Xander Schauffele began his PGA Championship title defence with a defining first four holes, then absorbed the kind of stretch a venue like Aronimink Golf Club hands out, and still walked off Thursday morning with a 2-under 68 and his name in the chasing group at the 108th PGA Championship.
Schauffele lifted the Wanamaker Trophy at Valhalla in 2024 with a major scoring record of 263. A year and a half later, the 31-year-old American is hunting a back-to-back PGA — a feat last achieved by Tiger Woods in 2007 — and the early evidence is that the formula has not changed. He made three birdies in his first four holes, settled into a more cautious middle stretch, and rallied late.
"I made three birdies in the first four holes and was feeling pretty good," Schauffele said. "Then started to play worse golf for the next six holes and then got a little bit better again. So I got the full experience today."
The course softened overnight. A rain band moved across Aronimink late Wednesday into Thursday morning, and Schauffele was off in the early wave that benefited from the slightly slower greens and softer fairways before the wind began chasing scores back to the field average.
"I think it definitely assisted," Schauffele said. "Just playing in the morning, a little more overcast, slightly softer fairways and slightly softer greens, maybe a little bit slower. You feel like you can be a little bit more aggressive."
Aronimink's defence is its slope and pin placement, not its length, and Schauffele acknowledged that the fairway width is misleading because of how quickly the ball runs into the cropped first cut.
"The fairways are generous in width, but the firmer they get, the more they're going to roll off into areas," Schauffele said. "A 35 or 40 yard wide fairway is going to start to feel like a 10 yard wide fairway. There is no first cut either. Your ball's rolling into something that's on the muffier side of things. So really, really thick rough and wind and really difficult greens and tucked pin locations is why you're seeing higher scores."
The story underneath the 68 was Schauffele's putter. Through the first four months of 2026, his strokes-gained putting had drifted below tour average. On Thursday it climbed back up. The reason, Schauffele said, was the return of his putting coach Derek, who had been on site at Aronimink for the three days leading into Round 1.
"I had my putting coach Derek out here for the first three days," Schauffele said. "Just tried to get some start lines and some reads back on track. There's when you're playing putts six foot to ten foot that are breaking anywhere from one cup to three feet, there's a lot of windows and speeds you can hit them. You just got to get confident and comfortable."
Schauffele's read on the scoring also matched what Min Woo Lee and Scottie Scheffler offered after their morning rounds — that the lead at -3 was unlikely to stretch much further across Round 1 without an afternoon player capitalising on a softening course before the wind picked up.
"Thursday, you're just trying to get in a decent position and kind of feel out how you're playing," Schauffele said.
That position keeps him a single shot off the seven-way co-lead alongside Scheffler, Aldrich Potgieter, Justin Thomas, Stephan Jaeger, Min Woo Lee, Ryo Hisatsune and Martin Kaymer. With Schauffele's defending-champion status and the venue rewarding precision rather than power, his Friday round in the afternoon wave at Aronimink looms as the test of how durable the early start is.
For now, the 263 record-holder has his title defence within touching distance of the lead, a putter behaving for the first time in months, and the early signal that his game travels into a U.S. major on a Donald Ross-restored course as well as it travelled into Valhalla.
"You're just trying to get in a decent position," Schauffele said, "and kind of feel out how you're playing."