{"id":675570,"date":"2026-05-17T13:37:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T13:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/675570\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T13:37:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T13:37:13","slug":"who-is-alex-smalley-the-pga-championship-contender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/675570\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Is Alex Smalley? The PGA Championship Contender"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"elk-29c590ec-fe97-4360-b911-56615d2a60a0\">Everyone has their own interesting story of how they got to the top of the game. For Alex Smalley, it began in the backyard in the snow in North Carolina&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"elk-aa55d5a9-8794-484c-bf11-6e0967ba1c30\" class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\"\/>Alex Smalley Facts<\/p>\n<p id=\"elk-8be63c98-1c47-4e1b-9cf3-38924cc71924\">1. He was born in Rochester, New York on October, 21, 1996<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"elk-seasonal\" class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\"\/><\/p>\n<p id=\"elk-8be63c98-1c47-4e1b-9cf3-38924cc71924-1\">2. His first golf memory was hitting a rubber golf ball in his backyard in the snow in North Carolina<\/p>\n<p>            You may like<\/p>\n<p>3. He played a few different sports growing up before focusing on golf from around the age of 10<\/p>\n<p>4. He&#8217;s a big fan of Disney World<\/p>\n<p>5. He graduated from Duke University with a 3.6 GPA, where he set the record for the lowest scoring average at 71.32 and the single-season scoring record of 70.35<\/p>\n<p>6. Smalley once beat <a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.golfmonthly.com\/tag\/scottie-scheffler\" data-auto-tag-linker=\"true\" data-url=\"https:\/\/www.golfmonthly.com\/tag\/scottie-scheffler\" data-hl-processed=\"none\" data-mrf-recirculation=\"inline-link\" data-before-rewrite-localise=\"https:\/\/www.golfmonthly.com\/tag\/scottie-scheffler\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Scottie Scheffler<\/a> 5&amp;4 in a singles match at the 2018 NCAA Championships, a victory that helped his Blue Devils team into the semifinals<\/p>\n<p class=\"newsletter-form__strapline\">Subscribe to the Golf Monthly newsletter to stay up to date with all the latest tour news, equipment news, reviews, head-to-heads and buyer\u2019s guides from our team of experienced experts.<\/p>\n<p>7. Finished one stroke back of the all-time scoring record during the strokeplay of the 2016 US Amateur<\/p>\n<p>8. He was a member of both the 2019 US Arnold Palmer Cup team and the Walker Cup team<\/p>\n<p>9. Smalley made his PGA Tour debut, qualifying for the 2017 US Open at Erin Hills when he was an amateur, shooting seven-under par in the 36-hole qualifier<\/p>\n<p>            What to read next<\/p>\n<p class=\"vanilla-image-block\" style=\"padding-top:66.78%;\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/htnLg2JyfeGzMaScWYfhwZ.jpg\" alt=\"Alex Smalley Walker Cup\"   loading=\"lazy\" data-new-v2-image=\"true\" data-original-mos=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/htnLg2JyfeGzMaScWYfhwZ.jpg\" data-pin-media=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/htnLg2JyfeGzMaScWYfhwZ.jpg\" class=\"rounded-[var(--image--border-radius,0)]\"\/>\n<\/p>\n<p>Alex Smalley in Walker Cup action in 2019<\/p>\n<p>(Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n<p id=\"elk-6929cfc1-77a3-4170-9f8f-c38d00c5898f\">10. He turned professional in 2019<\/p>\n<p>11. He earned his PGA Tour card for the first time in 2021<\/p>\n<p>12. His father, Terry, and mother, Maria, have both caddied for him during his career<\/p>\n<p>13. Maria sometimes takes videos of him when he&#8217;s playing and sends them to his coach. She also manages the statistics program he uses<\/p>\n<p>14. He carries no more than two tees in his right pocket during a round<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"elk-de35ee03-9c00-4596-be86-2d89edffd998\" class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\"\/>Alex Smalley BioSwipe to scroll horizontally<\/p>\n<p>Born<\/p>\n<p>October 21, 1996 &#8211; Rochester, New York<\/p>\n<p>Resides<\/p>\n<p>Greensboro, North Carolina<\/p>\n<p>Height<\/p>\n<p>6ft (1.83m)<\/p>\n<p>College<\/p>\n<p>Duke University<\/p>\n<p>Turned Pro<\/p>\n<p>2019<\/p>\n<p>Former Tours<\/p>\n<p>Korn Ferry Tour, PGA Tour Canada<\/p>\n<p>Current Tours<\/p>\n<p>PGA Tour<\/p>\n<p>Pro Wins<\/p>\n<p>0<\/p>\n<p>Highest OWGR<\/p>\n<p>63rd<\/p>\n<p>Best Major Finish<\/p>\n<p>T23rd (2023 PGA Championship)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Everyone has their own interesting story of how they got to the top of the game. For Alex&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-675570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}