Four shots back of winner Aaron Rai, Alex Smalley understood he wasn’t going to win the PGA Championship if he made the 20-foot birdie putt he was standing over on the 18th green Sunday at Aronimink. The question is whether he realized how much he still would walk away with if he could hole the putt?
He made it, and shortly afterward the magnitude of the moment settled in for the 29-year-old PGA Tour pro, playing in just his fifth major championship and never having finished better than T-23 in his prior starts.
The birdied allowed him to close with a 69 and grab a share of second place with Jon Rahm at six under for the championship. In turn, his payday at Aronimink jumped significantly; a four-way tie for fourth would have earned him $981,400, but T-2 was worth $1.8 million. In other words, the putt was worth $822,600. And let’s look at that a little more closely. The most Alex Smalley had ever won in any tournament of his career was $652,000 when he finished T-2 at the 2023 John Deere Classic. So that putt by itself was worth more than his biggest previous payday in his five years on the PGA Tour. (It also joined one of the
The birdie also secured his place in next year’s Masters (anybody in the top four at the PGA gets an invite) and PGA Championship (top 15 and ties get to come back). But that T-2 finish also boosted him from 78th to 42nd in the Official World Golf Ranking and up to 15th in the FedEx Cup points standings, which got him an exemption into next month’s U.S. Open (On Monday, anybody in the top 70 in the OWGR earned an exemption to Shinnecock Hills and the top five players on this year’s FedEx Cup points list not already exempt also got in.)
“I wasn’t really thinking about [the money or exemptions] honestly until I hit the green on 18, saw where I was,” Smalley said on Sunday. “Was really just trying to two-putt, just trying to lag it up. That 20-footer up the hill on 18, I was just trying to get a tap-in. Fortunate enough that it went in.”
Smalley will be making his debut at the Masters and has played in the U.S. Open once before, missing the cut in 2017 at Erin Hills after qualifying as an amateur during his college days at Duke.
There is yet another reward that will come soon for Smalley as well. In one week, His place on the OWGR will also officially get him into the field for the Open Championship in July (top 50 and ties on May 25 earn exemptions).
“This week was special. It was a lot of fun,” Smalley said. “I had a great amount of support out there. I tried not to get caught up in it a whole lot. I tried to just look where my feet were going, but I heard a huge amount of support, and I’m incredibly grateful to state of Pennsylvania and the city of Philadelphia and the surrounding area for rooting me on these last four days.
“As far as this tournament, in terms of my career, who knows? Maybe it’s a springboard. It gives me a lot of confidence coming away from this week to know that I can compete on the PGA Tour and even some of the major championships. So yeah, I think this week will do a lot for me.”
It will also get him in a lot of big tournaments.