There is a lot of inexperience at the top of the leaderboard.
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As the PGA Championship enters its fourth and final round on Sunday, the leaderboard has a very unique look to it. Unknown golfer Mito Pereira leads the way by three strokes, while Matt Fitzpatrick and Will Zalatoris are tied for second behind him, and Cameron Young and Abraham Ancer round out the top five.
Of these five golfers, four are 27 or younger and have zero PGA Tour wins between them. Only Ancer, who is 31, has ever won on the tour before, and he has only done it one time.
While they may not have won on this tour, that doesn’t mean those four have never won at all. Fitzpatrick has seven European titles to his name, while Pereira has victories on both the Korn Ferry Tour and the PGA Tour Latinoamérica.
The rest of the top 10, however, is then full of previous PGA Tour winners. Séamus Power and his one PGA Tour victory sit at six, then Stewart Cink, Justin Thomas and Bubba Watson are all tied for 7th. Those three golfers have combined for 34 wins on the PGA Tour since Cink’s first victory in 1997.
Seven golfers are tied for No. 10 entering Sunday, but they include former major winners Webb Simpson and Gary Woodland, along with top-40 golfers Max Homa and Sam Burns.
If the inexperienced golfers at the top of the leaderboard falter in any way, there are some battle-tested veterans waiting to pounce and make a move. For Pereira especially to earn his first PGA Tour win at a major, he is going to have to earn it.
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