PGA Championship: Who are these guys? Stars fade as lesser-knowns take center stage at Quail Hollow
Jhonattan Vegas, ranked 70th in the world, leads the pack at 7-under after a remarkable round of 64. He's followed by Cam Davis and Ryan Gerard at -5, and then five players at -4, plus another dozen or so players at -3. You probably know Donald; he's a former world No. 1 and the captain of the European Ryder Cup team, and you may know Vegas because, well, his name is Vegas, but it's OK if you don't know the others. The beauty of golf is that on any given day, a player can have the round of his life and vault himself up to the top of the leaderboard. And on Thursday, a whole lot of players did exactly that.
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Consider this: according to the Elias Sports Bureau, this is only the second time that a PGA Championship has had zero top-10 players in the Official World Golf Rankings in the top 10 at the end of a round. Ze-ro. The only other instance of this came in the 2021 PGA Championship at Kiawah, when the highest-ranked player at the end of round 2 was Brooks Koepka, ranked 13th in the world at the time.
The highest-ranked player in the world in the top 10 at Quail Hollow is Keegan Bradley, who's ranked No. 19. He's currently tied for ninth as one of the near-dozen at -3. World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler lurks at -2, but there are 19 players between him and the lead.
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What all this means is that there will be some fascinating and under-told, or untold, stories from this first round, like that of Gerard, who visited this course as a kid and played golf at nearby UNC. Naturally, he had a full gallery in his corner.
'It's nice when everyone is cheering you on,' he said. 'A lot of people that are wearing the light blue, UNC logo shirts and everything out there. It's a big family of UNC Tar Heels where we all root for each other and support our own and I'm appreciative of all.'
Or Vegas, who is playing in just his fourth major since 2019 and has never finished inside the top 20 at any of the four majors. He bested the field on Thursday by two shots thanks to birdies on five of his final six holes.
Plus, there were moments of sublime beauty. This Justin Thomas chip-in from the water's edge on No. 16 was magnificent:
But that only got Thomas back to +1; he had been as low as +4 after a bogey and a double in his first three holes of the day.
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Thomas, who finished at +2, had plenty of company in the depths of the leaderboard. Rory McIlroy and Xander Schauffele, part of the morning supergroup with Scheffler, finished at +3 and +1, respectively. Schauffele, like Scheffler, placed at least some of the blame on mud balls altering his shot. McIlroy didn't say what he blamed, since he didn't speak to the media after his round.
Meanwhile, the other favorite on the week, Bryson DeChambeau, basically parred his way around the course, making the turn at +1 with just a single bogey on the card. He's at even par. Jordan Spieth, in search of the PGA Championship win that would complete a career grand slam, couldn't get into red numbers. He's at +4. Koepka, once a major-killer, made a mess of Quail Hollow to also finish at +4. LIV's Joaquin Niemann, who has spent so much time lobbying to be included in majors, once again laid down an ugly round, this one a +3. Fellow LIV stars Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson continued to fade further into the distance with scores of +7 and +8, respectively.
There's a long time between Thursday and Sunday, and a whole lot of stars that could step up and drop a tidy 64 or 65 Friday and get right back into this. But on Thursday at the PGA, the supporting actors got their turn in the spotlight.
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