PGA Championship 2026: Alex Smalley was my teammate in college. Here are 4 things I learned from him

No one who played with Alex Smalley in college is surprised to see him contending in the PGA Championship. I should know—I was his teammate at Duke and was lucky enough to practice and play alongside him, learning plenty along the way.

Smalley winning on tour—or a major championship—is just a matter of time. At Duke, he was an All-American, competed for the U.S. in the 2019 Walker Cup, and graduated with the program’s all-time leading scoring record. Now with over $10 million in career earnings on the PGA Tour, it’s fun to reflect on a time when it was just a few of us on the practice facility at Duke University Golf Club.

Here’s a few things I picked up from Smalley.

1. Distance wedges are everything

I’ve never seen anyone practice shots from 50-120 yards more than Smalley. Every range session would begin the same: he’d fill two medium-sized buckets with balls and the first bucket was entirely devoted to shots under 120 yards. The Duke practice facility has numerous greens and pins for short wedge shots, and Alex would rotate around the various pins, often for 30 minutes.

His practice was never hurried; rather, he took his time to figure out the distance of each flag and would diligently go through a routine for each shot. The results showed his work. I’ve never seen a player with better trajectory or distance control with short wedge shots. His go-to wedge shot flew quite low and had a hint of draw spin—a wedge shot that I’ve found works best to control distance.

These shots helped him score so well. On the days that he was driving it well, his wedge play would give him close looks for birdie that allowed him to go low. There were times, though, that he was struggling with his ball-striking, and his wedge play kept him in the round. When he got in trouble off the tee, he would regularly chip out and get up and down from 100 yards to save par. It's the reason I never saw him shoot more than a few over par.

2. Groove two driver swings

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Darren Carroll/PGA of America

Smalley had elite command of his fairway-finder tee shot. In addition to practicing his normal driver swing, he would regularly tee the ball extremely low and hit stinger fade shots. These shots went remarkably low—about half the height of his normal drives, I’d say. By developing this go-to shot, Alex had an option to lean on when he was playing a tighter hole, in poor conditions, or when he wasn’t swinging his best.