Braden Shattuck keep his day job teaching golf before playing in the PGA Championship

SPRINGFIELD, Pa. (AP) — Braden Shattuck grabbed a golf club and held it horizontally just above his knees. He stretched the club out about even with his toe line to help show an amateur how to keep her club on the correct swing plane.

“I used to do that as a junior golfer because I had trouble with alignment,” Shattuck explained to his pupil. “It's a trick that you're able to do under the rules. You can't lay the club down and check it. But you can put it right over your toe line, check where you're at.”

Shattuck's teaching gig delayed his arrival later in the day at Aronimink Golf Club, where he was set to play at least nine holes in preparation of this weekend's PGA Championship in suburban Philadelphia.

Let Rory McIloy and Jordan Speith and most of the top-ranked players of the world spend Wednesday working on their game at Aronimink or signing endless amounts of autographs.

Shattuck had to clock in for his day job.

Shattuck, the PGA director of instruction at Rolling Green Golf Club, just 10 miles down the road from Aronimink, kept his appointment teaching a golf clinic, where he led a group of 10 women — from long-time students to the new La Salle women's golf coach — on tackling the more challenging parts of the game.

Shattuck is set to strike the opening tee shot of the tournament at 6:45 a.m. on Thursday — well before he ever usually grabs his bag — and is one of 20 golf professionals in the 156-man PGA Championship field. He finished eighth in April at the PGA Professional Championship in Oregon to earn a spot in the major.

He was raised in suburban Philadelphia and his local ties in Delaware County — Shattuck's been peppered with chants of “Do it for Delco!” — have made him an instant fan favorite. He laughed when he said the number of women were more than the normal number for a clinic — and certainly, there were more cameras than usual.

“If it makes any of you nervous, sorry,” Shattuck said with a chuckle.

His students didn't seem to mind their time in the spotlight, thanks to a PGA of America film crew and a pair of reporters that tagged along.

When one student boomed a shot down the middle of a hole on a course lined by gritty residential homes, she exclaimed, "Come on, Braden. Right in the middle, baby!”'

The 31-year-old Shattuck, in his fifth year at Rolling Green, said his sense of obligation kept him from ever considering canceling the clinic. There were swings to fix. Bunker shots to solve.

His students needed the practice.

Nancy Barton, a long-time club member from Drexel Hill, practiced her approach on the 11th hole shooting over a deep right greenside bunker.

“There's no confidence standing over your ball because this is so intimidating,” she said.

Shattuck counseled the golfer and told her more advice would come for the entire group if he scheduled more clinics at least once a month. He polled the golfers for ideal times, and they settled on a weeknight, preferably Tuesdays or Wednesdays. There was one caveat to the practice times:

“I expect all of you to show up,” Shattuck said.

Shattuck will show up and teach — and arrive at Aronimink around 4:30 a.m. Thursday — even if the longest of long shots (he has 2000-1 odds) somehow wins the Wanamaker Trophy on Sunday.

He's successfully navigated one of the busiest weeks of his career — including convincing security at Aronimink to let him park his pick up truck even though he didn't have the right tag, to landing 18-year-old high school senior Beau Riviere to caddy for him — as he prepared to play in his first major since the 2024 PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky.

Gale Donoghue, who lives in the nearby borough of Media, played in the clinic and has received 1-on-1 lessons from Shattuck for years. She's such a fan of his, Donoghue insisted she would set the early alarm to watch Shattuck start his round. Donoghue said she was among a sizeable contingent of Rolling Green players that rooted him on when he played in the 2024 Cognizant Classic in The Palm Beaches.

“I have three boys, so I can compare; he's very focused, very earnest,” Donoghue said. “He's very astute. He has this quiet way of observing and listening and then moving forward.”

Shattuck is well-versed in moving forward.

He was forced to rebuild his swing from the ground up following a car accident in 2019 that resulted in multiple herniated disks in his lower back, led to years of mental health struggles and made even walking difficult.

“Having panic attacks almost daily, having chest pain daily, dealing with anxiety was by far the hardest part of that, and I dealt with that for years,” Shattuck said. “Had to go to work and put a smiling face on for everybody and that was quite a challenge. I’m finally on the back end of that after six or seven years of it, however long ago that accident was.”

He's on the back nine of his recovery and was in good spirits at the course that served as the site of the 1976 U.S. Women's Open and 2016 U.S. Women's Amateur teaching his students the finer points of selecting the proper tee box and greenside bunker shots.

There are perks to making the field that go well beyond rubbing shoulders with the game's greats and not all the talk at Rolling Green was about pins and putting.

One golfer needed to know what kind of courtesy car Shattuck had shuttling him to Aronimink.

The answer: A Lexus.

“I’ll take it,” Shattuck said.

AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

Braden Shattuck, a club professional who qualified to play in this weekend's PGA Championship at Aronimink Golf Club, instructs a golfer during a women's clinic at Rolling Green Golf Club, Wednesday, May 13, 2026, in Springfield, Pa. (AP Photo/Dan Gelston)

Braden Shattuck, a club professional who qualified to play in this weekend's PGA Championship at Aronimink Golf Club, poses with golfers during a women's clinic at Rolling Green Golf Club, Wednesday, May 13, 2026, in Springfield, Pa. (AP Photo/Dan Gelston)

Braden Shattuck, a club professional who qualified to play in this weekend's PGA Championship at Aronimink Golf Club, instructs a golfers during a women's clinic at Rolling Green Golf Club, Wednesday, May 13, 2026, in Springfield, Pa. (AP Photo/Dan Gelston)

Braden Shattuck, a club professional who qualified to play in this weekend's PGA Championship at Aronimink Golf Club, instructs a golfers during a women's clinic at Rolling Green Golf Club, Wednesday, May 13, 2026, in Springfield, Pa. (AP Photo/Dan Gelston)

Braden Shattuck hits from the bunker during a PGA Championship golf tournament practice round at Aronimink Golf Club, Tuesday, May 12, 2026, in Newtown Square, PA. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Thousands of people rallied Saturday in the cradle of the modern Civil Rights Movement to mobilize a new voting rights era as conservative states dismantle congressional districts that helped secure Black political representation.

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey called Montgomery “sacred soil” in the fight for civil rights.

“if we in our generation do not now do our duty, we will lose the gains and the rights and the liberties that our ancestors afforded us,” Booker said.

The crowd was led in chants of “we won’t go back” and “we fight.”

“We are not going down without a fight. We are not going down to Jim Crow maps,” Shalela Dowdy, a plaintiff in the Alabama redistricting case said.

A crowd of thousands gathered in front of the city’s historic Alabama Capitol, the place where the Confederacy was formed in 1861 and where the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke in 1965 at the end of the Selma-to-Montgomery Voting Rights March. The stage, set in front of the Capitol, was flanked from behind by statues of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and civil rights icon Rosa Parks — dueling tributes erected nearly 90 years apart.

Speakers said the spot was once the temple of the confederacy and became holy ground of the civil rights movement.

Some in the crowd said the effort to redraw lines has echoes of the past.

“We lived through the “60s. It takes you back. When you think that Alabama’s moving forward, it takes two steps back,” said Camellia A Hooks, 70, of Montgomery, Alabama.

The rally began in Selma, where a violent clash between law enforcement and voting rights activists in 1965 galvanized support for passage of the Voting Rights Act. It then moved to the state Capitol, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “How Long, Not Long” speech that same year.

A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling involving Louisiana hollowed out voting rights law that was already weakened by a separate decision in 2013 and then narrowed further over the years. That helped clear the way for stricter voter ID laws, registration restrictions, and limits on early voting and polling place changes, including in states that once needed federal preclearance before they could change voting laws because of their historical discrimination against Black voters.

Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement are alarmed by the speed of the rollbacks, noting that protections won through generations of sacrifice have been weakened in little more than a decade.

Kirk Carrington, 75, was a teen in 1965 when law enforcement officers attacked marchers in Selma on what became known as “Bloody Sunday.” A white man on a horse wielding a stick chased Carrington through the streets.

“It’s really just appalling to me and all the young people that marched during the ’60s, fought hard to get voting rights, equal rights and civil rights,” Carrington said. “It’s sad that it’s continuing after 60-plus-odd years that we are still fighting for the same thing we fought for back then.”

Montgomery is home to one of the congressional districts that is being altered in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling.

A federal court in 2023 redrew Alabama's 2nd Congressional District after ruling that the state intentionally diluted the voting power of Black residents, who make up about 27% of its population. The court said there should be a district where Black people are a majority or near-majority and have an opportunity to elect their candidate of choice.

But the Supreme Court cleared the way for a different map that could let the GOP reclaim the seat. While the matter remains under litigation, the state plans special primaries Aug. 11 under the new map.

Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures, who won election in the district in 2024, said the dispute is not about him but rather people's opportunity to have representation.

“When Republicans are literally turning back the clock on what representation, what the faces of representation, look like, what the opportunities, legitimate opportunities for representation look like across this country, then I think it starts to resonate with people in a little bit of a different way,” Figures said.

Alabama House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter, a Republican, said the Louisiana ruling provided an opportunity to revisit a map that was forced on the state by the federal court.

“People tend to forget what happened. When this thing went to court, the Republican Party had that seat, congressional seat two,” Ledbetter said last week. “There’s been a push through the courts to try to overtake some of these red state seats, and that’s certainly what happened in that one.”

Evan Milligan, the lead plaintiff in the Alabama redistricting case, said there is grief over the implosion of the Voting Rights Act but it is crucial that people recommit to the fight.

“We have to accept that this is the new reality, whether we like it or not,” Milligan said. “We don’t have to accept that this will be the reality for the next 10 years or two years or forever.”

The State capitol is seen during a voting rally, Saturday, May 16, 2026, in Montgomery, Ala. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

A protestor holds a sign of the late Georgia Congressman John Lewis during a voting rally, Saturday, May 16, 2026, in Montgomery, Ala. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

A man sings a spirtual song during a voting rally, Saturday, May 16, 2026, in Montgomery, Ala. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

A protestor holds a sign of the late Georgia Congressman John Lewis during a voting rally, Saturday, May 16, 2026, in Montgomery, Ala. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

U.S. Sen Corey Booker, D-NY., has his photo taken during a voting rally, Saturday, May 16, 2026, in Montgomery, Ala. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

People gather during a voting rally, Saturday, May 16, 2026, in Montgomery, Ala. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

U.S. Sen Corey Booker, D-NY., has his photo taken during a voting rally, Saturday, May 16, 2026, in Montgomery, Ala. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Aaron McGuire sings a spirtual song during a voting rally, Saturday, May 16, 2026, in Montgomery, Ala. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)