![\"NEWTOWN,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/002460f6-614.jpg\"\/)
\nAlex Smalley holds the lead into the final day<\/p>\n
Rory McIlroy believes his superb third round at the US PGA Championship has given himself a chance of clinching a seventh major title – if he can chase down the lead of little-known Alex Smalley.<\/p>\n
The 37-year-old Holywood star carded six birdies on his way to a four-under-par 66, putting him one back from the leaders as he signed his card.<\/p>\n
That followed Friday’s 67 as he hit back from a four-over-par opening round which dented his hopes of sealing back-to-back majors.<\/p>\n
Smalley, the overnight joint-leader heading into the third round, got off to a disastrous start, dropping three shots in four holes. But the American clawed his way back into contetion and produced a phenomneal back nine – capping it off with a wonderful birdie on the 18th hole to grab a two-shot lead.<\/p>\n
His third-round 68 gives hi ma two-shot cushion over the chasing pack.<\/p>\n
McIlroy was among the morning starters at Aronimink Golf Club, teeing off over three-and-a-half hours before the leaders.<\/p>\n
He briefly moved alongside the four-under mark of overnight leaders Maverick McNealy and Alex Smalley but a bogey at the 17th pegged him back.<\/p>\n
\nAlex Smalley holds the lead into the final day<\/p>\n
McIlroy was unsure as to where the lead might sit come the end of the day, with the likes of Justin Thomas and Jon Rahm rattling in birdies on the screen behind him as he spoke to the media.<\/p>\n
“I feel like I still did enough to think I have a chance going into tomorrow,” he said.<\/p>\n
“If I had played the last three holes at one under instead of one over, I would have got to five under.<\/p>\n
“I sort of thought if I could go out today and get to that, it would make the leaders shoot under par to either be with me or ahead of me.<\/p>\n
“So I didn\u2019t get there. I made a couple of mistakes the last three holes.”<\/p>\n
The tough scoring conditions of the first two days eased on Saturday as the early starters, including Justin Rose and Michael Kim, began to notch a string of birdies.<\/p>\n
McIlroy needed to make a move and he did just that to put himself amongst the title hopefuls on an incredibly congested leaderboard.<\/p>\n
The Northern Irishman intends to follow some of the afternoon action but does have other viewing to be getting on with.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019ll watch a little bit of it,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019ll go back to the house and put the feet up. I started Batman: The Dark Knight last night, so I\u2019ll try and finish that. That\u2019s one of my go-tos to try to forget about things.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019ll be curious just to see how the leaders go this afternoon. The wind was whipping at the end.<\/p>\n
“We\u2019ll see if it continues to blow as hard as that, I\u2019d certainly like it to blow as hard as that as the afternoon goes on, but we\u2019ll see.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rory McIlroy believes his superb third round at the US PGA Championship has given himself a chance of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-452719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}