PGA Championship storylines: The weather’s impact; Justin Rose returns; the elusiveness of Rory vs. Scottie

Nick Faldo was out for a morning walk around Aronimink Golf Club in 2011 during the AT&T National when he stopped at the 10th green and stared.

Faldo was in a sort of awe when club pro Jeff Kiddie, making his morning rounds, came by.

“If you built it today they’d think you’re nuts,” Faldo said to Kiddie of the green complex on hole No. 10. “But it’s great.”

The eyes of the golf world are trained this week on the 300 acres in Newtown Square where course architect Donald Ross created what he called his “masterpiece” nearly 100 years ago.

It is the green complexes like the severely sloped 10th that will give the best players in the world fits when major championship men’s golf officially returns to the Philadelphia area for the first time since 2013 on Thursday morning to start the PGA Championship.

The greens are the course’s greatest defense against one of the best competition fields golf has to offer. But will the weather allow them to show their teeth?

How Aronimink holds up, and how the players navigate those greens, will be key things to watch during the PGA Championship this week. Here’s a look at that, plus other major storylines heading into the four-day event that is the second major on the men’s golf calendar:

You never want the golf course to be the story for the wrong reasons. There’s fear among some locals that the pros could tear Aronimink up over the next few days. Xander Schauffele shot 21-under par and won the Wanamaker Trophy two years ago at Valhalla Country Club in Kentucky.

Scores that low might make Aronimink the butt of the joke, a too-easy, out-of-date short course not built to stand up to the athletes and technology of the modern world.

Not so fast, others might say. And probably for good reason.

» READ MORE: Donald Ross’ ‘masterpiece’ at Aronimink will again challenge the best at the PGA Championship

Wet weather in the forecast overnight Wednesday into Thursday might make for soft conditions that lead to low scores early in the tournament. But it will be dry on Friday, and the forecast calls for lots of warmth and sun on Saturday, which should firm the ground up for the weekend.

“If you look at this golf course specifically, between it being soft and firm, I think is two totally different tests,” world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler said Tuesday.

“With soft greens you’re able to play a pretty simple strategy of golf where you can kind of play that sort of bomb-and-gouge-type strategy. That’s probably what works best because, when you have greens that have a ton of pitch back to front and they’re really soft, it’s easier to take off spin when you’re in the rough.”

But when it’s firm?

“The fairways are hard to hit,” Scheffler continued. “Then if you want to get the ball close to a lot of these pins, you have to control your spin and control your distance really well, which is not that easy to do out of the rough.

“There’s certain spots on this golf course where I think it can get really challenging if it’s firm and fast.”

Keegan Bradley won here in 2018 at the BMW Championship. He’s a native New Englander who knows Northeast golf courses well.

“What makes this place difficult are the greens,” he said. “So you really need to be able to control your distances, hit the ball in the fairway. Off the tee it’s not extremely challenging, but the greens get really crazy and they are really mounded and hilly and just like [what] a lot of Northeast courses are like.”

Scheffler is the No. 1 player in the world, and reigning Masters champion Rory McIlroy, who won his second consecutive green jacket last month, is No. 2. They have sort of lorded over the golf world over the last few years, but rare has been the weekend where the two battle it out against each other.

» READ MORE: Rory McIlroy lauded Philly as ‘a wonderful golfing city.’ Can the Masters champ win another PGA Championship?

According to The Athletic, the two have combined for 86 top fives, 111 top 10s, and have won 30 of the 114 PGA Tour events since the start of 2022. That’s some remarkable consistency. But The Athletic also pointed out the sad reality for golf fans who salivate over rivalries, some of which have gone by the wayside in the era of LIV: Scheffler and McIlroy have not started a final round where each are within three shots of the lead since the 2023 BMW Championship.

There’s no time like the present.

Justin Rose’s only major championship victory came at the 2013 U.S. Open at Merion. He won the 2010 AT&T National at Aronimink, then lost the 2018 BMW to Bradley in a playoff.

He has grown to like the region, and fans last year at the Truist Championship at Philadelphia Cricket Club treated him well. The area, he said, reminds him of where he lives in England.

“Very leafy, very green,” he said. “I feel like the spring here is very much like the spring in England right now. So it feels very familiar from that point of view. I think some of the golf course design in this area is sort of reminiscent of some of the courses in Surrey that I’ve kind of grown up playing. I like the old-school golf. I like old-school tests of golf. I like the design and the architecture of these classic old courses.”

» READ MORE: Aronimink’s prestigious history gets the national spotlight at the PGA Championship

Perhaps the course knowledge and past success locally will pay dividends for him. He could use it. Rose was 32 when he won his first and only major at Merion. The second major has been more elusive than a McIlroy-Scheffler showdown.

Close calls, there have been many.

“I regard them as my goals, my main objectives,” Rose said of how he treats majors at age 45, “but I regard them as more kind of coveted now because you never quite know how many you’ve got left.”

Jordan Spieth will start Thursday for the ninth time in a PGA Championship after winning the British Open in 2017.

The fourth major, the career grand slam, has been out of his reach. He missed the cut last year at Quail Hollow. He’s outside the top 50 in the world rankings and hasn’t won on tour since 2022. This year, Spieth has six top 25s and has made 11 of 12 cuts.

“If I can win one more tournament in my life, it would obviously be this one for that reason,” he said of the grand slam possibility. “But the easiest way to do that is to not try to, in a weird way, you know.

“Just go out and get ready for the first hole …”

He’s off on hole No. 10 and that gnarly green complex at 8:40 Thursday morning next to McIlroy and Jon Rahm.

No pressure.

Honorary locals like Rose, Bradley, and even Spieth, whose family has roots in the Lehigh Valley, will make easy targets for Philly fans to root for this weekend. But none of them is a passport-carrying Delco native like Braden Shattuck, one of the 20 PGA professionals who qualified for the tournament.

The director of instruction at Springfield’s Rolling Green is in the first group Thursday off hole No. 1 at 6:45 a.m.

The Sun Valley graduate has come a long way since a car accident stunted his golf career in 2019. Shattuck, 31, made the cut at Valhalla in 2024 and has the talent to do it again at Aronimink.

The PGA Championship at Aronimink Golf Club

The 108th PGA Championship returns to Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown Square for the first time in over six decades.

You can watch Marcus Hayes and Jeff Neiburg preview the tournament on Gameday Central from Aronimink, and be sure to check out the PGA Championship Range Show from 12-2 p.m daily, starting Wednesday.

Whether you're going, watching from home, or just curious about what all the fuss is about, we've got you covered with our PGA guide and stories on everything from Aronimink's history and design, to what the players have to say about returning to the Philly area. We even made a golf video game so you can play the course and learn its secrets. 

Get it all with our full PGA Championship preview. And follow the latest news and action from the course, right here.