NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — Golfers work countless hours just to create the opportunity so that two hours matter. Two hours when everything is up for grabs and everyone’s eyes are on them. Those hours occur just four times a year at the four major championships, but they cannot be reached without those that came before them.

Those that are filled with early morning and late evenings, sacrifices, sweat and points of inflection. That is what makes major championship golf so special. The entire tournament matters, but eyes are so transfixed on those final two hours. Making a journey to that point is hard enough, but it has been easy work for Cameron Young in his, coincidentally, young career.

Young stands at 2 under after two rounds at the 2026 PGA Championship, two strokes behind Alex Smalley and Maverick McNealy with only six names between his and those at the top.

Since the start of 2022, only two players have been inside the top 10 after 36 holes in major championships more than The Players Championship winner: Scottie Scheffler (four major wins) and Rory McIlroy (two).

Young, himself, is still at zero.

Most top 10s at majors after 36 holes from 2022-26

Young has already faced his fair share of two-hour trials, so to speak, including at this year’s Masters, where he was in the final pairing on Sunday with McIlroy. But never has he come with the expectations he does at this PGA Championship, and although it was a Friday round and not a final round, Young met the moment in a way to ensure he remains with a chance at mattering on Sunday.

An early blemish was put onto his scorecard from the middle of the fairway on the short par-4 13th amid a morning where the feel-like temperature was 40 degrees, and the wind was whipping in a manner that was not forecasted.

Flighting his wedge in hopes of accessing a back pin location, Young’s ball penetrated through the wind long of the green, leading to a bogey. His tee shot on the next hole found the greenside bunker, and suddenly the American was scrambling.

He successfully got up and down from the sand, and it was sand he found on the next forcing another saving move. This time, he rolled in a 14-foot par putt after throwing a wedge to that distance. Young kept his house in order and tidied things around the place when he connected from 21 feet just off the green after an average pitch.

Somehow, he was at even par during this stretch despite not playing his best golf on a course that demanded it. Another 8-foot par putt came on the par-3 17th when he turned in disgust once the ball left his blade off the tee. Destined for the water, his ball instead found the putting surface before it found the bottom of the cup in three strokes.

It’s a five-hole stretch that will be forgotten, but it was one that gave Young an opportunity for more meaningful hours like the two that ended his day. He connected from just inside 30 feet on the par-3 5th to get into red figures and bolstered his Sunday chances with a big birdie on the last to shoot 3 under — a score which has only been topped by two players this week.

Young is not yet at the point in the championship that golfers strive to reach, but he is inching closer once again. He is near the lead and approaching that time on Sunday when eyes fall on the contenders with nine holes to go, and although it is those that ultimately define a victor, Young’s performance on Friday was equally important in the long journey of one day possibly becoming a major champion.

A day that could come as soon as Sunday.

Traffic jam at the top

If you made the cut at the 108th PGA Championship, the good news is that not only will you have two more rounds and collect a paycheck, but you also sort of have a chance to win this tournament. Only eight strokes separate those who made the cut at 4 over and Smalley and McNealy, who stand atop the leaderboard after 36 holes of play.

Throw out all those statistics about needing to be within X strokes heading into the weekend of a major championship, because this rarity cannot rule anyone out.

Just one day removed from a “shit” round, McIlroy made his move with a second-round 67 to get within five strokes of the pace. Jordan Spieth may have struggled on the greens, but he pieced together a round that saw him give only two strokes back to par and remain within shouting distance at that same number alongside Brooks Koepka, Rickie Fowler and Xander Schauffele.

Former world No. 1s like Jason Day and Jon Rahm are a couple of strokes closer with a murderer’s row that includes Scheffler, Ludvig Åberg, Justin Thomas, Harris English and Si Woo Kim at 2 under before getting to Chris Gotterup and Hideki Matsuyama at 3 under.

There have been just two — yes, two — major championships in history where 15 players have been without two shots of the lead after 36 holes. Now, there are three with the number of contenders in this 2026 edition of the PGA Championship standing as a 36-hole tournament record.

Seven major winners are within four strokes of the lead for the fifth time in championship history, and everyone on that tee sheet on Saturday could make themselves believe going to bed on Friday night that they can be the last man standing come Sunday night.

A different type of traffic jam

The over/under from those inside the ropes was 6 hours once we realized how much time had transpired. We blinked and 1.5 hours had run off the clock while the group of Scheffler, Justin Rose and Matt Fitzpatrick had played just four holes. It was not their fault but rather a four-pronged problem.

It’s a 156-man field.

It’s a major championship where every stroke matters.

It’s on a golf course with tight quarters where greens run into tee boxes more often than not. (For example, No. 13 green is right next to the tee on No. 14, and players wait for the other groups to finish up before hitting their own shots. Similar examples include the green on No. 12 and the tee box on No. 13 and the adjacent greens of Nos.  8 and 10.)

It’s also two days where the PGA of America decided to have some fun — if your definition of fun is pin positions in severely sloped sections of the green (more on that below).

This will improve over the weekend as half the field exits stage left and perhaps a day of scoring could be in the cards as well, but let’s call a spade a spade — a round of golf should not take 6 hours, no matter the stage and no matter the circumstances.

The next step in the evolution

There was a point in Gotterup’s collegiate career where he shot three straight rounds in the 100s during a team trip. That is the same Gotterup who won the Fred Haskins Award in 2022, won his rookie season on the PGA Tour and has claimed three victories over the likes of McIlroy and Matsuyama in the last calendar year.

Gotterup’s progression has continued this week at Aronimink Golf Club as a formerly aggressive player has continued to show that his off-speed stuff is as good as it gets. On a test that requires patience, Gotterup is answering all the questions with his second-round 65 (the lowest of the championship), propelling him to 3 under and within one of the lead.

“I feel like I’ve gotten a lot better since turning pro at being okay with hitting it to 30 feet being a good shot, and I think there’s a lot of that out here. So I think there’s a lot of aspects of being patient, and I feel like I’ve gotten better at that, but also just being creative and being willing to execute a shot that might, you know, you might not try and pull off in a normal week.

“When you’re hitting 4-iron from 190 out here and you’re trying to cut it 20 yards to try to hold it up against the wind, it’s something that I’ve gotten used to playing in more wind, and, yeah, it doesn’t make it any easier to execute, but you just got to be in the moment to hit those shots, and I’ve been in a couple of those and hit it. So hopefully keep doing that.”

Raise the roof floor!

Since his win at the 2022 PGA Championship at Southern Hills, Thomas has mainly been a non-factor at major championships. It’s not because the skill is not there, but rather because when things are good they are really good, conversely when things are bad they are really bad.

Thomas has just one top-30 finish since raising his second Wanamaker, and he now has a great chance to raise his third, thanks largely to raising his floor.

“I think that’s what I’m probably more proud of or happy about than the scores itself was I didn’t put any extra pressure on myself these first couple days,” Thomas said. “I didn’t feel like I made this moment bigger than it was. It’s just I really have felt like I’m doing a lot of things well and swinging well and playing well and been putting it well. So just go out and play. … It sounds so easy when you say it, but it’s one of the hardest things to do in this sport, in my opinion.

“So I’m very, very pleased and proud of myself for doing that these first couple days, and yeah, just kind of playing what the hole, what the course kind of gives me. So just try to do more of that this weekend.”

Notable major rounds since 2023

The American’s second round had all the makings of what we have seen these last few years. Thomas gets off to a solid start but gets in his own way — the driver abandons him, short putts are missed, and his name is sent tumbling down the leaderboard into irrelevance.

Thomas’ second round had the same opening as those movies. He made two bogeys in his first three holes and went from red figures to perhaps trending towards the cutline, but this one featured an alternate ending. He righted the ship, made a couple of birdies on his second nine holes — thanks to some nifty wedge play — and entered the weekend at 2 under and well in this championship.

For the first time in the last four years, it felt like he had that major round everyone has to have to stay afloat, and it may well be the one to lead him to his first major win in that span as well.

Will changes be made?

In the last four major championships, Bryson DeChambeau has carded rounds of 77, 78, 76 and most recently 76 in the first round of the PGA Championship. It has led to his third missed cut in his last four majors, and if not for a heroic effort Friday at Royal Portrush, DeChambeau could easily have been on a missed-cut streak of four in a row in the biggest tournaments of his year.

So, after another early exit at the PGA Championship, does something have to give? Is it the single-length irons? Is it the extracurriculars outside the course pulling him in multiple directions? Is it the noise surrounding LIV Golf and the future of where he might be playing his golf down the road? Is it all of the above?

DeChambeau has reinvented himself time and time again throughout his career, and based on his four rounds that actually matter in 2026, another one may be required for the artist formerly known as the Mad Scientist.

Pin seeking

It was uttered ad nauseam at the onset of the week that Aronimink’s main defense is the green complexes. Devilish, tricky, whatever you want to call them, some believe that they are approaching absurdity. The par-3 14th has come under more scrutiny than others, given the hole’s beastly nature.

Already stretching over 200 yards and playing into a 20 mph wind for the last two days, No. 14 featured a hole location on Thursday that looked like it was not even on the green. A similar sight awaited players on Friday, only this time it was on the right peninsula of the green.

With pins like these on greens like this, players are largely going to take their medicine — 30-40 feet away and to the fat side of the green. However, even if they swallow their pride and take on the sensible shot, nothing is a given as the severity extends by the cup and even more so when the blustery conditions are factored in.

“This is the hardest set of pin locations that I’ve seen since I’ve been on Tour, and that includes U.S. Opens, that includes Oakmont,” Scheffler said after his second round. “I did ask [some caddies] … ‘Have you seen anything like this before?’ They said maybe Shinnecock is the only place they have seen that has pins that could compare to this.

“But it’s different in a sense on this golf course, because Oakmont, their greens are extremely severe, but they’re extremely severe in one direction. Here, it’s like the green may slope all this way, and then we put the pin down here, and then there’s also a slope this way. And like it’s not as, how would you say, natural to the slopes that are there. There’s a bit more, I think, that’s manufactured into the greens, and it’s just very difficult.

“It’s difficult to get the ball close to the hole. It’s difficult to hole putts, especially when you have big slopes and wind, and I think that’s why you see the scores so close to par.”