Braden Shattuck is back at Aronimink Golf Club this week with a place in the 2026 PGA Championship and a crowd that will feel more like a hometown gathering than a major championship gallery. The 31-year-old Corebridge Financial Team player said Monday he expects “a lot of family and a lot of friends coming out” for an event being staged close to home.
Shattuck earned his spot with a T-8 finish in the PGA Professional Championship at Bandon Dunes in April, and this week gives him his third PGA Championship start. He played Oak Hill in 2023 and missed the cut, then finished 72nd at Valhalla in 2024 as the low-PGA club professional. This time, he is doing it at a course he knows from a different part of his golf life: he is the PGA Director of Instruction at Rolling Green Golf Club, about 20 minutes up the road from Aronimink.
The home-area setting has brought extra work off the course, too. Shattuck said he spent about two hours the night before trying to send tickets to family and friends and collecting email addresses, adding that he has been “like my own manager.” He also said he has played only two tournament rounds at Aronimink, though he has been there three or four times in the last couple of weeks. “Preparation probably wasn't exactly what I wanted it to be,” he said.
The reason is the same one many club professionals know: work does not stop just because a major starts. After returning from Bandon, Shattuck said he went right back to teaching, coaching and programming from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day, trying to find time at the start or end of the day to get ready. He said he has been squeezing in breaks to hit balls or slip away early to play nine holes at Aronimink. Even so, he said, he understands what it takes to contend. “I know what it takes,” Shattuck said. “Your ball-striking and your entire game needs to be super-dialed in.”
That matters at Aronimink, where he said the fairways are not very wide and the rough is very thick. Shattuck said he has not had the preparation time he needs, but he expects practice rounds and full focus on the championship to help him sharpen his game. For a player whose major-championship path has been shaped as much by persistence as by scoring, the week is a test of how far a club pro can push himself when the stage arrives almost in his own backyard.
That persistence dates to 2019, when a driver went through a red light in Florida and T-boned Shattuck, leaving him with two herniated discs in his back. The pain made it nearly unbearable to swing a club, forcing him to overhaul his swing to manage the injury. He said the physical recovery was only part of it. Shattuck described significant mental health struggles during that period, saying he was in and out of the hospital quite a bit, worked with psychologists and psychiatrists, and dealt with panic attacks almost daily, daily chest pain and anxiety for years. “I had some mental health problems during that time that were significant and sidelined me pretty hard,” he said.
That background gives this week a sharper edge than a standard homecoming. Shattuck is not just returning to a familiar course; he is arriving with a major start secured, a short commute from work, a family and friends list to manage, and the memory of a much harder stretch that forced him to rebuild both his swing and his life around the game.
