Aronimink and Philly fans star at the PGA Championship in a year of big events in Philadelphia

Four days of superb weather on a legendary course with the best possible field playing inspired golf left Pádraig Harrington, the sage among the stars at the PGA Championship, thrilled at what he’d seen and done.

“I thought it was a brilliant setup,” said Harrington, a 54-year-old with three major championship wins and more experience than any other player in the field. “I thought it was absolutely fabulous.”

After two days of consistent whining by some of the game’s biggest names, Aronimink Golf Club settled down for a weekend of dozens of runs toward the top of the leaderboard in a tight field whose winner was in doubt until the very end. Players complained about the wind and the rough and the placement of pins on greens that were designed 100 years before for a very different game. By Sunday evening, the best had figured out that the course Donald Ross conceived to make birdies elusive for even the best players had done its job despite the fact it averaged just 7,223 yards.

“I, for one, love what I saw this week,” Harrington said. “I’d like to play this every day.”

He finished 1-under, tied for 18th place, his first top-20 at a major in a decade. His was the feel-good story of a tournament whose tale hardly could have unfolded better for Aronimink, hosting its first major since 1962, and Philadelphia, hosting its first major since 2013.

“To hear Pádraig say that makes me proud,” said Aronimink president Andrew Panzo, “and, certainly on behalf of the members, it certainly makes us proud.”

It was, against stiff odds, a brilliant event. It took nine years of planning logistics and build-out. It took a course restoration by Gil Hanse, who reintroduced more than 100 of the 174 bunkers. It took months of sacrifice from dues-paying members — $125,000 to get in, $1,800 a month, and often years on a waiting list — who were not allowed to play the course from Nov. 2 until Tuesday to ensure pristine fairways and greens.

» READ MORE: PGA Championship: Aaron Rai solves Aronimink Golf Club to win his first major

When the last players in the field had seven holes left to play in the final round, 13 players still had a realistic chance to win. A fourth straight sellout crowd pushed attendance for the week past 200,000, not a bad apple among them. There were few reports of even minimal misbehavior, unless you count Texas natives Scottie Scheffler and Jordan Spieth being heckled for their allegiance to the Cowboys, which, to be fair, they deserved.

Aaron Rai won the tournament at 9-under, but the star of the show was Aronimink.

The tournament turned out to be a hit, but the first two days had the earmarks of a bomb. The massive, deceptive, cruel, and inspired greens were challenging at Aronimink, which Ross called the “masterpiece” among the nearly 400 courses he designed.

It proved to be just that, even if the PGA of America, its handlers for the week, made it too hard, too early at the PGA Championship. They were worried that a brute like Bryson DeChambeau would overpower it. DeChambeau was never relevant (he stunk, missed the cut, left, and didn’t want to talk about it), but bombers Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler, and Jon Rahm all whined in his stead.

“There was some chatter where people thought 15- to 20-under was going to win,” Rahm said. “And I think that got to somebody in the PGA, and they did something about it.”

Did they? Kerry Haigh, who runs the PGA of America’s championships, said Wednesday, “We try to set up in a balanced way that challenges the best players in the world.”

Mission accomplished?

Haigh declined to comment.

At any rate, after two days of glacial carnage — some rounds lasted six hours — players found their footing, Haigh unlocked some of the pin placements, and the course defended itself the way Ross intended.

Harrington’s one criticism of the setup in regard to the pins:

“I would have switched Friday and Saturday,” he said.

The course played at 0.6 strokes over par on Sunday and even-par 70 on Saturday with less severe pin placements. It played 2.6 strokes over par Friday, which was cut-down day, and 2.2 strokes over par Thursday. Harrington’s point: Make it harder after the cut, not before it.

There was one round of 65 and one round of 66 before Saturday, when there were four 66s and five 65s.

Any place is tough with that much wind.

It’s hard to blame Haigh for manipulating the course’s choking rough, canted fairways, and funhouse greens. There hadn’t been a tournament of this magnitude here since Gary Player won the PGA in 1962, when carbon-faced drivers and Surlyn-skinned golf balls were a figment of fantasies for golfers hitting buttery balata balls with persimmon 1-woods.

Windy conditions just heightened the drama. On Saturday, 14 players held at least a share of the lead. On Sunday, Justin Thomas held the clubhouse lead for more than three hours, and he looked delighted to be done with Aronimink. He recalled getting post-round treatment Saturday night and looking over at Scheffler.

“We just looked at each other and said, ‘We are exhausted,’” Thomas said. “This place, with that wind and how the course is set up, is extremely tough.”

Steady 15-mph winds that gusted to 25-mph all but disappeared Sunday, when Thomas shot 5-under. The trees barely rustled by the time Rai finished his round at 6:30 with birdies on Nos. 16 and 17 and a par on 18.

The end wasn’t anticlimactic, exactly. Rai is a soft-spoken Englishman of Indian descent who wears two black gloves and, like a Sunday muni hack, keeps head covers on his irons to remind him of his modest roots amid peers who teethed on silver spoons.

The winner could have been flashier: say, Jon Rahm, who finished tied for second at 6-under and would have been the third LIV Golf player to win a major; or Thomas, who finished 5-under and tied for fourth, and would have become the seventh golfer to win at least three PGAs.

That’s OK. The competition had plenty of highlights.

Garrick Higgo was less than a minute late to his 7:18 a.m. tee time Thursday, which cost him two strokes, which cost him the weekend, which he missed by one stroke. He said he was on the practice green but he might’ve just been adjusting his man-bun. ESPN featured a Higgo Tracker before Higgo’s tee time Friday.

Tournament officials put the Friday morning group containing Keegan Bradley and Thomas on the clock. This was performative — everybody was playing slowly, just like Thursday — but it was effective, since officials knew that nobody on the course was going to overreact, gesticulating and whinging to the officials, like Keegan and JT did. The afternoon wave saw it and played briskly.

About an hour apart on Friday evening, both Justin Rose and Michael Kim chipped in for eagle on the par-5 No. 9, their 18th hole. Each stood at 5-over, and the chip-in ensured both made the cut. Kim finished 2-over and 44th, but Rose actually rallied and finished 3-under, tied for 10th.

“That was a magic moment,” Rose said Sunday.

There were plenty at Aronimink. Golf coverage was prehistoric when Player won the PGA in 1962, and while Aronimink has occasionally opened its gates for the pros and fans recently, never has its restored design been presented in such fine fettle, with such pristine fairways, such pure greens, and such glorious weather.

The 2030 U.S. Open at Merion is the next major men’s golf event on the area calendar. But with Cobbs Creek undergoing a massive, state of the art renovation — and considering the success that culminated in Sunday’s final round at Aronimink — a third PGA Championship in Philly’s near future seems more likely than not.

“It was a great father-son day, watching the best golfers in the world up close,” said Fred Greco, 53, who runs a branded merchandise company in Bucks County and, like most of the fans, had never before been to the extremely exclusive golf club. “What a great golf course. Great to see Philly represented so well this weekend.”

Panzo was on the grounds since the practice rounds began Monday. He is aware that this tournament is one of the mega-events in the Philadelphia region this year, along with the men’s subregional in the NCAA basketball tournament in March, six World Cup soccer matches in June and July and Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game on July 14, all during the year in which the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary of independence, a process ratified in Philadelphia’s Independence Hall.

Panzo now has done his part in Philly’s biggest sporting year ever.

His favorite moment during the tournament?

“My favorite moment of the week was watching the Philadelphia community, and the golf community in Philadelphia, and the club, just shine,“ Panzo said. ”Just ... shine.“