Braden Shattuck 2026 Pga Start Follows T-8 at Bandon Dunes
Braden Shattuck 2026 pga week arrived with a home-course edge and a heavy load. The 31-year-old PGA Director of Instruction at Rolling Green Golf Club earned his place in the 2026 PGA Championship with a T-8 finish at the PGA Professional Championship in April, and he is now playing at Aronimink Golf Club about 20 minutes from work.
It is his third PGA Championship start. He missed the cut at Oak Hill in 2023, then finished 72nd at Valhalla in 2024 as the low-PGA Club Professional.
Aronimink Fits His Routine
Shattuck said Monday that he will have plenty of company when he tees it up this week. “I will have a lot of family and a lot of friends coming out,” he said.
He said he spent about two hours trying to send tickets to family and friends and collecting e-mail addresses. “I'm really excited. I spent about two hours last night trying to send tickets out to family and friends and getting e-mail addresses. It's been -- I'm like my own manager. It's been a lot but it's really exciting to have some extended family coming to this event that normally they don't watch or play golf.”
That setting is not foreign to him, even if the tournament version is. He said he has only played two tournament rounds at Aronimink, but he has been there three to four times in the last couple of weeks. He has also worked in time around his job, trying to break away early or squeeze in nine holes after a day that runs from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Workdays Before The Major
“Preparation probably wasn't exactly what I wanted it to be,” Shattuck said. After Bandon Dunes, he went right back to teaching, coaching and programming, then tried to fit in practice where he could.
He said, “As soon as I got home from Bandon, it was right back to work, teaching, coaching, programming from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day. Trying to find some time at the beginning or the end of the days to get my game to where it need to be compete in a tournament like this, it's a little bit of a challenge. So it's been extra-long days ever since I got back, trying to schedule breaks during the day to hit some balls or getting out early, maybe 4, and trying to get nine holes in over here at Aronimink.”
He knows the course will demand more than a normal week. “I know what it takes,” he said. “Your ball-striking and your entire game needs to be super-dialed in.”
Shattuck added, “The fairways are not very wide. The rough is very thick.” He said his game needs to be better than it usually is if he wants to compete, though practice rounds and full focus this week should give him the time and resources to sharpen it.
From 2019 To Aronimink
The road to this start began in 2019, when a driver went through a red light in Florida and T-boned him, leaving him with two herniated discs in his back. He said the pain made it nearly unbearable to swing a club, and the accident forced him to overhaul his swing.
The hardest part, he said, was not only physical. “I had some mental health problems during that time that were significant and sidelined me pretty hard,” Shattuck said.
He described a stretch in which he was in and out of the hospital quite a bit and worked with psychologists and psychiatrists. “Having panic attacks almost daily, having chest pain daily, dealing with anxiety was by far the hardest part of that, and I dealt with that for years.”
That history gives this week a sharper edge than a normal major start. Shattuck is back in a PGA Championship field because of the T-8 at Bandon Dunes, and this one comes close to home, with family, friends and a familiar course waiting for him at Aronimink.
