Perhaps it’s fitting that the man left standing at the end of the most chaotic PGA Championship in recent history entered the week without a top-15 finish in his major career.
Aaron Rai rose from the pack with some brilliant golf down the stretch Sunday, punctuating a 5-under 65 with an epic 68-foot putt for birdie on No. 17 to pull away from the most bunched leaderboard in tournament history and claim his first major championship at Aronimink.
A star-studded group of chasers featuring the likes of Jon Rahm, Ludvig Aberg, Rory McIlroy, and Xander Schauffele were unable to match Rai shot-for-shot, and the Englishman’s victory means Europeans have won the opening two majors of the season for the first time since 1934.