The PGA Championship has returned to Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown Square, Pa., for the first time since Gary Player won there in 1962. The old result has come back into focus because the course is again hosting the game's best, and because Player's victory still sits among the defining moments of the stroke-play era.
Player was 26 when he finished at 2-under 278, carding rounds of 72, 67, 69 and 70 to edge Bob Goalby by one shot. Goalby finished second at 279, while George Bayer and Bob McCallister were two shots behind Player entering the final round. Bayer shared third at 281 with a then-rookie Jack Nicklaus.
The South African's win at Aronimink was more than a title. It made him the first foreign-born PGA Tour player to win the PGA Championship in the stroke-play era. It was also the third leg of a career Grand Slam that would be completed in 1965 at the U.S. Open, after Player had already claimed the 1959 British Open and the 1961 Masters.
The prize money underscored how big the victory was at the time. Player received a $13,000 winner's check, the largest in tournament history then. For a tournament that now pays out on a different scale entirely, the number is a reminder of how much both the championship and the sport have changed since that week in 1962.
Aronimink has since added to its major-stage résumé, hosting the Senior PGA Championship in 2003 and the Women's PGA Championship in 2020, when Kim Sei-young won. That history helps explain why the club keeps reappearing on the PGA's biggest calendar. It also explains why Player's name still comes up every time the championship goes back there.
This week, the leaderboard has already produced its own early drama. A seven-way tie at the top included Aldrich Potgieter, Stephan Jaeger, Min Woo Lee, Ryo Hisatsune and Martin Kaymer after opening 67s, while Scottie Scheffler was 3-under through 16 holes in the opening round before finishing with a 4-over 74. The opening day left the field bunched and the course demanding answers fast.
That is why Player's 1962 win matters now, not as nostalgia but as a benchmark. Aronimink is a 7,394-yard, par-70 test that has hosted the PGA Championship, the Senior PGA Championship and the Women's PGA Championship, a rare trio on the sport's rota. International winners in the stroke-play era remain a short list, with Nick Price, Vijay Singh and Rory McIlroy among the few players to join Player with multiple PGA Tour wins, and Padraig Harrington, Y.E. Yang and Jason Day among the other international PGA Championship winners.
McIlroy's 2025 Masters victory made him the most recent player to join the career Grand Slam club, but Player's place in that lineage is secure. At Aronimink, the first foreign-born champion in the stroke-play era still defines the last time this championship came to Newtown Square, and this return has only sharpened that memory.
