{"id":646661,"date":"2026-05-16T12:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T12:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/646661\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T12:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T12:24:09","slug":"scheffler-remains-in-hunt-at-halfway-despite-absurd-pin-positions-at-us-pga-us-pga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/646661\/","title":{"rendered":"Scheffler remains in hunt at halfway despite \u2018absurd\u2019 pin positions at US PGA | US PGA"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cGolf should be a pleasure,\u201d wrote Donald Ross, the man who designed Aronimink, \u201cnot a penance.\u201d And a fine sentiment it is, too, even if it wasn\u2019t immediately clear that any of the many men competing here for the PGA Championship were having very much fun doing it. Shane Lowry didn\u2019t seem to be when he shanked the ball into the water at 17, nor did Scottie Scheffler<\/a> when he threatened to slam down his wedge after hitting one thick on the 6th, and Justin Thomas and Keegan Bradley didn\u2019t look too enthused when they were busy ranting at the rules officials who put them on the clock for slow play.<\/p>\n

The pleasure, such as it was, seemed to be mostly in purists\u2019 appreciation of the high standard of lag putting on show, and everyone else\u2019s schadenfreude at watching the world\u2019s best golfers endure the same sort of frustrations amateur hackers suffer every weekend.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t supposed to be like this. It\u2019s been more than 60 years since they held a major here, and there was a lot of talk that the modern-day players were going to take the place to pieces. The bookmakers reckoned the winning score would be 14 under par, and there were suggestions someone might even take a run at the major record of 21 under set by Xander Schauffele when the tournament was held at Valhalla in 2022. Halfway through the tournament, a score of two under was enough to put a man in contention, and anyone who has made it all the way to three under counts as a red-hot contender heading into the weekend.<\/p>\n

Some said it was all down to the stiff wind, others said it was the sharp temperature. The one thing everybody blamed were the pin positions picked by the tournament committee. \u201cMost of the pins today were kind of absurd,\u201d Scheffler said after his round of 71, which included three bogeys in his first four holes. \u201cThis is the hardest set of pin locations that I\u2019ve seen since I\u2019ve been on tour, and that includes US Opens.\u201d Aronimink\u2019s greens are vast, fast and rippled, and the pins, Scheffler explained, have been set in unnatural positions on the top of the swells. \u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to get the ball close to the hole, and it\u2019s very difficult to hole putts.\u201d<\/p>\n

He singled out the 14th as the toughest pin he has ever played. \u201cI mean, there\u2019s literally just a spine and they\u2019re like: \u2018Oh, we\u2019ll just put the pin right on top of it.\u2019 And you\u2019re like: \u2018All right, well, I\u2019ll see what I can do.\u2019\u201d A two-putt par from 80ft, as it turned out.<\/p>\n

Alex Smalley has a share of the lead halfway through the US PGA Championship at Aronimink. Photograph: Laurence Kesterson\/UPI\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Scheffler still made 71 to finish on two under. He would not be the player he is if he spent too much time complaining, but he did ask whether all this grinding was really the best test of golf. \u201cIt\u2019s the hardest game in the world and we\u2019re trying to make it harder.\u201d It was a fair question. The field has been squeezed tight together by all the two-putts taken that the most skilful players have struggled to separate themselves from everyone else.<\/p>\n

Alex Smalley, 29, was right up at the top of the leaderboard on four under, alongside Maverick McNealy, 30. Smalley has never won a tournament in seven years as a professional, McNealy has won one, the RSM Classic in 2024, but is nevertheless reckoned to be the richest man on tour because his father is a multibillionaire. For a lot of the day, South Africa\u2019s Aldrich Potgieter, 21, who is playing in just his fifth major, was right up there with them. He had been five under until things took a turn for the worse on 17 and 18, where he made back-to-back bogeys. Potgieter was a champion wrestler before he took up golf, and it shows. He is the longest driver on the tour and belts the ball as if it had just insulted his mother.<\/p>\n

The weekend contenders are queuing up behind them. Hideki Matsuyama is two shots back, after he shot 67. He is tied with Chris Gotterup, who turned in the best round of the day, a superb 65, and Min Woo Lee. Scheffler, Cameron Young, Justin Thomas and Ludvig \u00c5berg were all one spot further down the leaderboard, tied in ninth, lurking an eagle off the lead. You need to keep scrolling a way to find Rory McIlroy, whose round of three under couldn\u2019t undo the damage he suffered when he made four bogeys in a row on the opening day<\/a>; he is on one over. They are saying the sun will come out on Saturday. Here\u2019s hoping the scoring warms up with the weather.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cGolf should be a pleasure,\u201d wrote Donald Ross, the man who designed Aronimink, \u201cnot a penance.\u201d And a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-646661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}