Alex Smalley leads PGA at 6-under

Alex Smalley enters Sunday with the lead at the PGA Championship, but the gap is small and the board is crowded. The 29-year-old American reached 6-under par with a third-round 68 on Saturday, May 16, at Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania. PGA Tour coverage said Smalley is the only player to break par in all three rounds. Official PGA Championship starting times show he will play in the final group on Sunday with Germany’s Matti Schmid. (pgatour.com) The leaderboard behind him is tight. Official PGA Championship listings showed Schmid, Aaron Rai, Ludvig Aberg, Nick Taylor and Jon Rahm tied for second at 4-under entering the final round. (pgatour.com) Rory McIlroy and Xander Schauffele were among the players at 3-under, still close enough to contend with one low round. (pgachampionship.com) PGA Tour coverage described the event as “quite literally anybody’s tournament,” quoting Scottie Scheffler after a congested moving day. ### How did Smalley get to the top? Alex Smalley climbed into the solo lead with a late surge on Saturday. PGA Tour coverage said he made six birdies over his last 10 holes after a rough start, turning a crowded leaderboard into a two-shot advantage by day’s end. That finish kept the championship from producing what the PGA Tour said would have been the largest 54-hole logjam in major championship history. (pgatour.com) The 68 mattered because scoring has been difficult all week at Aronimink. PGA Tour coverage said Smalley is the only player in the field to stay under par in each of the first three rounds, a measure of consistency that separated him from a pack that kept shifting throughout Saturday. (pgachampionship.com) ### Who is closest going into Sunday? Matti Schmid will have the first direct chance to pressure Smalley because he is paired with him in the final group at 2:35 p.m. ET. Official starting times released by the PGA Championship listed Schmid at 4-under, two shots back. Nick Taylor and Jon Rahm go out 10 minutes earlier at 2:25 p.m. ET, while Aaron Rai and Ludvig Aberg tee off at 2:15 p.m. ET. (pgatour.com) Rory McIlroy and Xander Schauffele start at 2:05 p.m. ET from 3-under. That places two recent major champions within three shots of the lead before the final round begins, with Patrick Reed and Maverick McNealy also close at 3-under in the 1:55 p.m. pairing. ### How crowded is this leaderboard, really? (pgatour.com) CBS reported that 22 players were within four shots of the lead after 54 holes. PGA Tour coverage also said that midway through the third round, 28 players were separated by two shots, underscoring how little separation the course produced before Smalley’s finish. Scottie Scheffler summed up the congestion in comments carried by the PGA Tour. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Scheffler said of the leaderboard, according to the tour’s coverage from Saturday. (pgachampionship.com) ### What does Sunday’s order tell us? Sunday’s schedule puts most of the leading names on the course in the final 90 minutes of tee times. (pgachampionship.com) Official PGA Championship pairings show McIlroy and Schauffele at 2:05 p.m. ET, Rai and Aberg at 2:15 p.m. ET, Taylor and Rahm at 2:25 p.m. ET, and Smalley with Schmid at 2:35 p.m. ET. The final round starts much earlier for the full field. The PGA Championship said first-round Sunday tee times begin at 7:40 a.m. (cbssports.com) ET off the first tee at Aronimink, with live scoring available through the championship leaderboard. ### Where can the tournament be followed on Sunday? The PGA Championship’s official site is carrying live scoring and posted the full final-round starting times for May 17. (pgatour.com) The event page lists Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown Square as the host venue for the 108th PGA Championship, running May 11-17. Sunday’s final pairing of Alex Smalley and Matti Schmid is scheduled for 2:35 p.m. ET, with Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele and Ludvig Aberg all teeing off in the preceding half-hour. (pgachampionship.com 1) (pgachampionship.com 2)