Aronimink Golf Club is a par 70, 7,267-yard course in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, designed by Donald Ross in 1928 and host of the 2026 PGA Championship. The club’s name comes from the Lenape word for “water turtle,” a nod to the Indigenous heritage of the Delaware County countryside west of Philadelphia.
Walking Aronimink is a lesson in understated difficulty. The course does not announce its challenges with dramatic elevation changes or intimidating water carries. Instead, it waits. The fairways are generous enough to invite aggressive driving, rolling through mature hardwood trees across gentle Philadelphia-suburban terrain. The lies look good. The approaches look straightforward. And then the greens reveal the truth. Donald Ross considered Aronimink among his finest works, and the putting surfaces are the reason why. They are crowned, tilted, and shaped with the kind of subtle cruelty that only becomes apparent after a ball lands on the wrong tier and rolls thirty feet past the pin. Miss the correct portion of a green by five yards and a birdie putt becomes a desperate par save. The Ross greens are the course’s immune system: they reject anything less than precision.
Ron Prichard completed a comprehensive restoration in 2003 that returned Ross’s original bunkering patterns and green complexes, stripping away decades of incremental changes that had softened the design. The bunkers are now placed exactly where Ross intended, punishing the second shot more than the first. The par-4 7th is a dogleg left that demands a draw off the tee, followed by an approach to a green protected on both flanks by deep sand. The par-3 9th plays over 200 yards to a narrow green with steep falloffs on three sides. The par-4 18th is a strong finishing hole, with an elevated tee shot into a rolling fairway and a demanding second shot to a green framed by mature trees, the kind of closing hole that decides championships.
The 2026 PGA Championship marks Aronimink’s return to major championship golf after more than 60 years. Gary Player won the PGA Championship here in 1962, his second major title, defeating Bob Goalby in a playoff. The course returned to national prominence at the 2018 BMW Championship, when the best players on the PGA Tour praised the conditioning and the design’s ability to separate the precise from the powerful. Keegan Bradley won that week in a playoff, and the consensus among the field was that Aronimink deserved a major.
Weather conditions in mid-May in the Philadelphia area can range from cool mornings in the upper 50s to warm afternoons approaching 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Afternoon thunderstorms are possible but not typical. The course drains well, and the tree-lined layout provides some shelter from wind, though not enough to eliminate it as a factor.
Aronimink is located in the Eastern Time Zone (UTC-4 during daylight saving time in May, when the PGA Championship is played). A 14:00 tee time in Newtown Square is 19:00 in London, 20:00 in Paris, and 03:00 the following morning in Tokyo. For current local time, check Philadelphia time or United States time on whatisthetime.now.