BYRON NELSON: It’s been an interesting two days at TPC Four Seasons, and an unexpected name currently sits atop the leaderboard with 36 holes remaining.
Jason Kokrak is the man of the moment, as he fired a brilliant bogey-free 62 on Friday to move to 12-under, a whopping five shots clear of the rest of the field. It’s the largest 36-hole lead we’ve seen on Tour this year and the largest halfway margin in this tournament’s 73-year history.
For Kokrak, these are uncharted waters: the 31-year old Canadian has never won in 145 PGA Tour starts, and he has some big names lurking behind him, with former FedEx Cup champion Billy Horschel sitting in solo second at 7-under and none other than world No. 1 Dustin Johnson joining a group of three others at minus-6. Johnson and Kokrak sit atop BETDAQ’s Win Market, with the former seeing his price shorten from 5.0 to 3.55 over the last two days and the latter rocketing from triple-digit obscurity to 3.5. The fact that you can still get the man with a 5-shot lead at a price like 3.5 just speaks to Kokrak’s inexperience and the difficulty of nailing down your first victory.
Unfortunately, our three pre-tournament selections have not fared particularly well: Marc Leishman sits at 1-under, eleven shots off the pace, and has seen his price go from 60.0 to 151.0; Tony Finau is one behind Leishman after a dreadful 75 on Thursday followed by an inspired 65 on Friday; and Graham DeLaet missed the cut. So we’re not off to the greatest of starts this week, but there’s still plenty of time to salvage things and this leaderboard offers real opportunity, for if Kokrak backslides, it really is anybody’s tournament– 23 players are currently within 4 shots of second place.
Here are a few guys who might be worth taking a look at as we head into Saturday:
WIN MARKET
Recommendations to BACK (odds in parenthesis)
Bud Cauley (17.0)- Cauley is tied for third at 6-under yet can still be had at 17.0, making him my favorite bet on the board right now. He had been red-hot coming into the week, logging top-10 finishes in each of his past three starts, and we knew he liked TPC Four Seasons after seeing him finish 4th in this tournament last year. I think Cauley can really draw on last year’s experience here– he found himself tied for the lead heading into Saturday after opening with rounds of 64 and 65, but he let his foot off the gas a little bit, shooting 68 on Saturday and 70 on Sunday, and still only lost by two. That has to give him some confidence, and given his current form it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he threw up something in the mid-60s on Saturday and really put himself in the mix. Kokrak’s not the only one with an excellent chance at his first victory this week…
Jason Dufner (51.0)- In a situation like this, with a big pack bunched a few strokes behind the leader, we tend to really focus on the players who are closest in pursuit and sometimes ignore guys who are just a shot or two behind them. Closing the gap on the leader seems like a monumental task when the margin is something like 5 shots, as it is now, so we must look at this leaderboard as if the current leader doesn’t exist. Wipe away Kokrak’s 12-under, and what do we have? Well, we have one at 7-under and no fewer than 22 players within four shots of him. One of those players is Dufner, who has carded rounds of 68 and 69 and has yet to make a bogey on the back nine this week. Of all the guys sitting at 3 or 4-under, Duf is the most dangerous, simply because of his history here: not only is he a past champion, having won in 2012, but he has three additional top-10 finishes in this tournament in six career starts, so it’s pretty obvious that he feels very comfortable at TPC Four Seasons. If Kokrak blows up, Dufner could find himself right in the mix again on Sunday, and we know he can finish the deal.
Grayson Murray (81.0)- While I’m a little bitter at Murray for deleting his highly-entertaining Twitter account, I recognize that he’s a great value here as a 81.0 longshot who sits just two strokes behind second place. He’s only a rookie and has never really been in contention on Sunday, but he did win on the Web.com Tour last year, and he held the first-round lead at the Wells Fargo two weeks ago, so if nothing else he’s starting to flash. He was absolutely tremendous on Friday, carding 7 birdies and no bogies in his round of 63, and afterwards he said that a round like that had been “in the making for awhile”, indicating that he’s been happy with the way his game has been progressing lately. There’s nothing fluky about a bogey-free round in which someone hits 16 greens, and that type of ball-striking could carry Murray a long way this weekend if he can keep his emotions in check. I believe he’s worth a bet at a price like 81.0.
