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NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — Aaron Rai never said his dream to win a major championship aloud. Early in his relationship with his now wife, Gaurika Bishnoi, she questioned why he never articulated his ultimate goal.
“There was a point when I first met him and I said, ‘Do you not believe that you can win (a major)?’” she recalled. “And he said, ‘The moment I say it, I will put too much pressure on it. I’d rather focus on playing good golf. That’s what I love the most.’”
Rai, a 31-year-old Englishman can now shout it from the rooftops that he is the winner of the 108th PGA Championship. On Sunday, he emerged from a jam-packed leaderboard to shoot 5-under 65 at Aronimink Golf Club and beat a slew of heavy hitters. Rai became the first Englishman since Jim Barnes, winner of the first two PGA’s in 1916 and 1919 when the championship was contested at match play, to hoist the Wanamaker Trophy. But just because he didn’t speak his dream into existence doesn’t mean he lacked the self-belief this day would come.
He made it happen at Aronimink, a restored Donald Ross layout built on rugged farmland outside of Philadelphia, enduring wind, cold and rough that Sahith Theegala described as like an unripened banana. “It's so sticky,” he said.
After overcoming tricky pins and outplaying the likes of Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm and Ludvig Aberg on Sunday, Rai was asked about his journey to claiming the Wanamaker Trophy and said, “Everyone playing in the field this week has a great journey to be able to share, and I'm no exception to that.”
Until this point, Rai’s story had been condensed to being the golfer who wore two black gloves, used iron covers and a pink plastic Castle Tee popular with senior golfers.
“I believe in the reasons why I do them,” he said. “So, I had no reason to really shift from that as I got older.”
It’s the story behind those reasons that reveal the man. Rai took up the game at age 4 after accidentally being struck by his brother's hockey stick, prompting his mother to buy him safe plastic golf clubs as an alternative. But it was Aaron who possessed raw talent for the sport. When Rai’s father, a talented tennis player, tried teaching him tennis he noticed Aaron’s forehand looked more like a golf swing and thus a golf career was launched. Those winter days, just father and son, practicing in Wolverhampton, a city in the West Midlands of England, were cold and harsh so he bought his son all-weather gloves and it became a habit he never kicked.
“He’s not changing who he is just because he is somewhere now,” Gaurika said.
Rai’s wife still marvels at how Aaron’s father always believed he would become a tour pro and the sacrifices he made to help that become reality. There is a well-told story of how Rai’s father pinched pennies and bought him his first set, Titleist MB 690 irons, that he so coveted, and taught him to treat his worldly possessions with great care.
“When we used to go out and practice, he used to clean every single groove afterward with a pin and with baby oil,” Rai recalled.
All these years later, Rai still protects his clubs with iron covers, the only player on Tour to do so as a tribute to his father.
“It shows a lot about a person,” said Jon Rahm, who finished co-runner-up on Sunday.
All 31,000 PGA members should now have to stock iron covers in the pro shop as a show of solidarity with its new champion.
Rai comes from working-class folk – his father, Amrik, seemingly always watching golf in his leather jacket, was born in England to immigrants from India, and his mother, Dalvir, of Indian descent, immigrated to England from Kenya as a teenager. At times, she held down multiple jobs and his sister started working at age 14 to help support his dream. They instilled in him a work ethic that would make a coal miner blush. Rai is a lunch pail to work kind of guy, the type who brings his own coffee in his Thermos and re-uses the same Styrofoam cup. He punches the clock every day and he’s not afraid to stay late. Xander Schauffele admitted Rai is one of the few players on the PGA Tour that outworks him. Take, for instance, the time 3 years ago, at the Genesis Scottish Open, when Schauffele stayed walking distance to the course and went out for a late-night putting contest with his caddie, Austin Kaiser.
“Aaron is finishing up his little putting session at 9:00 p.m. and going to the gym at 9:45,” Schauffele said. “I think that's what it's about to be a major champion. You put the work in when nobody's looking.”
The journey is never a straight line, but Rai has made a steady progression through the ranks. He met his caddie of seven years, Jason Timmis, when they competed against each other in golf’s minor leagues.
“I saw the potential," Timmis said, "but I didn’t see this potential.”
Rai has won in far-flung locales from Scotland to Hong Kong to Abu Dhabi and finally earned his first, and previously only, PGA Tour win at the 2024 Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, North Carolina. Along the way, he stayed true to himself, never conformed to the accepted ways of tour life and remained polite and humble to a fault. There’s a reason why he didn’t pump his fist when he holed the 68-foot birdie putt at 17 that essentially locked up the PGA. “He doesn’t do it as a sign of respect for the other player. He doesn’t want to put them down by doing it,” Gaurika explained.
Well, there was the time he won the 2025 Abu Dhabi Championship in a playoff over Tommy Fleetwood, and he made the tiniest of celebratory fist pumps. “I was like, ‘Maybe a bigger fist pump would have been nice.’ He said, ‘I didn’t want to do that in Tommy’s face.’ That is who he is as a person.”
Rai doesn’t smoke or drink or do social media, and his idea of letting his hair down is sleeping to noon, his wife said. His most cherished possession? A Honda Integra sports car like the one in the first "Fast and Furious" flick. Rai ordered one with the steering wheel on the right side and imported it to the U.S.
Gaurika is a professional golfer, too, formerly the top-ranked player on the Hero Women’s Pro Golf Tour, and she understands better than most spouses what the life of a pro golfer really is, including the never-ending internal struggle with doubt. On Saturday night, on the 30-minute car ride back to their hotel, Rai confided to her that he feared how winning could change their life, much the way Scottie Scheffler expressed similar concern to his wife if it was all happening too soon before the final of the 2022 Masters, his maiden major title. Gaurika calmed Aaron's mind as only a wife can do.
“I told him I can assure you that I won’t let anything change around you because I’m not someone who will change myself,” she said. “I told him that no matter what happens this week we’re still going to be simple people and we’re still going to live our lives the same way and it’s a choice we’re going to consciously make.”
Sometimes, she also provides advice on technique and sometimes she’s a shoulder to cry on such as when Aaron was dealing with injuries to the neck and back earlier this season. It had Rai thinking he would need to play in fall events to fight to retain his card, and meant competing at an opposite-field event, the OneFlight Myrtle Beach Classic, just a week earlier, to round his game into form. Now everything has changed.
“It’s crazy,” she said. “The lesson is to really play golf and not get too carried away with the noise around it. It’s never quiet on the PGA Tour. There’s always something attached to a win, there’s always something riding on a great finish. We’ve been outside top 100 this year. If you can learn how to isolate all that noise, this is where you can end up with two gloves, with iron covers, with a Castle Tee.”
Thanks to Gaurika, Rai was able to block out that noise and play without fear to wrestle the Wanamaker Trophy. He can finally call himself a major winner.
“Some of the things that she mentioned in the conversations were really with me today,” he said. “Yeah, I really wouldn't be here without her.”
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Aaron Rai wins PGA Championship, wife's support key
Continue reading...
“There was a point when I first met him and I said, ‘Do you not believe that you can win (a major)?’” she recalled. “And he said, ‘The moment I say it, I will put too much pressure on it. I’d rather focus on playing good golf. That’s what I love the most.’”
Rai, a 31-year-old Englishman can now shout it from the rooftops that he is the winner of the 108th PGA Championship. On Sunday, he emerged from a jam-packed leaderboard to shoot 5-under 65 at Aronimink Golf Club and beat a slew of heavy hitters. Rai became the first Englishman since Jim Barnes, winner of the first two PGA’s in 1916 and 1919 when the championship was contested at match play, to hoist the Wanamaker Trophy. But just because he didn’t speak his dream into existence doesn’t mean he lacked the self-belief this day would come.
He made it happen at Aronimink, a restored Donald Ross layout built on rugged farmland outside of Philadelphia, enduring wind, cold and rough that Sahith Theegala described as like an unripened banana. “It's so sticky,” he said.
After overcoming tricky pins and outplaying the likes of Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm and Ludvig Aberg on Sunday, Rai was asked about his journey to claiming the Wanamaker Trophy and said, “Everyone playing in the field this week has a great journey to be able to share, and I'm no exception to that.”
Until this point, Rai’s story had been condensed to being the golfer who wore two black gloves, used iron covers and a pink plastic Castle Tee popular with senior golfers.
“I believe in the reasons why I do them,” he said. “So, I had no reason to really shift from that as I got older.”
It’s the story behind those reasons that reveal the man. Rai took up the game at age 4 after accidentally being struck by his brother's hockey stick, prompting his mother to buy him safe plastic golf clubs as an alternative. But it was Aaron who possessed raw talent for the sport. When Rai’s father, a talented tennis player, tried teaching him tennis he noticed Aaron’s forehand looked more like a golf swing and thus a golf career was launched. Those winter days, just father and son, practicing in Wolverhampton, a city in the West Midlands of England, were cold and harsh so he bought his son all-weather gloves and it became a habit he never kicked.
“He’s not changing who he is just because he is somewhere now,” Gaurika said.
Rai’s wife still marvels at how Aaron’s father always believed he would become a tour pro and the sacrifices he made to help that become reality. There is a well-told story of how Rai’s father pinched pennies and bought him his first set, Titleist MB 690 irons, that he so coveted, and taught him to treat his worldly possessions with great care.
“When we used to go out and practice, he used to clean every single groove afterward with a pin and with baby oil,” Rai recalled.
All these years later, Rai still protects his clubs with iron covers, the only player on Tour to do so as a tribute to his father.
“It shows a lot about a person,” said Jon Rahm, who finished co-runner-up on Sunday.
All 31,000 PGA members should now have to stock iron covers in the pro shop as a show of solidarity with its new champion.
Rai comes from working-class folk – his father, Amrik, seemingly always watching golf in his leather jacket, was born in England to immigrants from India, and his mother, Dalvir, of Indian descent, immigrated to England from Kenya as a teenager. At times, she held down multiple jobs and his sister started working at age 14 to help support his dream. They instilled in him a work ethic that would make a coal miner blush. Rai is a lunch pail to work kind of guy, the type who brings his own coffee in his Thermos and re-uses the same Styrofoam cup. He punches the clock every day and he’s not afraid to stay late. Xander Schauffele admitted Rai is one of the few players on the PGA Tour that outworks him. Take, for instance, the time 3 years ago, at the Genesis Scottish Open, when Schauffele stayed walking distance to the course and went out for a late-night putting contest with his caddie, Austin Kaiser.
“Aaron is finishing up his little putting session at 9:00 p.m. and going to the gym at 9:45,” Schauffele said. “I think that's what it's about to be a major champion. You put the work in when nobody's looking.”
The journey is never a straight line, but Rai has made a steady progression through the ranks. He met his caddie of seven years, Jason Timmis, when they competed against each other in golf’s minor leagues.
“I saw the potential," Timmis said, "but I didn’t see this potential.”
Rai has won in far-flung locales from Scotland to Hong Kong to Abu Dhabi and finally earned his first, and previously only, PGA Tour win at the 2024 Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, North Carolina. Along the way, he stayed true to himself, never conformed to the accepted ways of tour life and remained polite and humble to a fault. There’s a reason why he didn’t pump his fist when he holed the 68-foot birdie putt at 17 that essentially locked up the PGA. “He doesn’t do it as a sign of respect for the other player. He doesn’t want to put them down by doing it,” Gaurika explained.
Well, there was the time he won the 2025 Abu Dhabi Championship in a playoff over Tommy Fleetwood, and he made the tiniest of celebratory fist pumps. “I was like, ‘Maybe a bigger fist pump would have been nice.’ He said, ‘I didn’t want to do that in Tommy’s face.’ That is who he is as a person.”
Rai doesn’t smoke or drink or do social media, and his idea of letting his hair down is sleeping to noon, his wife said. His most cherished possession? A Honda Integra sports car like the one in the first "Fast and Furious" flick. Rai ordered one with the steering wheel on the right side and imported it to the U.S.
Gaurika is a professional golfer, too, formerly the top-ranked player on the Hero Women’s Pro Golf Tour, and she understands better than most spouses what the life of a pro golfer really is, including the never-ending internal struggle with doubt. On Saturday night, on the 30-minute car ride back to their hotel, Rai confided to her that he feared how winning could change their life, much the way Scottie Scheffler expressed similar concern to his wife if it was all happening too soon before the final of the 2022 Masters, his maiden major title. Gaurika calmed Aaron's mind as only a wife can do.
“I told him I can assure you that I won’t let anything change around you because I’m not someone who will change myself,” she said. “I told him that no matter what happens this week we’re still going to be simple people and we’re still going to live our lives the same way and it’s a choice we’re going to consciously make.”
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Sometimes, she also provides advice on technique and sometimes she’s a shoulder to cry on such as when Aaron was dealing with injuries to the neck and back earlier this season. It had Rai thinking he would need to play in fall events to fight to retain his card, and meant competing at an opposite-field event, the OneFlight Myrtle Beach Classic, just a week earlier, to round his game into form. Now everything has changed.
“It’s crazy,” she said. “The lesson is to really play golf and not get too carried away with the noise around it. It’s never quiet on the PGA Tour. There’s always something attached to a win, there’s always something riding on a great finish. We’ve been outside top 100 this year. If you can learn how to isolate all that noise, this is where you can end up with two gloves, with iron covers, with a Castle Tee.”
Thanks to Gaurika, Rai was able to block out that noise and play without fear to wrestle the Wanamaker Trophy. He can finally call himself a major winner.
“Some of the things that she mentioned in the conversations were really with me today,” he said. “Yeah, I really wouldn't be here without her.”
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Aaron Rai wins PGA Championship, wife's support key
Continue reading...
