The course the pros play this week is not the course members played last fall. The fairways are narrower — averaging thirty yards across on the championship setup. The rough is taller. Every green compound has been tuned for firmness and speed the field has to face. A new forward tee on the thirteenth hole was built during the closure — a piece of turf that didn’t exist last spring.
Two men negotiated every decision. John Gosselin is Aronimink’s Director of Agronomy — twenty years on the property, Penn State Turf Science class of 1987, winner of the Philadelphia Association of Golf Course Superintendents’ Eberhard Steinegger Award. He sets the agronomic ceiling: what the bentgrass cultivars can take, what the irrigation system can sustain, what six months of Pennsylvania weather allows. Kerry Haigh is the PGA of America’s Chief Championships Officer — the man who sets up every PGA Championship at every venue. He sets the championship floor: what the field has to face, what the broadcast frame requires, where the gallery goes. Between those two limits, the course gets negotiated.
The Donald Ross design opened in 1928. Gary Player won the only previous men’s PGA Championship held here in 1962. The course on television this week was built in the months since November. Dave Stofanac runs daily operations on the ground under Gosselin’s direction with a thirty-person agronomy crew. It won’t exist after Sunday’s trophy presentation.
Chapters
- 0:00 — The Last Member Round at Aronimink
- 1:25 — The Parallel Course on TV
- 2:13 — A Course Doesn’t Get Set Up — It Gets Negotiated
- 3:02 — John Gosselin and Kerry Haigh
- 4:59 — Two Examples: The 13th Tee and the Green Compounds
- 6:57 — What 180 Days Actually Looked Like
- 9:47 — The Handoff
- 10:55 — Every Course in America
Sources
- Philadelphia Inquirer — Aronimink PGA preparations, May 5, 2026
- PGA Championship official course guide
- PGA Magazine — A Closer Look at Aronimink
- Wikipedia — Aronimink Golf Club