NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — There are good misses, and bad misses.
And at Aronimink Golf Club on Thursday at the 2026 PGA Championship, there was one miss that was worst of all.
That miss came on the 11th hole.
The 11th hole isn’t that long—only 421 yards on Thursday, which meant most pros had a wedge on their approach shot. The first was placed 23 yards onto the green, and nine yards from the left edge.
Because players had a scoring opportunity with a short club into the green, they took dead aim at this pin. But that brought the unforgivable miss into play: Airmailing the pin, and missing the green long.
This is what the 11th green looks like from behind. Not too scary…
Scott Taetsch
…But when you look under the hood you can see the severity of the slope. When you missed the green long, even though you were a short distance away, you were left with an incredibly severe and almost directly downhill putt.
Bryson made this mistake. He hit his wedge just 30 feet long of the pin, onto the fringe—then proceeded to putt his ball 57 feet past the hole and made bogey.
“It’s literally impossible to get up-and-down from where Bryson was,” one coach said.
Where Bryson’s ball ended up wasn’t much easier, and was actually a common position where golfers who were so afraid of missing long ended up rolling back to. The issue from here is that now you’re coming back up the hill. At the time of writing, 18 golfers hit their ball into that position one way or another, and seven of them three-putted.
Of the 14 players who made the mistake of missing at least a foot onto the fringe long, zero players made the putt and 30 percent three putted—for reference, the make rate and 3-putt rate for putts of the same distance on tour is about 12 percent and 2 percent, respectively.
Four players made an even worse version of that mistake: Missing the green long enough that they ended in the rough. Zero of those players got up and down.
Bud Cauley was one of the few players to make that mistake and escape with a two-putt. It helped that his ball ended inches onto the fringe, meaning he didn’t have to go through much of it, but look where he had to aim.
“That putt was something else,” Cauley said. “I said to myself, how do I even hit this soft enough? I just had to look at it and it would take off.”
The green itself is a marvel, and rumors are they’ll be plotting a front-left pin at some point during the tournament, which will bring a different kind of terror. The only silver lining is that players will be happy to see the end of this one.