowledge to navigate. Watch him closely if prices drift ahead of Thursday. His name will be on the leaderboard late in the week.
The Profile to Avoid
This is as important as knowing who to back. The profile that typically underperforms at Donald Ross designs: the bomber who relies on iron length rather than iron precision, the player whose best scores come from courses where driving distance creates easy wedge approaches, and the player whose short game is average rather than elite. Aronimink's collection areas are unforgiving, and average chippers will rack up bogeys from spots that a better short game player turns into par saves.
Be wary of players who have made their reputations on links courses or open, exposed layouts where wind management is the premium skill. Aronimink is a closed, parkland examination. The skills that win at Carnoustie or Royal Portrush are not the same ones that win here.
The Betting Angle
PGA Championship place terms are among the best in major golf. Most bookmakers pay 8 places at 1/5 odds, and with a field of 156, there is genuine each-way depth. Players priced between 20/1 and 60/1 who fit the course profile and arrive in form represent the most interesting part of the market. The market will be led by Scheffler and McIlroy, and that is as it should be, but the value is below them.
Look at who has been hitting fairways and greens at the top of the tour statistics over the past six to eight weeks. Look at who has played well on parkland layouts with complex greens this season. That is where the edge is. The PGA Championship has a good recent history of rewarding players from that second tier — Collin Morikawa, Keegan Bradley, Phil Mickelson at Kiawah — while the market-leaders cancel each other out at the top of the card.
One week. Compare prices, find the value, and get on before Thursday morning. The Wanamaker Trophy is waiting.
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