Alex Smalley doesn’t seek the spotlight, but occasionally it finds him.

That was the case at the PGA Championship at Aronimink Golf Club outside Philadelphia in May when Smalley, who lives in Jamestown, found himself the center of attention. In the sixth year of a solid PGA Tour career, Smalley owned a two-stroke lead entering the final round of the year’s second major, putting him 18 holes away from a career-altering victory in a major championship.

It was an unlikely place for Smalley and his Sunday playing partner, Matti Schmid, considering that between them they had zero PGA Tour victories and a minimal number of top-five finishes, few enough that they wouldn’t require the standard number of fingers and toes to count them all.

But golf can be funny that way.

And though Smalley ultimately finished tied for second, three strokes behind winner Aaron Rai, the experience helped redefine the career of the understated 29-year-old, who is a member at Sedgefield Country Club, site of the Wyndham Championship.

Despite the fact that he shared the lead with 18 holes remaining in a national championship, Smalley did his best to make it a Saturday night like any other.

“I was in the final group at the John Deere [Classic] a few years ago and it was the first time, so the thoughts were running through my head and I didn’t sleep great,” Smalley says.

“This felt like a pretty standard Saturday night.”

That meant a quiet evening with Smalley studying his yardage book, a hockey game on in the background and trying his best to sleep through the night. Two out of the three came easily, the sleep not so much.

On Sunday, Smalley shot 70 to finish tied for second with Jon Rahm, and though Smalley didn’t win the Wanamaker Trophy, the week reinforced his belief that he belonged in the spot where he found himself — near the top of the leaderboard.

“I didn’t get off to the best start Saturday or Sunday, but I was able to fight my way back both days and have decent finishes to both rounds. It just goes to show that even when I have a bad start I can hang in there and fight and claw my way back. That was a good realization to have,” Smalley says.

Back home the next week, Smalley was congratulated by some Sedgefield Country Club members who recognized him. “I told them it still doesn’t feel real, like it almost didn’t happen but it did,” he says.

Smalley grew up in Wake Forest (the town, not the university), about a 90-minute drive from Jamestown where his family moved in the summer of 2017, between his sophomore and junior years at Duke University.

Once Smalley graduated, he decided to stick around and now lives close to his parents. When he’s not on the road, Smalley tends to stay close to home, so close that when he’s asked if he has a favorite dinner spot or two, nothing comes immediately to mind.

“My parents don’t live far away so I go there pretty frequently,” he says.

And when Smalley is on the road playing tournament golf, his mother, Maria, is rarely far behind. Early in his career, his mother caddied for him, but as he has settled into his PGA Tour life, Maria is there to document her son’s performance, using it as a foundational piece.

She walks every round her son plays, takes detailed notes on every hole down to the yardage, which direction the wind was blowing and any other pertinent details, often capturing shots with her cellphone.

It’s their version of analytics, accentuating the detailed data available through the PGA Tour’s ShotLink system. The information and the videos go back years and, in the broader sense, document Smalley’s steady progression as a player.

Smalley’s mother worked in chemical analysis after graduating from Duke with a PhD and his father, Terry, is an assistant professor of biochemistry at Wake Forest University after spending more than two decades in the pharmaceutical business.

Smalley turned pro in 2019 after graduating from Duke, where he won three college tournaments and played on the 2019 United States Walker Cup team, posting a 3–1 record.

He won consecutive Sunnehanna Amateurs in 2018–19, becoming the first player since Rickie Fowler to win the prestigious event two years in a row.

On the PGA Tour since 2021, Smalley has been a consistent performer, blossoming this spring with the best run of his pro career, a stretch that included a pair of runner-up finishes, a tie for third and a tie for seventh in five events.

“Golf is like a roller coaster. When you’re playing well you’re at a peak, you want to stay at that peak for as long as you can. And then inevitably there will be valleys and you want to get out of those as quickly as you can,” Smalley says after having just tied for third at the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial Country Club. “Obviously, I’ve been playing decently well the last few weeks and good golf is fun golf, I guess. Just trying to ride the wave as long as I can.”  OH

Ron Green Jr. has been writing about golf for more than 40 years and is senior writer for Global Golf Post magazine. The first golf tournament he ever attended was the 1965 Greater Greensboro Open at Sedgefield Country Club.