Winners, Losers, and Payouts: 2026 PGA Championship

For about four straight hours Sunday afternoon at Aronimink, the 2026 PGA Championship felt completely unhinged.

Justin Thomas sprinted up the leaderboard early. Jon Rahm started throwing haymakers on the back nine. Rory McIlroy hovered close enough to make everybody nervous. Scottie Scheffler kept lurking without ever fully arriving. Alex Smalley was trying to hold together the biggest round of his career.

And through all of it, Aaron Rai just kept hitting fairways and making putts.

That was the strange thing about Sunday. The leaderboard looked chaotic. Rai never did.

The Englishman — wearing his usual two black gloves and carrying the most anti-modern Tour bag imaginable with iron covers and a seven-year-old driver — closed with a brilliant 5-under 65 to win the PGA Championship by three shots at nine-under par and cash a record-breaking $3.69 million payday.

And honestly, it never really felt fluky.

Rai started the day two shots behind Alex Smalley and buried inside a leaderboard traffic jam that featured basically half the sport.

Then he played the cleanest round of anybody in contention.

The front nine was steady enough. The back nine won him the tournament.

Rai birdied 10, stuffed an iron close on 13, poured in another birdie at 15, then effectively detonated the championship with a completely absurd 68-foot birdie putt on the par-3 17th. The ball tracked halfway across Pennsylvania before disappearing into the middle of the cup while the crowd completely lost its mind.

At that point, everybody else was basically playing for second place — or at least trying to avoid a major championship bogey train.

The most impressive part? Everybody around him kept making mistakes while Rai simply… didn’t.

No panic swings. No weird doubles. No emotional spiral. Just fairways, greens, and the occasional dagger putt.

By the time he walked up the 18th fairway, the tournament already felt dormie.

Alex Smalley walked away with a career-changing week and a $1.804 million paycheck, but Sunday still had to sting a little.

Smalley entered the final round at 6-under and looked surprisingly comfortable early, but once the birdies started flying around him, the pressure clearly changed. The putter cooled off, the aggressive iron shots stopped finishing close, and suddenly every missed opportunity felt enormous.

To his credit, he battled hard enough to still finish tied for second with Jon Rahm.

But major championships don’t usually hand out many mulligans, especially on Sunday afternoon. Smalley had a chance to completely change his career and watched Aaron Rai slowly take it away shot by shot.

For a stretch on the back nine, this genuinely looked like Jon Rahm’s tournament, or at least he was going to catch up to Rai and force a playoff.

He started making birdies in bunches, looked emotionally locked in, and briefly tied for the lead while the crowd started preparing for the full Rahm major-championship experience again.

The problem was Rai simply refused to cooperate.

Every time Rahm applied pressure, Rai answered immediately. Birdie. Fairway. Center green. Another birdie.

Talk about sticking it tight under pressure.

Rahm still collected $1.804 million for his co-runner-up finish and suddenly feels very dangerous heading into the rest of major season.

Rory McIlroy spent most of Sunday hovering close enough to matter without ever fully threatening the lead. For his effort, he banked $681,050. Enough to cover his personal jet fuel bill for a month or two.

There were moments where it felt like a trademark Rory avalanche might arrive — especially after a few early birdies kept him hanging around the top of the board — but the back nine never materialized. He failed to birdie key scoring holes, made a costly bogey at 13, and eventually boiled over after another “USA” chant from the crowd near the 16th hole led to an angry exchange with a fan.

The strange reality is McIlroy actually played pretty solid golf all week, right up until he didn’t

But after winning the Masters again earlier this season, expectations for Rory at majors now feel borderline unreasonable. A tie for seventh somehow felt disappointing. But what was truly disappointing was that his trusted driver was anything but trustworthy on Sunday’s back nine. Left misses, right misses – happening when he couldn’t afford wayward tee-shots to keep pace with Rai.   

It was good seeing Justin Thomas make a Sunday sprint. He came out firing immediately, making birdies in bunches on the front nine and briefly grabbing a share of the lead while the broadcast started leaning into “major champion JT” mode again.

For about two hours, Thomas looked like the guy most likely to steal the Wanamaker Trophy. Then the momentum stalled just enough on the back nine. After posting his score and grabbing a refreshment, he watched intently as Rai kept accelerating.

Still, Thomas earned $984,000 for a tie for fourth and reminded everybody that he is a major champion, playing good enough golf to contend once again.

Where was Scottie when all of this fun golf was taking place? He hung around early Sunday but never found the explosive scoring run the leaderboard demanded. While Thomas, Rahm, and Rai all started making birdies in waves, Scheffler stayed stuck in neutral, missing shorties and never applying the pressure we have grown accustomed to from World #1. Major championships sometimes become putting contests disguised as survival tests, and this week never fully tilted in his direction.

Quietly, Kurt Kitayama posted one of the best rounds of the entire championship Sunday.

His 63 came from basically nowhere and tied the lowest final round recorded at a major championship. While the leaders were grinding through pressure-packed pars, Kitayama was out there playing a completely different sport. But was he even feeling the pressure of a major championship Sunday?

By the time CBS fully acknowledged what was happening, he had already launched himself deep into the top 10 after torching Aronimink’s penal pin placements.

The 2026 PGA Championship started Sunday looking like total chaos.

Four hours later, Aaron Rai walked away with the Wanamaker Trophy looking like the calmest guy on the property the entire time — while the rest of the field was left trying to put the pieces back together.

Winners and Losers from Sunday at the PGA Championship:

Winner: Aaron Rai’s double glove action. Yes, we have already looked into buying a pair.

Loser: Nick Taylor. Taylor, Canada’s favorite son, couldn’t keep up the pace and faltered in a big way on Sunday, finishing up 4-over for the day and dropping 24 spots on the leaderboard. Sadly, if Taylor had finished Top-5, he would have likely locked up his Presidents Cup International team spot.

Winner: Kurt Kitayama. He tied a major championship record with his final round best 7-under 63. His lottery-winning finish helped him leap 54 spots up the leaderboard into the top-10.  

Loser: Mav McNealy. Bazillionaire McNealy continues to put himself in good positions in some of golf’s biggest events on the weekend. But come Sunday at Aronimink, McNealy wilted once again, finishing with a 2-over 72 and slipping out of the top-10.

Winners: Matty Fitzpartick and Jordan Spieth. Both stars had good Sundays that helped them jump a good portion of the field, each claiming top-20 finishes. At times, it looked like Spieth had the game this week to contend. Fitzpatrick not so much. But these guys did show up Sunday when the crowds and TV audiences surged.   

2026 PGA Championship prize money payouts