To borrow the words of Xander Schauffele from Saturday, this 108th PGA Championship is an “absolute free-for-all.”
Sure, Alex Smalley rolled in five birdie putts in his last 10 holes, including a 14-footer at the par-4 18th, to take a two-shot lead into Sunday at Aronimink Golf Club outside of Philadelphia.
But behind him, it’s more congested than the Schuylkill Expressway at rush hour.
A whopping 21 other competitors are within four shots of Smalley, a group that includes so many heavy-hitters – Jon Rahm, Ludvig Åberg, Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele, Patrick Reed, Justin Rose, Hideki Matsuyama and Chris Gotterup – that Rocky Balboa would be proud. The previous PGA record for number of players at or within four shots of the 54-hole lead, according to stats guru Justin Ray, was 18.
Bring five shots into the mix and pushes the total to 30 contenders, including world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and three-time PGA champion Brooks Koepka.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Scheffler said. “Going into tomorrow, it’s quite literally anybody’s tournament.”
Don’t blink at the Mink.
Smalley and Maverick McNealy began Saturday tied for the lead at 4 under, but they gained company in McIlroy before even teeing off at 2:40 p.m. local. Twenty minutes later, Rahm had climbed to 4 under, tied with just McNealy, and an hour after that, Aaron Rai passed both, reaching 5 under.
Rahm and Gotterup would soon tie Rai, and the carousel continued all afternoon, with 13 different players holding at least a share of the lead, until Smalley righted his ship, overcoming a 3-over start through four holes to shoot 2-under 68 in what were noticeably tougher scoring conditions than the pairs who teed off hours earlier.
“I had watched the coverage this morning … saw a lot of birdies being made,” Smalley said. “Then by the time that I teed off, the wind had picked up, and it became very difficult to hit a fairway, hit a green, even make a 3- or 4-footer.”
The scoring average for Round 3 was 70 on the dot, over two-and-half shots tougher than the previous day thanks to a few more gettable pins – only a few, though. Of the players in the last six twosomes, only Smalley shot better than Saturday’s mean.
Though the wind generously switched to southwest, it increased to near 20 mph sustained and 30 mph gusts by mid-afternoon, which stiffened the challenge of hitting and handling on Aronimink’s treacherous, slopey Donald Ross greens.
Scheffler, whose 71 dropped him to 1 under, missed five putts inside of 8 feet, including two from less than 5 feet.
“It’s kind of like a little bit of a dice roll at times when you have so much slope and so much wind,” Scheffler said.
Through 54 holes, Aronimink is yielding only a 65.39% make rate on putts from 4-8 feet, which would rank it tougher than every PGA Tour course except Riviera so far this season. Some “diabolical” – another Schauffele-ism – hole locations led to 127 three-putts on Thursday alone; for context, there were 190 total three-putts at last month’s Masters.
Rahm lipped out a par putt from just inside that range on No. 18, recording his first three-putt all week and costing himself a spot in the final pairing. But Rahm, who is instead tied at 4 under with Aberg, Rai, Nick Taylor and Matti Schmid, could only tip his cap to the “showmanship” of Kerry Haigh and the PGA setup team.
“They found some incredible hard pin locations out there,” Rahm said. “Usually when we’re practicing, we put our discs out, and there’s definitely quite a few that I would have told Adam [Hayes, my caddie], ‘man, there’s no way they’re going to put a pin there,’ and they did.”
Rahm went on to explain how these Ross surfaces have flummoxed the world’s best.
“You’re going to see very few major championship golf courses where, if you’re in the middle of the green, you’re going to have as hard a time to two-putt as you can on some of the holes out here, especially with the pin locations,” Rahm said. “Usually being in the middle is a safe haven. This week you need to think about where you’re going to leave the ball because the middle isn’t always the best option.”
Reed, who is T-7 with McIlroy, Schauffele and McNealy, added similar thoughts: “There are so many flags this week that are either right on a crown or right in a valley where if the ball’s 2 feet from the hole, it could go a completely different direction, or it could go from straight uphill to downhill. It makes it so hard on putting.”
It’s made it equally tough to prognosticate what will happen on Sunday.
Smalley has only a 17.5% of winning, according to Data Golf’s live model. Nine other players are above 3%, including Scheffler at 3.1%.
Odds-wise, Smalley is +475, followed by Rahm (+500), Aberg (+550), McIlroy (+650) and Schauffele (+1100).
“When it’s a congested Sunday, not always great for the competitor, but it’s great for fans,” Reed said.
McIlroy criticized the course setup on Friday, arguing that the lack of separation was indicative of “not a great setup” and that the PGA was protecting scoring with both birdies and anything worse than bogey hard to come by. He seemed to walk back those comments, at least somewhat, on Saturday after a 66, expressing that he thought there’s been “good balance” in hole locations this week.
That said, McIlroy added, “I feel like they’ve used a lot of the hard ones up.”
“As every day goes on, we just keep learning a little bit more about the golf course and getting a little more comfortable,” McIlroy said, “and that’s what you’re seeing today.”
Smalley, who graduated from Duke in 2019, doesn’t expect that kind of comfort on Sunday – not with the solo lead, not only chasing his first major but his first win as a professional.
“It’s going to be hot,” Smalley said. “It’s going to be sunny. There’s not going to be a whole lot of moisture on the golf course. … The hole locations are probably going to be difficult as well.”
Oh, and it’s most definitely going to be crowded, probably even chaotic at the top.
McIlroy’s evening plans included finishing the Batman film, The Dark Night, his go-to when he wants to get his mind off the golf. One of the best lines in that movie comes from Heath Ledger’s Joker character:
“You know the thing about chaos? It’s fair.”
