Aaron Rai proved a lot of people wrong at the PGA Championship last week after he secured a three-shot victory to lift the Wanamaker Trophy.
In fact, Rai has been proving people wrong for quite some time now.
The 31-year-old from Wolverhampton in England comes from a working-class background and always had to work twice as hard as anyone else to get where he has today.
Aaron Rai‘s win at the PGA Championship capped off what has been quite an incredible rise in the game for the Englishman, and he is now ranked as the 15th best golfer in the world
The man who wears two gloves and uses head-covers on his irons was far from a heralded name when he arrived at Aronimink last week, but he left as a major champion.
Despite the fact that he was somewhat of an unknown name when he turned up at Aronimink, Aaron Rai received strong support from the fans at the PGA Championship throughout the week.
He has had to work incredibly hard his entire life for everything he has now and it’s fair to say that there is nobody more deserving of the success he has than the 31-year-old Englishman.
Rex Hoggard believed Aaron Rai wouldn’t make it on the PGA Tour
Rex Hoggard and Ryan Lavner were speaking about Rai’s victory at Aronimink on The Golf Channel Podcast with Rex and Lav.
Hoggard offered some fantastic insight into what Rai is like as a person, as he opened up on the first meeting he shared with the recently crowned PGA champion.
“I remember speaking with Aaron when he first came on the PGA Tour,“ Hoggard explained.
“It was at the RSM Classic, he’d earned his Tour card via the Korn Ferry Tour.
“I kind of make it a point to try to get to know the players that I’ve never really met before.
“And I walked away thinking to myself that, yeah, he’s not a PGA Tour player, because all of them have something in the DNA that connects them all.
“Even Scottie Scheffler, who, I would argue, is right there in the same vein as Aaron Rai when it comes to just being a good person, being a good father, being a good husband, all of the things that we’re talking about with Aaron Rai. But even when you talk to Scottie Scheffler, there is still the edge.“
PGA Tour players are ‘inherently selfish’
Hoggard explained how Rai simply didn’t have the edge he believed players need in order to make it on the PGA Tour.
“PGA Tour players always have some sort of edge. You have to. You cannot achieve what these players have achieved in their career, just making it to the PGA Tour, without it,“ Hoggard explained.
“They’re inherently selfish, and they want to play the, ‘let me show you’ game. Let me show you what I can do, game.
“That it’s written into their DNA, that they want to prove to you, and they want to show off in every particular situation that they have the opportunity to.
“And he had none of that.
“There was none of the bravado that you would think a young player coming over to the United States to play would have.“
Aaron Rai clearly proved Rex Hoggard wrong, just like he has done with many other people throughout the years.
