NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — Congratulations to the cut-makers at the 2026 PGA Championship! Your gift: birdies, birdies as far as the eye can see. Our gift: a major that might just have all of the game’s very best at the very top of the leaderboard.
After two days of absolute carnage, where players derided their “s**t” performances and criticized “absurd” pin placements, Aronimink, host of the 108th PGA Championship, relented. On a gorgeous Saturday, the warmest and brightest day of the week, the players stormed the course like Black Friday shoppers, loading up birdies by the armload. Some of the most notable rounds:
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Kristoffer Reitan, who carded two eagles, and a near-ace on a par 4, en route to a 5-under round to end at -2
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Chris Kirk, who flirted with the PGA Championship record before a double-bogey on the 18th left him with “only” a -5 round and a -2 position
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Justin Rose, who needed an eagle to make the cut, then rode a five-birdie opening nine to also card a -5 and also finish the day at -2;
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Joaquin Niemann, who had five birdies and an eagle to finish a round of -4 and, yep, end the day at -2 for the tournament.
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Topping them all, the two-time reigning Masters champion, the only guy in the field capable of achieving a grand slam, the dude who had that aforementioned crappy Thursday: Mr. Rory McIlroy. He began the day at +1, and by the 13th hole he’d caught the leaders at -4, 45 minutes before they’d even teed off. He gave one back coming in, but a 4-under 66 put him just one back of the lead when he walked off the 18th green.
Add in strong rounds from Xander Schauffele, Jon Rahm and Patrick Cantlay, and by the time leaders Alex Smalley and Maverick McNealy actually teed off, the top of the leaderboard looked like a Ryder Cup reunion.
So what’s changed from the first two days of the tournament? Warmer, calmer weather, for one thing; winds throughout the first half of Saturday were gentle and uncomplicated, a welcome reprieve — not to mention a gift — to those with the earlier tee times who used the gettable conditions to cut into their deficits.
And just as the morning wave finished their rounds, giving way to the afternoon groupings — those who entered Round 2 atop the leaderboard — the wind began to pick up, giving Aronimink back some of its teeth.
“It is warming up, and I think that makes a big difference,” said Rose, who started the day seven shots back. “Suddenly the ball is going a bit further. I think players feel a little bit better in T-shirts, and the body works a bit better, people start hitting the ball a little bit further.”
More importantly, the pin placements were far more favorable to scoring. “Pin locations is a big difference, for sure,” Kirk said. “There's a handful of really tough ones out there still, but for the most part, they're much, much more accessible than they have been the last few days.”
“The pins today were a little bit more forgiving, or they weren't as, perhaps, crazy as they were a little bit the first few days, where they were sitting on top of the ridges a lot,” Reitan said. “So I felt like the birdie tries that you did have didn't necessarily have, like, a fall-off right behind the hole. So it was a little bit easier to be a little bit more aggressive with the putts.”
One thing all the early finishers agreed on as flags out on the course whipped ever harder: they were happy to be done with the wind rolling in.
“I think, if you don't get off to a fast start,” Rose said, “then you're going to kind of get to, let's say, the seventh hole, eighth hole, and you're going to be like, geez, you know the easy holes are running out.”
