Rory McIlroy shot a bogey-free 67 on Friday at Aronimink Golf Club, but the second round of the PGA Championship ended with more complaint than celebration. The leaderboard stayed packed, the course played to a scoring average of 72.609, and some of golf’s biggest names came away saying the setup had gone too far in protecting par.
McIlroy did not hide his view of the test. He said it was “not a great setup” because it had not really enabled anyone to separate themselves, adding that it was easy to make a ton of pars, hard to make birdies and that bogey felt like the worst score a player was going to shoot on any one hole. He also suggested scoring could improve if warmer weather turns the greens “crispy” and the fairways more bouncy.
Shane Lowry sounded just as exasperated. “I felt like every pin was on the bonnet of a car,” he said, calling some of the hole locations very difficult and adding that he had never had so many 15-footers that he felt like he could putt off the green. Scottie Scheffler, who shot 71, went further, calling the pins “kind of absurd” and zeroing in on the par-3 14th, where he holed a 3 1/2-foot par putt after describing the location as “one of the craziest pins that I’ve seen.”
The 14th became the day’s reference point for frustration. Matt Fitzpatrick made double bogey there and needed four putts, a sequence that turned one hole into a warning about how narrow the margin had become. Chris Gotterup produced the low round of the day and of the championship so far with a 65, but even he said he did not think the course was unfair by any stretch of the imagination. He also said players would not get any 4 1/2-hour rounds if that was what was going to happen.
The criticism landed against a course with crowned Donald Ross greens restored by Gil Hanse, a layout that appears to have been set up to protect par in bitterly cold morning weather and wind. That design choice helped keep the field together, and after two rounds the leaderboard was described as bunched. The result was a familiar major-championship tradeoff: difficult enough to irritate the contenders, but not so severe that the scoring race broke open.
Kerry Haigh was expected to present the setup for the third round on Saturday, when the question will not be whether Aronimink can defend itself, but whether it can do so without making the championship feel cramped. For now, McIlroy’s round, Scheffler’s 71 and Lowry’s complaint all point to the same answer: the course has its teeth in, and the players know it.
