In November 1990, the Aronimink board voted to walk away from a PGA Championship it had already been awarded. The men’s major didn’t return for 33 years.
The man preparing Aronimink for the 2026 PGA Championship is John Gosselin — 20 years at Aronimink, 36 years in the trade, 18 professional events run. Scottie Scheffler reads greens this week on the property the club walked away from in 1990.
The work didn’t start the Monday of championship week. It started somewhere between 1995 and 2017 — a master plan, four architects chipping at the original Donald Ross design, Ron Prichard’s restoration drawings, Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner taking the bunkers back to what J. Victor Dallin’s 1929 aerials actually showed. Proving rounds came after: a Senior PGA in 2003, AT&T National in 2010–11, a BMW Championship in 2018 that survived three inches of rain across a weekend, and a KPMG Women’s PGA won by Sei Young Kim in 2020.
Donald Ross drew Aronimink in 1926. Gary Player won the 1962 PGA Championship on these greens. Then Aronimink walked away in 1990 — a seven-year waiting list, 30 names already $15,000 paid, and a board that wouldn’t reorder it.