A Crash Course In Sunday's Appealing (Really) Leaders

I know, I know you haven't heard of them but two of the leaders have been adored by scribblers for months and now they are under the microscope Sunday at the PGA. With a wide open leaderboard, they could be gone by the time CBS goes to its first commercial break, but they are still worth getting to know. Dave Kindred offers this crash course.

Sean Martin offers a meat and potatoes look at Brendan Steele and Jason Dufner. And God bless these young, eager major contenders who both gave interviews to Golfweek that are posted on the same page.

Brett Avery crunches some numbers to see how the Steele's, Dufner's and Bradley's will hold up Sunday, along with other stats.

8. For those wondering if Steele will collapse Sunday, he ranks 14th on the PGA Tour this season in final-round scoring average (69.91). (h/t to John Antonini of Golf World staff.) Among other contenders, Steele is outranked by Donald (2nd, 68.70), Schwartzel (4th, 69.18), Nick Watney (9th, 69.50) and David Toms (11th, 69.64).

Brian Wacker reports on Dufner's candid post round comments. I don't know if he'll be playing in the Playoffs as long as Auburn football is around.

While Dufner was in college, for example, he would have a few beers and goof off with his friends trying to hit things — a lamp post, the engineering building on campus. One particular night, Dufner took aim at the light atop one of those lamp posts and smashed it from 150 yards away.

“Yeah, I hit it pretty good,” Dufner recalled. “We’d have a couple beers and everybody would try to show off for each other or maybe some of the girls who were there. Those were probably my most delinquent years in college.

“After that I figured I needed to do something better with my life than drinking beers and hitting golf balls at lamp posts at two in the morning.”

Like try to play well enough to take the rest of this season off so he could watch college football. When Dufner was discussing his goals with his coach Chuck Cook a couple of years ago, that’s what he told him his goal was.

“Most people say win tournaments, win majors,” Dufner said. “He said ‘You’re easy, all you want to do is finish before football season.’"