Michael Block Earns 10th Major Start at Aronimink
Michael Block is back in the PGA Championship field, and this one carries extra weight: the 49-year-old head pro at Arroyo Trabuco Golf Club in Mission Viejo, California, played his way into Aronimink after a strong run at the 2026 PGA Professional Championship at Bandon Dunes. It will be his 10th major, another stop in a career that still bends around the 2023 PGA Championship that made him impossible to ignore.
Block at Bandon Dunes
Block said the 2026 PGA Championship will be his 10th major, and he did not dress up the milestone. When asked whether getting into another PGA Championship was significant, he answered, “Oh, yeah, for sure.”
The qualification came through the 2026 PGA Professional Championship at Bandon Dunes, where he played well enough to earn a spot at Aronimink. He has now qualified for the PGA Championship five years in a row as a full-time club pro, a run that keeps the pressure on his game every spring and keeps him in the same field with the best players in the sport.
Oak Hill Still Follows Him
Block’s latest step back into a major field also reopens the conversation around what happened in 2023. He finished 15th at that PGA Championship and made a Sunday ace while playing alongside Rory McIlroy, a week he described by saying, “the stars aligned and it was the most unbelievable week of my life.”
He also said he almost was able to hang with Scottie Scheffler and McIlroy for a few days that week, but added, “Do I belong with the Scottie Schefflers and the Rory McIlroys of the world? Obviously not.” That blunt line sits beside the fact that he has stayed in the championship mix long enough to keep earning starts rather than living off one famous week.
Aronimink And The Next Test
Block is turning 50 a month after the PGA Championship, and he said the 2023 experience would not happen again. “I can pretty much guarantee that it won’t,” he said, then added, “I earned it.”
That is the real edge in this story: a club pro who keeps creating another chance to test himself against elite players. He qualified for the U.S. Open at Oakmont in 2007, thought that was the end of the line, and now gets one more major start at Aronimink after proving again that Bandon Dunes was not a one-week outlier.
