US Open an achievable aim for Aaron Rai - golf’s Mr Nice

When Aaron Rai became the first Englishman since Cornwall’s Jim Barnes in 1919 to win the PGA Championship, everyone from Rory McIlroy to Jon Rahm lined up to call him pretty much the nicest man in the locker room.

As Rai, a 31-year-old from Wolverhampton, bears down on the US Open at Shinnecock Hills (18-21 June) as a newly anointed member of golf’s elite, Piers Ward, who has coached him for 20 years with his business partner Andy Proudman, explains why Rai has a reputation for decency.

“The biggest compliment I can give you on Aaron is that it doesn’t matter whether it’s Tiger Woods or Dave Smith – if he engages in a conversation with someone, he looks them in the eye and he listens,” Ward told The Observer from the firm’s base in America.

“I think in a world where we’re so rushed, he’s one of the top performers, and where a lot of people want his time, it’s very difficult to find top athletes who have the presence of mind all the time to look somebody in the eye and have a conversation. He’s phenomenal at that. That shows the huge respect Aaron has for other people and his willingness to listen to what they have to say. That’s a difficult skill, it really is.”

Ward credits Rai’s “mum and dad” for their role in forming his student’s character. It’s common to talk of a modern athlete’s “team”. But Rai’s is a collective of extraordinary depth and influence.

His father was a community worker and amateur tennis player who masterminded his career progression; his mother Dalvir, a mental health nurse, caddied for him in his early years. Accidentally hit by a hockey stick when he was small, Rai was saved from further harm by his mother buying him a set of plastic golf clubs, which set off his addiction.

His wife Gaurika Bishnoi has won eight times on India’s Hero Women’s Pro Golf Tour. She’s also his unofficial sports psychologist. “We live in a nice, simple house. Aaron doesn’t wear nice watches,” she says. “He doesn’t drink or smoke. He doesn’t do social media. Everything in our life is about simplicity.”

Proudman and Ward run a largely digital teaching company called Me And My Golf that they started in 2011 and have been with Rai from the beginning.

“I met him in a golf shop in England when I was 18 and Aaron was four years old,” Woodman says. “In 2006 me and Piers started an academy in Wolverhampton at the 3 Hammers Golf Complex. I think it was then that we had a conversation and said: ‘Aaron could be really, really good, he’s got something very special, let’s have a chat with him and his dad and see if they’d like some help.’ Aaron was 10 or 11 at that point, so it’s been a 20-year ride.

“It was him as a person. It was his ability to focus. He had something different that I’ve never seen at such a young age: his ability to repeat and focus. Normally young kids get distracted and wander off. They’re a little bit erratic. Aaron was never like that. What you see on the golf course now is what I saw on the range when he was four years old. It was like: ‘This guy wants it, he’s not messing around’.”

Ward takes up the story: “Whenever he came for a session, whatever we asked him to do, he would do. It was literally a daily pursuit. On Christmas Day, they would sneak onto a golf course and play. That was a tradition they had.”

Rai was educated at Wolverhampton Grammar School. His first club was Patshull Park. Success and career earnings of $16.3m (140th on the list) have taken him to Jacksonville in Florida. His ascent, with a glove on each hand, and covers on his irons to help him value what he has (both highly unusual on the pro circuit), was gradual rather than spectacular.

His 2020 Scottish Open play-off win over Tommy Fleetwood was a catalyst. His 2024 Wyndham Championship win was his first on the PGA Tour. In the PGA at Aronimink Golf Club near Philadelphia, he was the biggest long shot in 20 years to win a major.

Ward says: “We always think about people like a Collin Morikawa, who kind of bursts onto the scene and wins a couple of majors early. With Aaron we always thought he could win these big tournaments, but he was always going to be on a gradual progression, an organic progression. We never set goals to win tournaments. We just set goals to get better every day. It did mean that it’s taken longer to get to this point, but it also meant his tournament record would get better every year.”

“I think early on Aaron’s dad knew what needed to be done at the highest level,” Proudman adds. “A lot of golfers out there would like to be on the Tour, but they don’t understand the commitment and hard work that goes into it.”

Part of the calculation was that Rai has “a background that doesn’t come from lots of money. But he had full support around him, with his family, with us, who all understood what he wanted to do – we were all there behind him, believing he could do it.”

As a major champion who improved his score with every round at the PGA – a rare feat – Rai now wakes in a new world of increased scrutiny. “We’ve been able to speak to lots of top players over the years like Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, Jon Rahm, individually, and to their coaches as well,” Ward says. “As a result of that, we’ve been able to speak to Aaron about Jon Rahm, say, and how he adapted to winning major championships. We’ve got a bit of a head start on that.

“Aaron is very level-headed. Things never go to his head. But he is now in a situation where there’s going to be a lot of people who want a piece of him at tournaments. Just getting Aaron used to spotting the signs is important. The conversations since [the PGA] have been not so much about his golf game but managing it away from the course or when he’s at the venue.

“He’s in a good place. He played last week at Memorial. He played with Scottie Scheffler over the first two days, then over the weekend with Xander [Schauffele] and Rory as well. He’s played with these guys before, but now he’s getting used to being billed as the same as them.”

Since 1946, only Tony Jacklin, Justin Rose and Matt Fitzpatrick have been English US Open winners. Back-to-back major wins for Rai is a big ask. But now he’s reached his prime, it’s hard to imagine the PGA being his only one.

Photograph by Mike Mulholland/Getty Images