Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler bemoaned the PGA Championship 2026 set-up at Aronimink with the pin positions causing havoc for the world’s best players.
The second men’s major of the year has seen higher than expected scoring and a bunched leaderboard with the south-west Philadelphia course showing its teeth through two rounds.
With only 21 players under par before the weekend, world No 1 Scheffler is two back, while McIlroy is five adrift after storming back to make up for some of the damage from Thursday’s first round.
“It’s a bunched leaderboard but that means it’s a sign of not a great setup,” McIlroy said when discussing the test this week.
While Scheffler labelled the targets as “absurd,” despite many fans enjoying the difficulty so far, while sharing the views of his caddie Ted Scott and Justin Rose’s caddie Mark Fulcher.
“Most of the pins today were kind of absurd,” he said. “There are just some things that are out of your control. They were just so far into the areas where we thought the pins were going to be, and then they just… like the one on 14 was probably the hardest pin that I’ve seen in a long time just because, I mean, there’s literally just like a spine and they’re like, ‘oh, we’ll just put the pin right on top of it.’ And you’re like, ‘all right, well, I’ll see what I can do.’
“This is the hardest set of pin locations that I’ve seen since I’ve been on tour, and that includes US Opens, that includes Oakmont. I did say to Fooch, he’s been around a long time, and to Ted, too, ‘have you seen anything like this before?’,” Scheffler continued. “They said maybe Shinnecock is the only place they have seen that has pins that could compare to this.
“But it’s different in a sense on this golf course, because Oakmont, their greens are extremely severe, but they’re extremely severe in one direction. Here, it’s like the green may slope all this way and then we put the pin down here and then there’s also a slope this way. And like it’s not as, how would you say, natural to the slopes that are there. There’s a bit more, I think, that’s manufactured into the greens, and it’s just very difficult.”
McIlroy anticipated an easier test at the weekend, should the pin locations change and the weather improves.
“With calmer conditions and maybe a couple more favourable hole locations, I think everyone’s got to feel like they have got a chance,” McIlroy added.
“Yes, it’s bunched, but you get on a run with wedges on that front nine and you shoot four, five-under and all of a sudden you’re right in the thick of things.
“At five back I do feel like I’m right in the tournament, and that’s really what I wanted to do today was to just get myself back in it.”
