Before Aaron Rai became a major champion, he was a proud winner of the Barclays Kenya Open.
Rai was just 22 years old at the time, an English pro who spurned college golf in the U.S. and had already twice been sent back to qualifying school on the EuroPro Tour. He finally graduated to the Challenge Tour in 2016, four years after turning pro at age 17, and a year later won three times on the developmental circuit, including that maiden title in Muthaiga, Kenya, in 2017.
Rai’s breakthrough came a couple seasons before the event was upgraded to DP World Tour status, though the unrealized prestige didn’t make the triumph any less magical. Rai’s mother, Dalvir, was a Kenyan immigrant who came to England as a teen, and when she accompanied her son to Kenya decades later, it marked her first return to her homeland since she left at 14 years old. On Mother’s Day in the U.K., Rai completed a three-shot win over Adrien Saddier, and Dalvir, who worked multiple jobs – mental-health nurse and aerobics instructor among them, plus most of the daily household chores – while her husband, Amrik, tended to Aaron’s golf career, ran onto the 18th green to celebrate a victory that was as much hers.
“It was the most memorable moment of my career,” Rai once said.
Nine years removed, Rai has added plenty to the memory bank, also capturing three titles on the DP World Tour before earning his PGA Tour card via the Korn Ferry Tour Finals in 2021. He scored his first PGA Tour win at the Wyndham Championship two summers ago and climbed into the top 20 in the world rankings for the first time later that year.
What Rai did Sunday at Aronimink, separating from a leaderboard packed with big names to prevail by three shots, surely will slot in as the now-31-year-old’s crowning achievement.
And yet, Rai isn’t the type to forget where he came from.
“Everyone playing in the field this week has a great journey to be able to share, and I’m no exception to that,” Rai said.
Rai’s story with this game begins when he was 4 years old. Amrik, a community worker and tennis player who knew little to nothing about golf, observed Aaron’s natural swinging motion and purchased him some plastic clubs; Dalvir preferred those anyway, as Aaron had previously nearly split his head open with a hockey stick.
When Aaron turned 7, the Rais invested in a set of Titleist 690 MBs. It was as if they were made of gold; after every round or practice session, dirty or not, Amrik would clean them, running a pin through every groove and wiping each clubface with baby oil to prevent rust. When they weren’t being used, they were protected by iron covers, which Aaron keeps on his clubs to this day, cool or not. He doesn’t care; never has.
“I didn’t really mix with a lot of other junior golfers, which didn’t give me a perspective of what was normal,” Rai explained. “So, I think [my dad] kind of sheltered me to be able to develop in a way that made sense for me, in a way that I guess was a little bit unique. … I felt like I was strong enough in why I did certain things to be able to continue to move that forward.
“I knew the reasons why I do them. I believe in the reasons why I do them.”
Rai began wearing two black, Macwet gloves around 8 years old, the same year in which he advanced through all three stages of the U.K.-based Wee Wonders circuit to earn a trip to Pinehurst for his first U.S. Kids Golf World Championship. It was there were he and his dad were introduced to a system that gradually increases course length with age and physical growth, with the idea of getting young players accustomed to scoring.
It wasn’t until Rai turned 12 that he played his first round from the forward tees.
“Before that, I was playing off the fairways and trying to make the course short enough for me to score par or better,” Rai said. “I thought it was a great idea. My dad thought it was a great idea. But naturally, that kind of kept me away from club golf, medal golf. I would still play in junior events, but only in my age group, just to really protect, I guess, myself and what we were trying to work on and what we were trying to kind of build toward.”
Rai competed in his first big tournament when he was 13 years old.
Just four years later, he was a professional, a decision made by Rai and his team, which also includes longtime instructors Andy Proudman and Piers Ward, who have coached Rai since he was 12, and mentor and backer Shabir Randeree, who owned the golf course where Rai learned the game, put him through school and bought him junior memberships, and continues to sponsor him.
Rai knows how much hard work, whether by him or others, it took for him to reach the pinnacle of the sport. That realization still pushes him.
“Rarely do you feel like people work way harder than you,” said Xander Schauffele, who tied for seventh with Rory McIlroy and Cameron Smith, a shot back of Justin Thomas, Ludvig Aberg and Matti Schmid, and two behind Jon Rahm and Alex Smalley, Rai’s closest challengers in the end.
“I feel like I’ve played a pretty good amount of time, and Aaron is always there. He’s always in the gym. He’s always on the range. At the Scottish, I’m staying right on site there. I thought it was fun for Austin and I to go putt. Aaron is finishing up his little putting session at 9 p.m. and going to the gym at 9:45.”
To call Rai a golf obsessive might be an understatement. He and Amrik once drove overnight from their home in Wolverhampton, England, to watch Rai’s idol, Tiger Woods, play a 6:30 a.m. practice round ahead of the 2013 Open Championship at Muirfield. A decade later, Rai walked the last nine holes of Woods’ pro-am at the 2023 Genesis, during which he finally got the chance to meet Woods; that was perhaps the only time he’s ever neglected practicing.
“Golf is an amazing game,” Rai said. “It teaches you so many things, and it teaches you so much humility and discipline and absolute hard work because nothing is ever given in this game no matter what level you’re playing, no matter what course you’re playing on.”
Especially a punishing layout like Aronimink, which flummoxed the world’s best with its intricate green complexes, unpredictable rough and an assist from a stiff wind that gusted into the high 20s on several days. With a load of past major winners among the record 22 players at or within four shots of the lead heading into Sunday, Rai wasn’t among the favorites to pull this off; he had only just gotten fully healthy last month after battling neck and back injuries for several months. And yet, he did masterfully, playing his final 10 holes in 6 under.
Rai’s finish included an eagle at the par-5 ninth that began his charge, a 40-yard bunker shot to 7 feet at No. 13, a well-struck 5-iron to 17 feet that set up a two-putt birdie at No. 16 and then lastly, the shot of the tournament, a 68-foot birdie bomb that closed the lid on the championship.
From there, Rai waited for the final two pairings to come in, then he kissed his wife, Gaurika, who is also a professional golfer. Rai credited a half-hour conversation with her on Saturday night for inspiring him to his first major title.
“I’m not exaggerating when I say that I wouldn’t be here without her,” Rai said.
The same goes for his parents, though neither were in attendance.
“It’s probably hard for me to really express everything that I feel toward them,” Rai said. “I think I’ll get way too emotional to speak. …I would love to share this with them. It would be amazing if they were here.”
With the victory, Rai became the first English-born player to capture the PGA in over a century, since Jim Barnes captured his second Wanamaker, in 1919. Coincidentally, Barnes worked as a head pro in the Philadelphia area.
Rai is honored to represent England – and his Indian and Kenyan heritage, too.
Most of all, though, he’s proud of every moment along the way, from England to Kenya to the U.S. and now, to major glory.
“Amazing journey.”
