Alex Smalley and Maverick McNealy will open Round 3 of the 2026 PGA Championship tied at the top of the leaderboard at Aronimink Golf Club. Smalley, 29, reached Saturday with another chance to convert a steady week into the biggest result of his career.
That position comes after years of near misses and patient progress. Smalley finished runner-up at the 2022 Corales Puntacana Championship and again at the 2023 John Deere Classic, results that fit the reputation he has built for reliable ball-striking and overall consistency. For a player from Rochester, New York, who first appeared on the circuit at the 2017 U.S. Open and secured his PGA Tour card in September 2022, the chance to spend the weekend near the top of a major championship leaderboard is a major step forward.
McNealy, 30, shares the lead with him as the field moves deeper into the tournament at Aronimink. The two also carry a Duke connection: Smalley played on the Duke golf team for all four years he attended Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and he has a girlfriend, Chelsea Groves, who serves as director of social media for Duke Athletics. The overlap gives Smalley’s rise a familiar thread, even if it is not known exactly where he and Groves met.
The tension now is whether Smalley’s game can hold up under the weight of a major championship weekend. His climb has been built on consistency rather than flash, and Aronimink is demanding enough to punish any small lapse. That is what makes his position so notable: he is not there by accident, but he still has to prove that steady golf can survive the hardest rounds left in front of him.
If Smalley can keep striking the ball the way he has all week, he has a real chance to turn a long, gradual climb into a defining victory.
