What you need to know about Aronimink Golf Club, host of the 2026 PGA Championship

When it comes to golf in Philadelphia, Merion Golf Club tends to get the most shine, thanks to its architecture bona fides and significant history as a USGA championship host (19 of them, with the 2026 U.S. Amateur making #20). But the City of Brotherly Love has one of the deepest rosters of great golf courses of any city in the world. Aronimink Golf Club, a Donald Ross gem, leads that list in many golfers’ eyes.

Sixty-four years after Gary Player won the 1962 edition there, “The ‘Mink” welcomes the strongest field in professional golf for the second time in its history, which also includes a Senior PGA, a Women’s PGA, two USGA championships and three PGA Tour events, all since Player’s win.

The club dates to 1896 but its current course has existed since it opened on Memorial Day in 1928. That places it squarely in its architect’s most prolific period, not long before the Great Depression put the kibosh on the Roaring Twenties’ golf boom.

Aronimink is a parkland golf course on one of Philadelphia’s best pieces of golf ground. Although there is less than 50 feet of elevation change across the course's 200 acres, the topography lends itself to one of Ross' many ingenious routings, using a central rise in the property to stage a variety of exciting shots from different directions. The greens, often elevated above their surroundings and generally canted from back to front, complicate approaches, short-game shots and putts with various swells and depressions.

Several architects adjusted Aronimink’s features over the years, during which time the site saw considerable tree growth that narrowed the intended playing corridors. Robert Trent Jones, Sr. worked on the course in the late 1980s, and in 2003, architect and Ross expert Ron Prichard brought much of Ross’ design intent back. In 2017 architects Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner – both sons of greater Philly – completed a set of updates that saw numerous trees removed, greens and fairways restored to their original sizes and bunkers returned to their original style and locations.

Aronimink’s bunkering stands out from that of the vast majority of Ross’ oeuvre. It now sports a whopping 180 of them, more than almost all other stateside major championship hosts. Though Ross' plans for the course included larger, muscular hazards, it was ultimately festooned with strings and clusters of smaller bunkers that confront the golfer’s eye in layers and stacks that can mess with depth perception. Their smaller size may force pros into more awkward stances than they might encounter in larger pits elsewhere.

In his 2000 book Golf, As It Was Meant To Be Played, which explored Ross' work across 18 of his greatest courses, historian Michael Fay selected this hole from Aronimink, calling it “a firm handshake,” where an elevated tee gives way to a gradually rising fairway and an elevated, pitched putting surface. It's a stirring first image of the course. As for the "firm handshake" moniker, times change, and as far as touring pros drive the golf ball these days, they should be able to push their opening tee shots into short-iron or wedge range, putting them in attack-mode from the outset. The first of Aronimink's many clusters of bunkers does not intrude until about 330 yards off the tee.

This medium-length par 4 is the fullest expression of Donald Ross' bunkering philosophy on the entire course, with 20 of them framing and protecting the landing area and green. But bunkers are not the only defense here. The hole rises more than 20 feet from tee to green, with the majority of that elevation gain coming in the final 75 yards. The way the green is perched up will challenge players' powers of depth perception. Shots that miss short or land with too much backspin may reel back off front of the green and down the hill by as much as 50 yards, or careen into one of the four bunkers well short and right of the green.

Donald Ross was a master of the long par 3, a genre of golf hole that is divisive, even among architecture aficionados. But distance creep has made superior long-iron play less of a differentiator than it used to be. Water does not often feature on classic courses as prominently as it does on this hole, where a pond guards the entire left side of the green. Bailing out into the middle of the green will leave a tricky two-putt. By giving players just enough room to bail out, but complicating the recovery for those who decline to take on the shot from the tee, Ross gives great players an opportunity to separate themselves from merely good ones. If the 2026 PGA Championship comes down to the wire, it is easy to imagine this hole having a significant part to play in deciding the champion.

Aronimink Golf Club

Newtown Square, Pennsylvania

Private

5.0

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Architecture

July 27, 2018

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