PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 16, 2026

Alex Smalley

Aronimink Golf Club

Flash Quotes

THE MODERATOR: Alex Smalley is with us at the 108th PGA Championship.

Q. Alex, I'm just wondering, you bogey three of your first four holes, in front of you some pretty heralded names up there. How did you keep your wits about yourself, and what did you do to get back on track?

ALEX SMALLEY: Certainly difficult. I had watched the coverage this morning before I arrived on property and saw there were scores out there, certainly at the beginning part of the golf course. Saw a lot of birdies being made. Then by the time that I teed off, the wind had picked up, and it became very difficult to hit a fairway, hit a green, even make a three- or four-footer.

Hit a couple wayward shots early, didn't make it easy on myself. Left myself a lot of par putts of some significant length.

I think the putt on 6 definitely helped calm me down a little bit. I made a great par on 6, was able to find a fairway on 7, which is very difficult to do with how that fairway slopes. Hit a good wedge shot and made birdie there. So that certainly helped ease me into the rest of the round.

I just try to keep putting one foot in front of the other and just tried to regain my tempo and rhythm in my golf swing because, when that gets off some, I can start hitting it a little wayward. So I just tried to focus in on that. Just tried to play smart and was able to get some back on the back nine.

Q. Did the moment feel too big at all in the beginning? Is that any of it?

ALEX SMALLEY: I don't know if it felt too big. It was a comfortable pairing with Maverick. I've played with Maverick before. He's a great guy. I hope it was comfortable for him, too.

I mean, I've been in the final group before, a couple years ago, obviously nothing of this significance, if you want to call it that, or at this stage.

It just felt like another golf tournament, honestly, but I just wasn't executing the shot in front of me the first few holes. I was putting a lot of undue stress on myself early on.

Then as I mentioned before, the putt on 6 kind of helped me ease into things and then had a great up-and-down on 9 from over that green for birdie. Surprisingly felt fairly comfortable for most of the back nine given -- I was aware of my position. I was aware of where I was and felt pretty darn comfortable for most of the back nine, which was kind of soothing a little bit for my mentality.

Q. You have a lot of time before you're going to tee off tomorrow. I'm just curious, I know your mom's here, parents are here, but is there a swing coach, mental coach, girlfriend? Who on your team, who will you be talking to the next 12, 18 hours?

ALEX SMALLEY: I'll probably have less time between tee times today and tomorrow than I did Friday to today. I played in the morning on Friday. So I had a little bit more time between rounds there.

I don't have a mental coach. My golf coach was here through Thursday, but he left. My dad flew up this morning from Greensboro. So he came in this morning. My agent was staying at the house that we were renting, but we had to kick him out because my dad came in. My physio, my trainer's here still, agent's here, but he won't be staying at the house.

So I'll just try to treat it just like any other tournament night for a round tomorrow that I typically would.

Q. I'm most curious, yesterday, for example, and obviously today the whole day what that's like for a player when you're playing well and all of a sudden more cameras come follow you, and all of a sudden you've got the CBS people walking in front of you while you're walking the fairway. Does that take you out of things at all?

ALEX SMALLEY: I don't want to toot my own horn or anything, and I mean this in the nicest way possible. I've had that the last couple of weeks. I've been fortunate to play -- fortunate enough to play well the last few weeks to where that's starting to become a norm, if you want to call it that.

Yeah, I mean, once you see cameras show up, you know that you're doing something that's, I guess, worthy of having a camera there.

So I recognize that, but I just try to stay in my own little world and just try to take care of my business and just try to hit each shot the best that I can.

Q. Quickly, it's kind of been almost understood most of the week, the front nine there's more scoring opportunities than back nine. What you just did on the back nine, does that surprise you at all, or was there an opportunity you saw that allowed you to do that?

ALEX SMALLEY: The wind was certainly up when we first started the round. I mean, it was playing fairly difficult. Obviously I wasn't watching coverage, so I had no idea how maybe the four or five guys, the groups in front of me, had started, but it certainly was not easy.

It certainly wasn't as easy as some of the guys had it in the morning when the wind wasn't as strong. I was able to hit a few more fairways on the back nine, was able to take care of some of the scorable holes, I guess, if you want to call them that, but the wind died down a little bit on the back nine.

I had a great birdie on 10, wasn't really expecting to pick one up there, but I did.

They moved 13 up today, and it was drivable. It's still a difficult hole because it's not very wide where the landing zone is or where that green is. Hit a great tee shot there, was able to get up-and-down. Wasn't expecting to make birdie on 15 either, but was able to pick another one up there.

Yeah, I just tried to hit the shot as best as I could. Just tried to hit a good putt. If it went in, great. If not, I was happy with the tap-in. Just tried to keep my speed up around the hole on the putts and just tried to add them up from there.

Q. So 67, 69, 68, you are the only player this week that has shot under par for the first three rounds.

ALEX SMALLEY: Thank you.

Q. What does that mean, in terms of your strategy, in terms of your mindset, and also in terms of your support system, the people that are supporting you this week?

ALEX SMALLEY: Yeah, it's a difficult golf course. Conditions are tough. It's been windy the last few days. Greens were a little firmer today. I anticipate it's going to be that way tomorrow, too, just because of the forecast. It's going to be hot. It's going to be sunny. There's not going to be a whole lot of moisture on the golf course, I would imagine.

Yeah, any time you can shoot under par on a golf course of this caliber, under these conditions, I think anybody would take that. So I'm hoping to put up another under-par score tomorrow. I recognize that it will be difficult because the golf course is playing difficult. The hole locations are probably going to be difficult as well.

We'll just add them up at the end of the day tomorrow and see where that takes me.

Q. And in terms of staying in your own box, like you said, or your own zone, you've done a great job with that until now. The fact that you played with Maverick today, who's another guy under the radar, looks like you're going to play with Matti Schmid tomorrow. Does that help you, you think?

ALEX SMALLEY: I think so. I think it was a comfortable pairing with Maverick and I today. I hope it was for him as well. I played with him a couple times before. He's a great guy. He's very easy to play with. His brother was on the bag, too, Scout; a great family.

I've played with Matti a few times. I think we both graduated college in 2019. He played in Louisville in the ACC, so I'm very familiar with him. Matti and I actually paired up together in the New Orleans event three years ago, so we're good. We're good buddies. We're familiar with each other. So I think that will kind of help both of us tomorrow as well. I'm looking forward to that.

Q. I was reading that your mom has kept pretty close track of your stats and your golf swing and I guess a catalog of a whole bunch of useful things for years now. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about that relationship and her spot on your team.

ALEX SMALLEY: Yeah, obviously I'm very lucky to have both of my parents be on the team with me. My dad and I traveled quite a bit when I was younger. He would be the one that would take me to the golf tournaments, junior golf tournaments. My mom would stay back home with my sister.

My dad still works now, so now kind of in the professional stage of my career, my mom has been traveling with me. We use a statistics program, and she kind of keeps tabs on that side of things. I make notes on my hole location sheet of what club I hit, how far I have to the hole, the putt distance, the break direction, all that, and she kind of plugs all that into the stat system.

I don't really look at it that often. I don't know if she really does, honestly, either. I think she does it more so for the golf coach, to kind of give him highlights of, okay, he's making a lot of his right-to-left putts, but he's missing a lot of his left-to-right putts low, maybe something like that.

She likes to stay ahead out on the golf course. She takes videos of me when I'm out competing in a tournament. If she sees something, she might tell me later that night like, hey, your tempo seemed a little quick today. What did that feel like? Or she'll send them to my golf coach as well so he can kind of see things.

Yeah, that's, honestly, what she does. I'm very lucky to have the team I do behind me. There's a number of people in my team, and she's just one of them.

Q. When did you start dreaming of winning tournaments like the PGA Championship?

ALEX SMALLEY: I would say when I was relatively young. I can't give you an age exactly. I played a few other sports growing up, but it's been strictly golf ever since I was 10. So probably somewhere in that 10, 11-year-old range, maybe a little earlier than that.

Anybody who wants to play golf for a living dreams of winning on the PGA TOUR when they're younger. I recognize that I have an opportunity to do that tomorrow. I recognize that it's on a stage that's a little bit larger than most other TOUR events. I'm trying to downplay that as much as I possibly can just to make it seem like any other golf tournament, because essentially that's all it really is.

So, yeah, I obviously dreamed of this as a kid, and it's funny, it's the Wanamaker trophy, and when I was in college, I stayed in the Wanamaker dorm for three years. So my parents and I have been joking that maybe this would be a tournament that I would win just because of that kind of fact. That's just kind of something that we've joked about even before I made it out here.

It would be pretty cool to actually pull it out tomorrow.