Sahith Theegala emerged from the most punishing opening round of the 2026 PGA Championship with a 2-under 68 — and arguably the most colourful read of Aronimink's rough yet offered by any player in the field.
The Californian, who has spent almost no time on Northeast golf courses in his career, struggled all day to predict how the ball would react when it found Aronimink's sticky bluegrass-rye mix, particularly around the greens.
'A lot of these blades, I'm not sure — I think it's like a bluegrass rye mix right now, and I don't know how to describe it, but it's like an unripened banana,' Theegala said in his post-round press conference. 'It's like so sticky.'
The analogy quickly became the day's defining quote. Theegala explained that the difficulty of the rough was not simply about distance loss, but about lateral dispersion — there was no way to read the grain.
The 26-year-old went so far as to say he would rather be in a fairway bunker than a greenside lie in the deep stuff.
'You'd rather be in a fairway or a greenside bunker all day,' Theegala said. 'It's a fun challenge, but it's really tough to get up and down out of the rough.'
Asked what made the morning so tough overall, Theegala pointed first to the chill and then to the rough itself. The fairways, by his read, were generous and largely forgiving. The greenside grass was the genuine torture.
'I'm usually one of the guys, I feel like, that takes their jacket off pretty early, and I left it on all round,' he laughed.
'I'm I was thinking that you might be the only player today that says that the pins were awesome,' a reporter put to him.
'Yeah, yeah,' Theegala replied. 'I grew up in California, so I really have played very little Northeast golf, but just the green contours and the structures and where you can put some of these pins is so cool. I think they did a great job today of putting a lot of the pins kind of on these little ridges and little humps, and it's kind of comparable to what they do at St Andrews. When I played there in '22, they put a lot of pins on the knobs, where it's really flat right where the pin is, but both sides on the hole kind of go away — kind of Pinehurst-esque. So it's a good challenge. I thought it was fair.'
Theegala has battled neck and back problems through stretches of the past two seasons, and he admitted the simple fact of feeling healthy at a major has changed the lens through which he is reading Aronimink's setup.
'It's been a while since I've been healthy for once, so it's nice to get kicked around a lot,' he said. 'Tomorrow's a new day, and who knows, it might kick me really bad. But I really enjoyed the pins. It's a different challenge.'