Alex Smalley shot a 1-under 69 on Friday at Aronimink and moved into a tie for the lead at 4 under at the 2026 PGA Championship. The 29-year-old is sharing the top spot with Maverick McNealy after a round that turned messy late but still left him in control of his first major chase.
Smalley said he was “very pleased with 4 under,” adding that the course “played really difficult the first couple of days with the wind.” That scorecard mattered because it kept him in front on a day when a rules official warned his group about slow play as they made the turn, and he still had to survive three bogeys after that point.
The finish showed both sides of Smalley’s round. He opened with a 33 on his front nine, then made two birdies in his final six holes to salvage the day and stay tied for the lead. It was his fifth major start, and he arrived at Aronimink with momentum already building after four top-10 results this season, including a tie for second in the team-format Zurich Classic and a tie for 17th at the Truist Championship last week.
The family operation behind his game is as unusual as the leaderboard position. Maria Smalley, his mother and former caddie, has tracked his tournament round data since his senior year of high school, kept it through his Duke career and continued after he turned professional. She uses an app called Shots to Hole and records his distance to the flag, club selection and wind direction on every hole at every event, along with altitude, lie and slope when those are available. She also keeps iPhone videos of his swing.
Maria Smalley said, “It’s all finally coming together,” a comment that fits a player whose numbers have started to match the work behind them. She said she began using the app after a coach mentioned it during a college recruiting trip, and she has been feeding the system ever since. “Luckily, I got a new phone back in December,” she said. “Because my other one, I was constantly backing up and deleting stuff. Sometimes I go back and delete certain ones, but it’s funny, because his coach asked me, ‘Do you have anything from like, 5 years ago?’ and I’m like, yes, I do!”
That data trail gives Smalley a more detailed picture of his game than the Tour’s standard shot tracking, and it has become part of how he evaluates each start. He qualified for the PGA Championship through the Official World ranking, arrived as a steady presence rather than a headline act, and then put himself in position to leave Friday as one of the names atop the board. The question now is whether he can keep the round-by-round discipline that got him there when the pressure rises over the weekend.
