Chef praises Scottie Scheffler’s PGA Champions dinner menu: ‘Very high quality’
On the Tuesday night of tournament week, the PGA Championship features a tradition like no other: the PGA Champions dinner.
Like its more popular predecessor, the Kings Champions dinner, the PGA Champions dinner features a guest list of past PGA Championship winners, and the previous year’s champion selects the menu.
In the 2026 PGA Championship, that man is World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler. And thanks to a sneak peek from the chef who created the food in a CBS News interview, we know the basics of the food served at Champagne Tuesday night, and both are Italian-American staples.
Scottie Scheffler’s PGA Champions dinner features Italian-American favorites
Although he is better known as a Texan, Scheffler was born and raised in New Jersey. His mother, Diane, is of Italian descent. Given both of those facts, you’d think that Italian-American cuisine was a staple of Scheffler’s childhood.
That personal background seems to have influenced his choice for the PGA Champions dinner at Aronimink, which is centered around two Italian-American staples: chicken parm and gelato.
The man behind Scheffler’s menu, Aronimink Golf Executive Chef John Ferguson, revealed the details in an interview with CBS News this week.
“You want chicken. So we’re going to use local chicken, the best quality chicken,” Ferguson told CBS News. “And he wanted three flavors of gelato.”
According to CBS News, the three gelato flavors Scheffler requested were “lemon, strawberry and raspberry.”
The food options are different from what Scheffler chose for his recent Masters Champions dinner in 2025. That year, World No. 1 stayed away from Italian-American cuisine, and instead opted for Texas-themed items.
Scheffler’s options at Augusta included Texas-style chili for the first course, and wood-fired cowboy ribeye or blackened redfish for the main course. Despite the differences, he still opts for comfort food, with cheeseburger sliders making the menu as an appetizer.
Xander Schauffele ‘can’t even remember’ his PGA Champions dinner menu (we do)
We only know a few items on the Scheffler’s menu this year, but last year we took a closer look at the dinner chosen by 2024 PGA champion Xander Schauffele.
Don’t just ask him to memorize lesson by lesson.
Xander Schauffele reveals the expensive menu for the PGA Champions Dinner
By:
Kevin Cunningham
On Tuesday at a press conference at Aronimink before the tournament, Schauffele admitted that he “doesn’t even remember” his dinner choices from last year.
“I don’t even remember how much I was in mine. I’m sure Scottie will do a great job. This is only my second job that I’m going to. I’m still very new to this Championship dinner thing, and it’s good to get to know the other guys better. All the older guys always have good stories. So I’m looking forward to that,” Schauffele said on Tuesday.
Among Schauffele’s picks (and misses) were smoked goat cheese dates, pickled watermelon, clams casino shooters and steak and bleu cheese crostini. For the main course, Schauffele chose the Wagyu NY strip steak, served with blackened shrimp, mashed sweet potatoes and a bourbon bone marrow reduction.
Although the PGA Champions dinner doesn’t date back as far as the Masters Champions dinner (1965 for the PGA, 1952 for the Masters), and doesn’t have the same prestige, it does offer one expert to the winners to choose a meal.
The PGA of America pays for the entire PGA Champions dinner each year. Alternatively, at the Masters Champions dinner, the previous year’s winner chooses the food and foots the bill.
So the PGA can thank Scheffler for not going all out as McIlroy did at the Masters in April.
