10 golfers to watch at PGA Championship (for various reasons)

NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — It’s Wednesday of the PGA Championship and everybody has gone home.

Almost everybody, that is.

There’s one golfer left on the driving range. He’s often the last golfer on the driving range at these events, bashing balls until dusk, running the roulette wheel of human emotion as he goes. That would be Bryson DeChambeau, whose range habits seem exhausting and counterintuitive when you consider how much energy he’ll need expend in the actual tournament over the next four days — until you remember that “exhausting” and “counterintuitive” and thousands of late-night range balls is exactly how he got to two major-championship victories plus a whole bunch else.

There’s also one golfer left on the course. He’s been in the news plenty of late, for his age-defying win at Torrey Pines and his heartbreaking near-miss at the Masters and his dramatic, surprising golf-club change. That would be Justin Rose, whose papaya-orange golf bag is visible against Aronimink’s green fairways from two holes away. He’s won at this golf course before. He’s won a major in this metropolitan area before. He’s finished top three in three of his last six majors. He’s also 45 years old, reminding us that age is just a number but in this case, an impressive number.

Of the 156 golfers in this week’s PGA field, these are two well worth watching. You could argue there are 154 more well worth watching, too, and you’d be right — what a cool thing, in the grand scheme of golf, to have accomplished so much you’ve qualified for a major championship! — but life is all about choices, so we’ve made some tough ones. Here are the rest of our 10 players worth watching at Aronimink.

3. Jordan Spieth is well worth watching every week he tees it up, but this week even more so; he’s one PGA Championship from the career Grand Slam which means, as he said on Monday, “If I can win one more tournament in my life, it would obviously be this one.”

Which Spieth will show up? We have no idea! That’s why he’s so high on this list.

4. Rory McIlroy is one-quarter of the way to the calendar Grand Slam. That is true of every Masters winner every year, of course, but McIlroy has enough firepower and his game sets up so well for this golf course that it’s worth letting your mind wander and wonder. Good news? McIlroy and Spieth are in the same group on Thursday and Friday, which means you can monitor their situations in tandem.

5. Cameron Young leads the list of high-profile zero-time major winners we expect to be in the hunt this week; Young won the Players, he ran (drove?) away with the Cadillac and he’s up to No. 3 in the world.

“I’ve done a really good job taking advantage of the opportunities that I’ve had to finish high in tournaments and fortunate to win a couple times,” he said on Wednesday, understated as usual. “Fortunate” plus very, very good at golf.

We’ll toss in Ludvig Aberg and Tommy Fleetwood as other esteemed members of this club; time to see whether this is their time. (Or Viktor Hovland, or Patrick Cantlay, or Sam Burns, or Chris Gotterup, or…)

6. Rickie Fowler is part of that crew, too, but worth highlighting just because he seems to be slipping under the radar, despite the orange. I brought this up pre-Masters when he was, in my estimation, the most talented player not in the field. Since then he’s played three tournaments and finished T8 at the RBC Heritage, T9 at the Cadillac Championship and T2 at the Truist. That’s strong form.

7. Adam Scott has played well this year and boasts a tantalizing combination of driving distance plus precise iron play; he’s one hot putting week away from another trip to contention at a major.

8. Jon Rahm‘s major-championship demise feels slightly overstated. Still, in a world where Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy have won four of the last five majors, Rahm’s lack of serious chances the last three years sticks out. His continued success on LIV — where he’s finished first or second in seven of his last 10 events — only further ramps up that pressure these major weeks. Let’s see how this one goes.

(He leads a group of LIV players whose performances will be under extra scrutiny as the league seeks fundraising; their contingent includes young talents like David Puig and Tom McKibbin, veterans like Joaquin Niemann and Thomas Detry plus their top Masters finisher, Tyrrell Hatton.)

9. Patrick Reed, in an interesting twist, hasn’t played a competitive round since his T12 finish at the Masters. That means there’s an air of mystery surrounding the man who made headlines for leaving LIV and made more for winning on the DP World Tour immediately after. But he’s been home, he told Today’s Golfer, watching his kids play sports and gearing up for the rest of the major championship season. Good news for Reed backers: he visited Aronimink last week and played for three days in a variety of conditions. If this is sounding familiar, McIlroy employed a similar light-schedule approach heading into last month’s Masters. We’ll see if Reed can channel similar form.

10. Scottie Scheffler is always worth watching. He’s the best golfer in the world looking to add to a generational run of success these past few years. If he needed any extra motivation (he didn’t), McIlroy’s two majors ahead of him again, six to four.

We’ll see how that tallie stands come Sunday night.