NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — You’re not alone if you are surprised to see Martin Kaymer at the top of the leaderboard after the opening round of the PGA Championship.
Consider this:
“I’ll tell you a funny story,’’ Kaymer said after shooting a 3-under-par 67 at Aronimink. “On Tuesday evening we had the champion’s dinner, and there was a gentleman sitting next to me from the PGA of America and he asked me if I still play.
“And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘Well, are you playing this week?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, that’s why I’m here. I’m not flying from Europe to here to have a New York strip with you guys. Of course I’m playing.’
“And that really motivated me. So it was a good start to the week. Again, I really enjoy Aronimink Golf Course. It really suits my eye. It’s a very fair test. Great for the PGA Championship. It’s fun to play and I look forward to hopefully have another three good days.’’
People forget how accomplished the 41-year-old German is, having won a U.S. Open, a PGA and a Players championship and who was once No. 1 in the world.
Kaymer hasn’t posted a top-10 finish in a major since a tie for seventh at the 2017 PGA, a span of 23 major starts.
Riddled with injuries in recent years, he’s never won on the LIV tour and played so poorly on it that he’s been in position to be relegated out of the league, but was saved from that ignominy because he’s the captain of the Cleeks GC.
“I’ve been struggling since 2021,’’ he said. “I had a couple surgeries then and other issues came with it the years after. And it was quite disappointing for me that playing out there on the LIV Golf league I could never really perform, because I could never really practice because I was always hurt.
“We all need to play the tournaments, and I didn’t really have enough time and enough rest in between events to rest, so I always came into tournaments never prepared. The other guys were ready to play. They were playing great. To be honest, it really pissed me off.
“Fortunately, the last four, five weeks I had great treatments, I have no pain any more. Everything is going the right direction. I can practice. It’s fun. I have a great passion for the game.’’
When he left the PGA Tour and DP World Tour for LIV, Kaymer was famously stripped of his 2023 Ryder Cup captaincy.
He’s a former Ryder Cup hero, who sank the winning putt for the Europeans in 2012 at Medinah, and was forced to cede his captaincy for the 2023 team in Rome to Luke Donald.
All Donald has done is lead Europe to victory in the last two Ryder Cups and he’s going for a third in a row in 2027.
