Why true gent and now major winner Aaron Rai should become new ambassador for golf
The R&A should also get Lottie Woad on board in official capacity as English duo are real gems
Who would have thought it? A man from Wolverhampton with one parent who has Indian roots and the other from Kenya, wears two gloves when he’s playing and has head covers on his irons giving golf the biggest shot in the arm it’s had in a long time.
Step forward Aaron Rai, who, as the whole world now knows following a sensational major breakthrough in the 108th PGA Championship at Aronimink in Pennsylvania on Sunday, is a gem of a human being first and foremost and, despite being a bit different from most others at the top level of the game, just happens to be a bloody good golfer to boot.
Like a few others, this correspondent first met Rai in person - I think so, anyway - when he won the 2020 Genesis Scottish Open at The Renaissance Club, beating his compatriot, Tommy Fleetwood, in a play-off on the East Lothian coast.
Most people that day were rooting for Fleetwood, the highest-ranked player in the field, because, quite frankly, few had heard of Rai at that time. In fact, I’ll hold my hands up and admit that myself and a few media colleagues felt a bit deflated by the outcome.
Not for long, though, because it allowed us to discover way before lots of others that Rai is probably one of the nicest individuals to have graced the game of golf and the sport should feel very lucky indeed to have him as golf’s new star.
In 2015, playing on the now defunct PGA EuroPro Tour, Rai landed his maiden win as a professional in the Glenfarclas Open at Mar Hall in Renfrewshire. Asked about that after his Scottish Open success five years later, the same warm smile we saw on the outskirts of Philadelphia on Sunday night creased his face.
Aaron Rai won trolley and rangefinder for first pro win
"I remember it a lot," he told us. "That was the first tournament I had a chance to win and it was a really big moment at that time. On that tour, you have to finish in the top five on the money-list to progress up the ladder, so a win was really important. I won a golf trolley and a Bushnell rangefinder. It is different to almost a million pounds (laughing).”
He earned $3.69 million on this occasion after becoming the first English player since Jim Barnes, who won the first two editions in 1916 and 1919, to be crowned as the PGA champion and, boy, was it a wonderful sight to see Rai announcing his arrival in the top echelons of the game, well, in true Aaron Rai style.
Some of the shots the 31-year-old hit on the back nine will be among the best you’ll see this season. Flying a bunker shot all the way to a tricky hole position at the driveable par-4 13th, for example. A laser-like tee shot to find the fairway at the par-5 16th to set up another timely birdie. And, of course, draining a 65-footer - the second-longest putt holed all week on treacherous greens for the season’s second major - for a 2 at the par-3 17th.
At no point over the final couple of hours, when he was facing the most pressure he’d encountered in his career, did Rai look anything but cool, calm and collected. But that’s the way he’s always gone about his business.
He’s polite and respectful, as evidenced by what he had to say in his first interview after getting his hands on the gigantic Wanamaker Trophy, having ended a run of ten straight victories by American players in the PGA of America event.
“Golf is an amazing game,” he replied to being asked what his chosen sport meant to him. “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. I think it just teaches so many amazing life skills.”
There’s many a dad who played a part in promising careers being ruined over the years, but let’s give Amrik Rai credit where credit is due. His guidance was excellent as Rai started out in the game and it was interesting to hear Aaron talk about how he felt doing things differently to his peers had been the making of him on his journey from a Wee Wonder - the junior programme set up by Alasdair Good, the head professional at Gullane, in 1995 - to major champion.
New PGA champion doesn’t bother about trying to be ‘cool’
It’s also where his values and a work ethic that is probably second to none came from. It might not be the norm to wear two gloves. And it’s certainly not cool to have headcovers on irons. But that doesn’t matter in the slightest to Rai. He’s only been interested in doing things that are reflective of him as a human being and, at the same time, is always trying to improve as a golfer.
He idolised Tiger Woods as a youngster. Now, as the likes of Akshay Bhatia and Sahith Theegala, two other golfers of Indian origin, have also done in recent years by emerging as very talented players on the PGA Tour, Rai is surely giving Woods something to smile about during his self-enforced break from the game.
The new PGA champion can expect a warm welcome when he returns to East Lothian in July for the Genesis Scottish Open and, boy, has he handed the 154th Open at Royal Birkdale the following week a massive boost.
I’m not really in the business of making suggestions to the people who run the game, but I’m going to on this occasion. The R&A should make Rai an official ambassador and Lottie Woad, a winner at the weekend, too, on the LPGA Tour, as well. The English duo, after all, are both doing a fabulous job when it comes to showcasing everything that is good about this great game at a time when so much bickering, barking and biting is still going on.
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