Michael Block opened the Us Pga Championship with an even-par 70 on Thursday, a steady start from the Southern California club professional who turned himself into one of golf’s most watched underdog stories two years ago.
Block, 46, played the first round alongside Dustin Johnson and Rasmus Højgaard and kept pace with far longer hitters by refusing to chase them off the tee. He made 10 pars and four birdies, but also dropped shots at 4 and 8 and took a double bogey at 12. Even so, his 70 was one better than Cameron Young’s tally and four better than Rory McIlroy’s.
The round mattered because Block earned his way here through qualifying, not a sponsor’s invitation or a past result. Last month, he tied for 10th place at the PGA Professional Championship at Bandon Dunes in Oregon after opening with 71 and 70, then closing with 78 and 69. That finish sent him to his third PGA Championship since the breakout week that changed his career, and his second straight trip is part of a stretch that has included two more PGA Championships and eight other PGA Tour events.
Block arrived early at Aronimink and mapped out the course the way he has learned to manage these weeks. He played the back nine on Sunday and the front nine on Monday, saying he does nine holes every day starting on Sunday so he can see the course twice. With his son Ethan on the bag, he treated the week like a lesson in survival as much as a tournament. Block called Aronimink a second-shot golf course and said, “This is such a second-shot golf course, it’s insane,” before explaining that the key was to stay patient and keep the ball in front of him.
That mattered even more because the numbers around him were so different. Block said he was 50-plus yards behind his playing partners on most fairways, a gap that can turn a normal hole into a long day. “Two absolute bombers,” he said of his group. “Do not try to hang with them. We’re just going to play our own game,” he added. The plan was simple: “Main thing was get it in the fairway, put it in a spot, on the green or even off the green that would give us an opportunity to still make a par.”
Block’s first trip into the game’s wider spotlight came in 2023 at Oak Hill, where he holed an ace on 15 and finished 15th after an up-and-down on the 72nd hole. That performance turned him into a cult figure, but this week he is here on merit, and that is the more telling part of the story. He is back in the field, back in a major, and back to doing what club pros have to do when the stage gets bigger than the player beside them.
For Block, the opening round suggested the formula still works. He did not overpower Aronimink. He managed it. He stayed close enough to give himself another day, which is exactly the kind of round a 46-year-old club professional needs if he wants to keep writing the rarest kind of major championship story. For more on the early pace at Aronimink, see Aldrich Potgieter starts fast at 2026 US PGA Championship at Aronimink.
Block said even the mistakes did not feel like mistakes, only the cost of trying to keep up with a demanding course. “Even on my bogeys today, I never hit a bad shot,” he said. That is the sort of sentence that fits a player who knows the difference between fighting a course and letting it beat him.
