Aaron Rai won the PGA Championship on Sunday at Aronimink Golf Club while wearing two golf gloves and swinging a TaylorMade M6 driver released in 2018, reinforcing the tournament’s reputation as golf’s least predictable major. Rai defeated Jon Rahm and Alex Smalley by three shots to win the Wanamaker Trophy.
The Masters often crowns the sport’s established royalty, while the U.S. Open usually rewards the game’s most precise ball-strikers. The PGA Championship, meanwhile, continues to elevate golfers few people expected to see holding a major trophy by Sunday evening.
Rai is simply the latest example.
A Winner Nobody Saw Coming
Rai entered the week with two PGA Tour victories, including the 2024 Wyndham Championship, but no major championship wins in 12 previous appearances.
He began Sunday’s final round two shots off the lead and struggled through much of the front nine. Television coverage largely drifted elsewhere as Rai failed to generate much momentum early in the day.
Then everything changed.
Rai holed a 40-foot eagle putt on the ninth hole, added a birdie at the 11th, and closed with a final-round 5-under 65 to finish at 9-under for the tournament.
The 32-year-old became the first Englishman to win the PGA Championship since 1919. Afterwards, he joked that he and his wife would “probably just go to Chipotle” after securing the $3.69 million prize.
A perfect PGA Championship story.
The Major That Keeps Producing Surprises
No dissection of this event and the unpredictability surrounding it would be complete without a journey back to 1991.
That was the year John Daly arrived at Crooked Stick as the ninth alternate, driving overnight just to reach the course. Days later, he stunned the field and walked away with the trophy.
Rich Beem captured the 2002 PGA Championship at Hazeltine despite Tiger Woods entering the tournament fresh off a U.S. Open victory earlier that season.
Shaun Micheel entered Oak Hill in 2003 ranked 169th in the world and left with the only PGA Tour win of his career.
Y.E. Yang shocked Woods at Hazeltine in 2009 after Woods stumbled to a final-round 75.
Keegan Bradley won the tournament in his first appearance in 2011, overcoming a triple-bogey on the 15th hole with a stretch of clutch birdies late in the round.
Then came Phil Mickelson in 2021, becoming the oldest major champion in golf history at age 50.
Why Chaos Thrives at the PGA Championship
One reason this tournament produces so many surprises is the sheer depth of the field.
The event includes:
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the top 100 players in the world rankings
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past champions
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PGA Tour winners from the previous five seasons
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top performers from the PGA Tour money list
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Korn Ferry Tour players
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club professionals
With so many capable players packed near the top of the leaderboard, the PGA Championship often leaves the door open for unexpected contenders deep into Sunday.
What Rai’s Win Reveals
Rai’s breakthrough was not entirely random. The Englishman had already developed a reputation as one of the PGA Tour’s most accurate ball-strikers and had won multiple events worldwide before arriving at Aronimink.
Rai also credited his wife, former professional golfer Gaurika Bishnoi, as a major source of support throughout his career and during the championship run.
Still, few analysts or betting markets viewed him as a legitimate threat entering the week. Rai sat at +7000 to win the tournament at BetMGM before play began.
On paper, it was highly unlikely that a golfer with only two PGA Tour victories and no previous major wins would leave Aronimink holding the Wanamaker Trophy.
Yet that unpredictability remains part of what separates this championship from the other three majors.
While Rai and his wife headed to Chipotle for dinner, another unexpected champion had just added his name to PGA Championship history.
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