Aaron Rai's PGA Championship win shined a light on the team behind him.
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Yo! Calling out to all you new Raiheads out there.
As if we need another reason to jump on the bandwagon of the new and unexpected PGA Championship winner, straight out of Aronimink in suburban Philadelphia, the oh-so-grounded Aaron Rai. Here it comes anyhow — lay your gloved hands here.
You know how (to cite one famous example) John “Wild Thing” Daly, the 1991 PGA champ, will rent out any part of his golf outfits in the name of commerce? Aaron Rai, golf’s Mild Thing, doesn’t do that. Every day is opposite day in Raiworld. And we like it!
Consider the swirling logo and four stenciled words — Me and My Golf — above the brim of his baseball cap. You see it again on the all-important right chest of Rai’s shirt as well. (The right chest, for a righty golfer, gets more airtime than the left, at least upon the swing’s finish.) Those are two prime bits of real estate. J.D. will tell you that. So will J.T., as in Justin Thomas, two-time PGA Championship winner. Any touring pro with an agent will tell you that. Except for Aaron Rai. Those spaces are not for rent. They are a gift he gives to his two main teachers.
That is, the two guys behind Me and My Golf, Andy Proudman and Piers Ward, a pair of unpretentious English blokes/teaching pros who have been with Rai pretty much all of his golfing life.
Piers Ward, left, and Andy Proudman with their star pupil at the 2025 Players Championship. getty images
“I almost feel disrespectful, calling them just ‘my coaches,’” Rai, 31, said at the winner’s press conference at the PGA Championship earlier this month. “They’ve been so much more to me than that, from a young age, as a teenager, on this journey as a professional golfer. They’ve been my mentors, my big brothers. They’ve almost been like family to me.”
Proudman and Ward, who had been with Rai earlier in the week at Aronimink, were honored, but not surprised, when they heard that tribute.
“He’s a very generous guy,” Proudman said in a phone interview the other day.
Ward added, “You can see the values he grew up with in everything he does.”
You could say Rai’s Sunday-night comments about his two teachers were right on brand, except that brand is not a word you readily associate with Rai. He’s not looking to get paid to use this product or that one. He’s not really looking for product at all. His thing is tried-and-true and getting better all the time.
Rai’s black gloves, for his left hand and his right, are not made by FootJoy or G-Fore or any other golfy company. They are a product of a small English manufacturer called MacWet Limited, makers of all-weather gloves for sailors, hunters and the horsey set. If you zoom in on Rai’s golf glove you can see the company’s unfamiliar logo. The chances of it registering with you are close to zero, unless you are a sailor or hunter or member in good standing of the horsey set.
Proudman and Ward remember when Rai first started wearing them, as a kid golfer beating balls through the dank, wet English winter. He was already a golfer doing his own thing, a smart young man who would have been university-bound, except his dream and plan was always to play professional golf.
“By 17, he was ready,” Ward said. Not ready to take on the world, but ready to start playing tournament golf for prizemoney, traveling across the United Kingdom as a teenager, often with his father as his chaperone. In terms of his mindset, the teachers said, Rai was a pro as a 12-year-old, but not a copy-cat, mini-me pro. To this day, you can see junior golfers who in appearance and mannerism look like 10-year-old Rickie Fowlers.
Rai, per his two teachers, was a young and analytical player who figured things out for himself, with the help of his two teachers and his father. He learned from his divots and the flight of his ball (as old school as you can get) and from the biometric skin stickers on his body.
Proudman started working with Rai when he was about 4 years old. Ward came into the picture a few years later. They met him at the 3 Hammers Golf Complex in England, a Birmingham-area public driving range with a short course where Proudman and Ward worked. It was there the two teachers developed their holistic approach (mind and body) to teaching that is at the core Me and My Golf, the instruction business they own and operate today.
“With the driver, Aaron’s thing was always in play over distance,” Proudman said. “We had a 70-yard hole, and he was driving the green at [age] 5 and 6. He has always been comfortable hitting driver into really small targets.”
In the wake of Rai’s win at Aronimink, many ordinary golf fans, hearing him talk about the game he clearly loves, were enthralled by his modest and humble demeanor. Rai is an Englishman of Indian descent on both his mother and father’s sides. Rai’s mother spent years in Kenya as well. The two teachers say that when you visit Rai’s childhood home you are overcome, in the most pleasant way, by the smells and spices of Indian and African cooking.
Like their now-famous pupil, Proudman and Ward have an inherent modesty as well. They described traveling across the United States and Australia some years ago, staying in hostels to keep costs down, making an intimate study of some of the teaching pros they particularly admired, few of the names familiar ones. In videos, you can see the two teachers working with Rai as he uses an alignment stick not only for alignment but also for balance and foot position. This is achieved by . . . standing on the alignment stick. The two teachers often ask probing questions and listen with care, letting the expert do his thing. Good teachers are always learning from their pupils. It’s a two-way street.
“I remember at the BMW PGA Championship [at Wentworth, in England] probably six years ago now, Piers was on the putting green with me until 11:30 at night on a Tuesday,” Rai said Sunday night at Aronimink. “They just go above and beyond for me in every single way. They’ve played a huge part in this trophy and a huge part in my development as a golfer.” But Saturday night at Aronimink, Rai was the last man standing in the short-game practice area, hitting one pitch shot after another, without a soul around, not even his caddie.
The two teachers did not share the details of the financial aspects of their arrangement with Rai, but they did broadly describe his approach to everything he does in golf, whether it’s working with the Me and My Golf guys, not being on social media, using an old driver, seldom looking at his mobile phone or anything else.
“If it doesn’t serve his desire to improve at golf, he’s not interested in it,” one of the gents said.
Michael Bamberger writes for GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com. Before that, he spent nearly 23 years as senior writer for Sports Illustrated. After college, he worked as a newspaper reporter, first for the (Martha’s) Vineyard Gazette, later for The Philadelphia Inquirer. He has written a variety of books about golf and other subjects, the most recent of which is The Second Life of Tiger Woods. His magazine work has been featured in multiple editions of The Best American Sports Writing. He holds a U.S. patent on The E-Club, a utility golf club. In 2016, he was given the Donald Ross Award by the American Society of Golf Course Architects, the organization’s highest honor.
