A lot has been said leading up to the 108th PGA Championship about how Aronimink Golf Club will handle the modern game’s philosophy of bomb and gouge. Tipped out, the Donald Ross design is just shy of 7,400 yards. In comparison, Quail Hollow played at nearly 7,600 yards last year. Off the tee shouldn’t be an issue for most players in the field. What will stress their games are the putting surfaces. 

“The greens seem to be the big defence and the big talking point of the golf course,” two-time PGA champion Rory McIlroy said ahead of the tournament.

“Yeah, it reminds me, we played Philly Cricket Club last year for a PGA Tour event. It reminds me a little of that, very wide playing corridors. Still got to get the ball on the fairway. The rough is sort of hit-and-miss, but you can get some bad lies. They can really tuck the pins away with some of these slopes on the greens and just really being aware of that.”

The theme of McIlroy’s comments could be why plenty of players were testing out new flatsticks throughout the early week in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia. Some were forced, however, and keep reading for Brooks Koepka’s new putter and why he’s added it to the bag. 

On the surface, one of the more surprising putter changes for the undulating surfaces at Aronimink is that of Alex Fitzpatrick. The newly minted PGA Tour member, who earned his card by winning alongside his brother Matt at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, is teeing it up for just his second major championship and his first at the PGA. Despite collecting back-to-back top-10 paychecks in his two starts since that victory, the younger Fitzpatrick is trading in his short-slant Odyssey Ai-One #7S for a newer version, but equipped this time with plumber’s neck hosel. 

“It’s more of a hosel configuration change that we could hopefully identify some face awareness and rotation benefits,” Cody Hale, Odyssey Tour Rep, told GolfWRX. “So what we looked at was, could we help reduce the rotation, tighten some of that up a little bit, and after measuring that and then his team came out to the putting green, measured again, we saw some positive changes.”

By switching the hosel type and going with less toe hang on the putter, Fitzpatrick was able to become a “little bit tighter and a little bit more efficient” with the stroke, according to Hale. 

Along with the hosel change, Fitzpatrick has moved from the standard metal finish to a darker, navy-blue PVD finish, although the switch-up is merely aesthetic and not to help with alignment or framing the putter behind the ball. 

Ryan Fox, Haotong Li and Sahith Theegala also join Fitzpatrick with putter swaps in Philadelphia. Fox added an Odyssey Tri-Hot double-wide, while Li opted for a center-shafted GoLo, and Theegala has returned to his Ping TR 1966 Anser 2 prototype after gaming a Ping Ally Blue H at Quail Hollow last week.

Cameron Young using conforming rollback ball

Cameron Young revealed in his pre-tournament press conference at Aronimink that up until a few weeks ago, he didn’t know that his golf ball would meet the criteria of the new rollback rules.

The Titleist Pro V1x Double Dot that Young switched to last summer, with which he ended up winning during the first week he had it out on Tour, meets the proposed standards by the USGA and The R&A.

“I think I put it in play [for] the same reason that everybody else plays the ball that they play,” Young said. “I hit it during a ball test, one of the Titleist facilities probably close to two years ago and didn’t know anything about it. I just kind of (said), ‘Hey, what’s that one?’ because I liked the flight.

“Then as things progressed, I was able to test it last year at Wyndham, able to put that in play, and it’s been there since.”

Young’s distance hasn’t been impacted by the switch to the Double Dot golf ball. He’s sixth on Tour in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee and, in fact, is hitting it 0.4 yards longer on average this year compared to last.

“Obviously, there is no conforming list,” Young said. “I wasn’t aware that it would have (conformed). I suppose I read something that said it passed that test, but I wasn’t aware of that until very recently. So, at no point was that a consideration. It was just really me trying to optimize my golf, and it’s the ball that seems to work the best for me.”

Young has won twice already during 2026 on Tour, both at high-level events – The Players Championship and Cadillac Championship – and entered the PGA Championship as a pre-tournament favorite behind Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy.

Read more about Young’s setup and how his bag is centered around one thing– the golf ball.

Brooks Koepka’s enforced putter switch

Three-time PGA Championship winner Brooks Koepka spent plenty of time Monday morning and into the afternoon on the practice putting green in front of the Aronimink clubhouse, working with coaches and Tour reps and putting plenty of different flasticks through their paces, after apparently recently breaking his new TaylorMade Spider Tour X last time out at the Myrtle Beach Classic. 

Koepka tested out a couple of Scotty Cameron heads, similar to that of Cameron Young’s Phantom 9.5R with a full sightline. It’s not the first time a Tour pro has asked to follow in Young’s footsteps. Justin Thomas had the same request last week at the Truist Championship. Why not follow the hot hand?  

Koepka’s custom Cameron featured the same style Teryllium insert that he has used previously, most notably during his PGA Championship wins in a Newport-style blade. The putter, however, that looks to have the best chance of making its way into the bag come Thursday is a TaylorMade Spider Tour V, the head model recently launched on Tour at the RBC Heritage. 

What’s unique about Koepka’s new Tour V putter is the custom-length L-Neck (plumbers) hosel that he has equipped. The extended version looks to reduce the toe-hang of the putter while adding stability to the stroke. 

The putter change comes with a plethora of additions to Keopka’s bag after his split with Srixon/Cleveland. Along with already playing a Titleist Pro V1x golf ball, Koepka added Vokey wedges to his Grove XXIII staff bag last week in South Carolina. The 36-year-old is using SM11s in 48.10F, 52.12F and 56.10, along with the WedgeWorks 60B, a special grind with an interesting letter choice. 

Look at Koepka’s full bag here.

Rickie Fowler goes shorter

In a golf world where players are looking to eke out every yard possible, usually by lengthening their drivers to add clubhead speed, there’s one player at the PGA Championship who’s going in the opposite direction. In fact, for Rickie Fowler, his goal off the tee is not about gaining extra distance or yards north to south, but rather about shrinking the misses from east to west. 

Ahead of the PGA Championship and the week prior at the Truist Championship. Fowler mentioned to Cobra Tour Rep Ben Schomin that the driver didn’t quite swing feel the same as everything in the bag. As a result, and with Schomin’s suggestion to try and sync everything up with the big stick, Fowler decided to test out a shorter length shaft. 

“He’s been at 45 (inches), and he’d been at 45 for a few weeks, 44 1/8 (inches) is really is where he is been living really for the most part, for the last couple of years, and is where he is been comfortable,” Schomin told GolfWRX. “It just felt like it was a little long and loose on him.”

Interestingly, Fowler ranks 40th in Driving Accuracy this year on the PGA Tour. It’s his most accurate season with the driver since the start of the decade. But sometimes for players, feel is more important than statistics.

“It was really more of a trying to get the swing to feel the fluidness from club to club to club to try to get it to feel the same,” Schomin added. “And so we took it down to 43 and a quarter, and it was a touch of a ball speed loss, just based on that overall club head speed. But honestly, he squared it up probably a little better. The right miss wasn’t nearly as far. So really, overall down-range dispersion tightened up a fair amount, and he felt confident in swinging it.”

The change in length had Fowler’s caddie, Ricky Romano, beaming at how well he had driven during Tuesday’s practice round at Aronimink. So much so, he was asking Schomin not to suggest changes anymore.

Fowler’s shaft-shortening is one of a few driver adjustments he’s made this season. Read more here on Fowler’s driver updates this season. 

Odds and Ends

Keith Mitchell, one of the best drivers of the golf ball, switched to the Qi4D LS 10.5-degree driver last during the Cadillac Championship, and it was still in the bag at Aronimink. He’s currently eighth on Tour in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee. Alex Noren switched from a C-grind Opus SP wedge to Callaway’s X grind. The X grind features more bounce than the C and considerably more trailing-edge and heel relief. Max Geryserman looks to be another Callaway staffer switching to the Quantum Triple Diamond TDTD head. The head features a unique face progression and a slight heel-weight bias, a right-to-left ball flight. Aldrich Potgieter scrapped his fairway woods and is looking to use two driving irons. Along with his usual 18-degree PXG Gen 8 X 2-iron, he’s added a 15.5-degree 1-iron version.