Aronimink Is About to Devour These Golfers: 174 Bunkers and Zero Mercy

Welcome to PGA Championship week, baby. This year we're heading to Aronimink Golf Club just outside Philly, and if you think the field is walking into a casual stroll through the fairways, think again. This course is a straight-up gauntlet.

Here's the vibe: the PGA Championship can sometimes get a bad rap as the red-headed stepchild of golf's majors. Some years, the Tour guys absolutely eviscerate these courses like they did at Valhalla a couple years back. But this week? Different energy. Aronimink is built to punish, and we might actually see a winner who finishes in single digits under par. That's how brutal this track is set up to be.

Last Year's Drama Proved Scottie Is Built Different

Let's rewind to last year's PGA at Quail Hollow for a second. Scottie Scheffler came into Sunday with a 3-stroke lead, and yeah, you'd think that's a cruise control finish. But Scottie actually started the day rough, bogeying the first hole and playing the front nine in 2 over. Jon Rahm caught him briefly at 9 under after birdieing 10 and 11, and suddenly we had fireworks brewing down the stretch. Scottie birdied 10 to take back the lead and never let go. Rahm completely flamed out, going bogey-double-double at the Green Mile and falling all the way back to T-10. Meanwhile, Scottie birdied 14 and 15 to re-open his 5-stroke advantage and cruised home to win his first PGA Championship. Bryson, Harris English, and Davis Riley finished as co-runners-up. Scottie's probably getting a few more of these before we're done.

174 Bunkers and Fairways That Demand Respect

Aronimink is a classic Donald Ross design built way back in 1928, then recently restored in 2016-17 by Gil Hanse before the 2018 BMW Championship. The course plays as a par 70 at 7,394 yards, and here's what makes it terrifying: 174 bunkers. They're everywhere, man. Many line and cross fairways to force real decisions off the tee. The rough is thick, the greens are tiered, and the fairways have been narrowed to make you earn every decent approach shot. This isn't a bombers' course where length alone saves you.

The best hole for drama has to be the par 3 seventeenth at 229 yards down the stretch. That long downhill par 3 could absolutely decide this thing on Sunday. The green is big but the pin placements are sneaky: back left brings water into play, short right tucked beyond a bunker, or back middle-rightish on the backside of that knob. Any ball heading left finds the pond running down the entire left side. The safe shot to the middle almost certainly leaves you a brutal two-putt.

The Format and the Field

We're looking at stroke play, 72 holes, 156 golfers competing. The field gets cut to the Top 70 and ties, and if somehow we go to a playoff, it's a 3-hole aggregate using holes 10, 17, and 18, with 18 repeating if needed. The field includes the world's best on merit, past PGA Championship winners, and 20 PGA professionals who qualified through their own process. Realistically, only a couple club pros make the cut, so you're really looking at about 125 true competitors.

Coverage is all ESPN and CBS this week. Time to see who can survive Aronimink's 174-bunker nightmare.

This article was created with AI assistance and reviewed by Seattle On Tap editorial staff. Always verify information with official team sources.