Aaron Rai becomes first English golfer to win US PGA Championship since 1919

There’s never been a PGA Championship quite like this one . Come Sunday morning there were 21 players within four shots of the lead, and eight major winners among them. Every one of those 21 and a good few more woke up thinking that they had a shot at winning the Wanamaker Trophy.

There was the six-time major champion Rory McIlroy; the 2022 Open champion, Cam Smith; the 2017 and 2022 PGA champion, Justin Thomas; the 2021 US Open and 2023 Masters champion, Jon Rahm; and on, and on, and on, all the way down the leaderboard. And then there was Aaron Rai, a 31-year-old from Wolverhampton, the world No 44. Rai has won Tour events before, but his biggest achievement in major golf until this point was his top-20 finish in this tournament last year and a victory in the rinky-dink par-three contest they play the day before the Masters. And by doing it, Rai has ended one of the longest-standing jinxes in golf. It had been 107 years since an Englishman last won the PGA. That was “Big” Jim Barnes way back in 1919, when it was still a matchplay event. The last four days – the last four hours – of the wait were the most excruciatingly tense of the lot. It has been a week of high-wire golf at Aronimink, which was set up in such a tough way that on Friday McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler, the two best players of their generation, were left complaining about how tricky it was. But like McIlroy said a day later, hard as it was, it made for a “helluva entertaining” day on Sunday. There was hardly a player in the field who didn’t fancy their chances. And when Kurt Kitayama, who started the day tied for 64th, went out in the morning and scored a 63 to rocket into the top 10, everyone knew there were plenty of opportunities out there for anyone good enough to take them. The flipside was that in a field as busy as this one, when everyone was pressed up against each other on the leaderboard, you would be lucky to get away with one mistake, let alone two.

Key points

• There was the six-time major champion Rory McIlroy; the 2022 Open champion, Cam Smith; the 2017 and 2022 PGA champion, Justin Thomas; the 2021 US Open and 2023 Masters champion, Jon Rahm; and on, a…
• And then there was Aaron Rai, a 31-year-old from Wolverhampton, the world No 44.
• Rai has won Tour events before, but his biggest achievement in major golf until this point was his top-20 finish in this tournament last year and a victory in the rinky-dink par-three contest they…
• And by doing it, Rai has ended one of the longest-standing jinxes in golf.
• It had been 107 years since an Englishman last won the PGA.