Alex Smalley is turning heads at Aronimink Golf Club during the 2026 PGA Championship, and the 29-year-old from Rochester, New York, has put himself in the conversation on a leaderboard that has been jam-packed from top to bottom. With difficult conditions continuing to make scoring hard to find, the Wanamaker Trophy is still up for grabs.
Smalley, a Duke product who turned professional in 2019, has built one of the more consistent 2026 campaigns on the PGA TOUR heading into Aronimink. His approach game and around-the-green numbers have been among his strongest attributes this season, and those strengths matter in a major that is asking for patience more than power. He is not a stranger to the championship, either. This is one of three PGA Championship appearances for Smalley, whose career earnings in the event stand at $284,820.
That history is part of what makes his run at Aronimink worth watching. Smalley’s best major finish came with a T-23 at Oak Hill in 2023, and he has already shown he can post a low round on a major stage, shooting 67 in Round 1 at Quail Hollow in 2025. Those results do not guarantee anything this week, but they do point to a player who has been able to handle the scale of the moment before.
Aronimink is giving him little margin for error. The course has remained difficult, and scoring has been tough to come by, which has helped produce a leaderboard that feels crowded and unsettled. In that kind of test, a player’s short game and touch around the greens can keep a round alive when birdies are scarce. That is where Smalley has earned his place in the mix.
He arrives with the sort of steady season that can get overlooked until a major championship tightens everything around it. If he keeps putting the ball in the right spots and survives the difficult stretches that Aronimink demands, Smalley has a chance to turn a solid year into something much bigger before the week is over.
