Smalley and McNealy lead PGA Championship as Scheffler hangs on

Aronimink Golf Club took control of the 108th PGA Championship, squeezing elite players with narrow targets, firm pressure and a leaderboard that never stretched far. After 36 holes in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, Alex Smalley and Maverick McNealy shared the lead at 4-under-par, while Scottie Scheffler, the defending champion, was still close enough to keep the tournament within reach.

The setup, not the scorecard, defined the week. Scheffler said the pin locations were the hardest he had ever faced, a reflection of how the PGA of America pushed them as far as they could. That decision helped turn the second round into a survival test, and it left 15 players within two strokes of the lead, the most after 36 holes of a major championship since The Open Championship in 2002.

Aronimink made that challenge feel deliberate. The Donald Ross design, restored by Gil Hanse from 2016 to 2018, returned to the PGA Championship for the first time since 1962, and the club had already carried rare major history as the first venue to host all three of the PGA of America’s rotating major championships. The course’s movement, angles and guarded greens demanded patience instead of raw power, and the leaderboard showed it.

That is what made the scoring context matter. Scheffler won the 2025 PGA Championship at 11-under 273, with Harris English, Bryson DeChambeau and Davis Riley tied for second at 6-under. At Aronimink, the front-runners were only four shots under par halfway through, a sign that this championship was rewarding control, not just speed and distance. The 2026 field included all 50 players in the top 50 of the Official World Golf Ranking and all 25 players in the top 25 of the FedExCup standings, yet the course still kept the best players bunched together.

The financial stakes rose with the difficulty. The total purse reached $20.5 million, up from $19 million in 2025, and the winner was set to take $3.69 million, compared with $3.42 million a year earlier. But at Aronimink, the larger story was not money or star power. It was a major championship reminding the game’s biggest names that a true test can still punish impatience, expose weakness and reward the player who can handle every shot the course demands.