PGA Championship preview: Time is now for a Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler Sunday staredown

TIME IS NOW: Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy are the two favourites for the USPGA Championship.

Green jacket off, oversized right shoe on, Rory McIlroy is dressed to go again.

The red toe of Ulster has, it appears, stopped its throbbing just in time for the year’s second major to begin. McIlroy’s DIY fix for an awkward blister briefly threatened to kill off the showdown that so many hope, and at least a few believe, will finally be delivered at Aronimink Golf Club over the next four days.

Scottie Scheffler and McIlroy are not just first and second in the world golf rankings. Their daunting dominance stretches into the vast space which separates the top two and whoever happens to occupy third in the table.

Right now that’s Cameron Young and rightfully, given both his blistering form this season and generally brilliant all-round game, he’s fancied by many to claim the first major of his career in the hinterlands north of Philadelphia. Matt Fitzpatrick is the only man hotter than Young on tour this term and has his backers too.

From the wailing and gnashing world of LIV instability come two genuine contenders in the shape of Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton and a paper tiger in the hulking frame of Bryson DeChambeau.

Given the demands of Aronimink's storied parklands and DeChambeau’s persistent weaknesses on and around the greens over the past 18 months, not to mention an inability to judge distance from the fairways, he might be back to his YouTube subscribers as early as Saturday.

It’s easy to see why the Rory-Scottie chatter has seemed to be particularly present ahead of this one. Throw in the striking fact that this week marks the first PGA Championship that won’t feature either of Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson since 1991 too.

So, eyes have mostly stuck on the two dominant figures of the current era, who haven’t served us up a proper Sunday staredown. The argument goes that now is the time.

At last year’s edition in Quail Hollow it was Scheffler who soared when a still discombobulated McIlroy mostly slunk around for four days. The Texan added a fourth major at Portrush later in the year but McIlroy pushed his cushion out to two again last month back at Augusta. Is the somewhat eccentric PGA Championship, and particularly this one, the best bet for a two-horse race of the game thoroughbreds though?

We’ve been told to expect scoring to be particularly low with accuracy not a huge issue and deep rough not taxing enough either. “Bomb and gouge works best,” observed Scheffler. "The reward for hitting the fairway is not that great”.

Rory McIlroy attends to his foot on the third fairway during a PGA Championship golf tournament practice round at Aronimink Golf Club. Pic: AP Photo/Matt Slocum.

Nine-straight Americans have claimed the Wanamaker, a run which it’s worth noting includes three Brooks Koepka triumphs. That may be a run which feels ready to end. In the past decade and 30 majors played in the US in that time, Fitzpatrick’s 2022 US Open is the only English win. Perhaps he, Hatton, Tommy Fleetwood or the veteran Justin Rose, who has won a PGA Tour event at Aronimink, can bring up that paltry tally.

McIlroy has plenty of history still to chase. He just does it freely now. By Sunday he could become the first player since Jordan Spieth in 2015 to win the year’s first two majors. That would bring a new never-been-done holy grail into view: winning all four majors in the same year. At least his toe is feeling up to it.

“It’s fine,” McIlroy was quoted as reassuring a group of reporters after playing the back nine on Wednesday alongside Shane Lowry, Padraig Harrington and Spanish rookie Angel Ayora, whose first major week must already feel like a dream.

“I felt very soft having to walk in [on Tuesday] because of a little toe but I figured it out by separating the little toe from the other ones and having a bit of cushion around it definitely helps. I have also gone to a bigger shoe (by half a size) and a different style, which is a little softer and wider in the toe box. Yesterday was painful but today I was pleasantly surprised by how good it felt.”

In theory, the year’s second major has landed at a pocket of Pennsylvania which should absolutely suit Lowry. A blissful retreat for the best iron strikers, an expanse of rolling hills where bunker escape artists can conjure and concoct. The best short-game exponents are rewarded at Aronimink. This all sounds good — in theory.

Alas, Lowry has reached a peculiar place of his own where, currently at least, he feels impervious to theory. What will we get from Shane Lowry this week? Best of luck answering that one with any great confidence. The Offaly man turned 39 last month. His next birthday is a big one and the feeling that he should have had more big days out there just will not shake.

The Sunday struggles are now indisputably a feature and not a bug — until he can prove otherwise. In back-to-back years he has gone into a Masters Sunday smack bang in contention and shot 81 and 80. His Cognizant collapse and season-opening Sunday stumble in Dubai are bracketed here too.

At the 2024 PGA Championship he scorched Valhalla for a Saturday 62 which equalled all-time major records yet never got going on Sunday, one of only two inside the top 10 who didn’t go sub-70.

Tell us the joke, lads 😂☘️#PGAChamp pic.twitter.com/fz7z38AIC7

— PGA Championship (@PGAChampionship) May 13, 2026

To his credit, Lowry is unshakeable in his belief that it will roll his way again on one of these big weeks. Before their practice round, he appeared to be in flying form on the range Wednesday afternoon, cackling and clapping backs as he shared what was clearly an uproariously funny joke with McIlroy, Harry Diamond and others.

McIlroy briefly staggered, not the cranky toe making him unsteady but the craic of it all. A good sign surely.