Aaron Rai just won the PGA Championship. Two gloves. Iron covers. A 7-year-old driver. A 150-to-1 longshot nobody saw coming.
Rai closed with a 5-under 65 to finish at 9-under 271, three shots clear of Jon Rahm and 54-hole leader Alex Smalley. It is the first time an Englishman has lifted the Wanamaker Trophy since Jim Barnes in 1919. He is also the first player of Indian descent to win a men’s major championship.
Rai entered the final round three shots off the lead. Through eight holes, he was 1-over and going nowhere. Then came the par-5 ninth.
He hit a 5-wood from 260 yards, landed it just short of the green, and watched the ball feed up to 40 feet. The eagle putt dropped. That started a stretch of seven consecutive one-putts. He had the lead before the field knew what was happening.
The 17th hole sealed it. Rai drained a 68-foot birdie putt to go to 9-under and open a three-shot cushion with one hole to play. The leaderboard entering Sunday had 22 players within four shots of the lead, a PGA Championship record. Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler, Justin Thomas, Xander Schauffele, and Rahm were all in the mix. None of them could catch him.
“You won’t find one person on property who’s not happy for him,” McIlroy said after the round. Rahm added: “I have heard consistently there’s very few people that are nicer and kinder human beings than Aaron Rai.”
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He turned 31 in March. He grew up in Wombourne, a small town a few miles outside Wolverhampton, England. His dad, Amrik, immigrated to England from India. His mom, Dalvir, came from Kenya as a teenager. Neither of them knew much about golf when Aaron picked it up as a four-year-old.
Rai wears two gloves. Uses iron covers. Plays a TaylorMade M6 driver from 2019. Tees the ball with an orange plastic castle tee more commonly found in the bags of 20-handicappers than major champions. None of it is an accident.
The two gloves started when he was eight years old. A manufacturer sent over a pair, he tried them, and they stuck. One day his dad forgot to pack both gloves and Rai played with one. Per Rai: “It was terrible. I couldn’t play, I couldn’t feel the grip, so I’ve always stuck with the two gloves ever since.”
The iron covers go back further. His father paid for every set of clubs, every membership, every entry fee, money, as Rai put it, “that we really didn’t have, to be honest.” When his dad bought him a set of Titleist 690 MBs as a kid, he cleaned every groove afterward with a pin and baby oil. Then he put iron covers on them to protect them.
“Just to appreciate the value of what I have,” Rai said. He never stopped using them.
Jason Timmis grew up playing junior tournaments alongside Rai. He eventually realized Rai was far better than him and started caddying for him in 2019.
“There’s little quirky things he does in the golf game, but I think that just keeps him grounded in a way,” Timmis said after the win.
Rai’s long-time swing coaches, Andy Proudman and Piers Ward, have worked with him since he was 12. His mentor and early financial backer, Shabir Randeree, owned the course where Rai first learned the game, paid for his schooling, and helped fund his early professional career.
Rai turned professional in 2012. He worked his way through the PGA EuroPro Tour and the Challenge Tour before earning his European Tour card. He won three times on the DP World Tour, the 2018 Hong Kong Open, the 2020 Scottish Open, and the 2025 Abu Dhabi Championship. His PGA Tour card came through the tour’s international pathway, and he won his first PGA Tour title at the 2024 Wyndham Championship after rallying from four shots back with five holes to play.
He arrived at Aronimink with one PGA Tour win and no top-15 finishes in 12 career major starts. He went off at 150-to-1.
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Rai collects $3.69 million from the record $20.5 million purse. Along with the Wanamaker Trophy, he receives a lifetime exemption into the PGA Championship and five-year exemptions into the Masters, U.S. Open, The Open Championship, and the Players Championship.
He is the first first-time major winner since J.J. Spaun at the 2025 U.S. Open, and the first breakthrough at the PGA Championship since Xander Schauffele in 2024.
When the winning putt dropped on 18, Rai didn’t fist pump. He wobbled for a moment, then turned to his playing partner, took off his cap, and shook his hand.
