Draws and Fades: Look for defending champ Cameron Young to climb leaderboard at Wyndham Championship

The first round of the Wyndham Championship gave us a full day of excitement and plenty of birdies to go along with it.

Beau Hossler (+750) set the pace in the morning wave with a 9-under 61. Somehow, that wasn't even his lowest opening round at the Wyndham Championship. Hossler shot a 60 here in 2024 before eventually finishing T12. His 61 on Thursday marked the 15th round of 61 or better on the PGA TOUR this season.

Despite some incredibly low individual rounds, the overall scoring average wasn't quite as outrageous. The field played Sedgefield Country Club at 1.46 strokes under par, with the afternoon wave having a slight advantage.

That's the beauty of Sedgefield, and we saw it throughout the opening round. If you're hitting fairways, you can go extremely low. If you're missing them, the scores will not be in your favor.

Even the reachable par-5 15th gave players problems when they missed the fairway off the tee. Several golfers walked away without birdie simply because they were playing their second shots out of the thick rough instead of having a midiron in from the fairway.

Conditions were pretty friendly for most of Thursday, allowing players to attack from favorable spots. Friday and Saturday could be a little more interesting with winds around 15 mph and a chance of rain later in the afternoon.

And Hossler's 2024 result is a pretty good reminder of why this tournament is far from over. Shooting 60 or 61 on Thursday doesn't guarantee you anything. It doesn't guarantee a win. It doesn't even guarantee a top-10 finish.

That's why I think there's still some money to be made on golfers whose live prices have gotten a little too big after one round.

Keegan Bradley Top 20 including ties (+570 at DraftKings)

As always with some of the longer prices I throw out, be smart with your stake.

I'm taking Keegan Bradley to finish inside the top 20, and it's not simply because he's around the FedExCup bubble and needs a big week. Almost everything about his opening round suggested he should have shot something closer to 65 than 70.

Bradley hasn't exactly been playing lights-out golf recently, but it hasn't been terrible either. He had a shaky start to the season, which wasn't all that surprising after everything that came with the Ryder Cup, but his game has started to level out.

Most importantly, he has now gained strokes on approach in eight straight events.

Bradley didn't play poorly Thursday despite shooting 70, and probably leaving frustrated. He hit 11 of 14 fairways and 13 of 18 greens in regulation while gaining strokes on approach and off the tee.

The problem was his putter.

It was absolutely horrendous.

Bradley lost strokes putting on 10 of 18 holes and really only had one memorable moment on the greens, his eagle on the par-5 fifth. Outside of that, he couldn't make anything.

I'm not going to sit here and pretend Sedgefield has been some incredible course for Bradley. A top-20 finish this week would actually be his best result at the Wyndham Championship.

But this is some of the best approach-form he's brought into this tournament, and Thursday's round was much better than the score suggests.

At +570, it's worth a small sprinkle for me.

Cameron Young Top 20, including ties (+345)

Of the two bets, I like Cameron Young (+10000) quite a bit more.

I think both prices should probably be somewhere closer to +300, but Young's number really stood out to me.

I'm not sure it's possible to have one of your best approach rounds of the season paired with your worst putting round, but that's basically what happened to Young.

He gained +2.43 strokes on approach while losing an absolutely disgusting -4.8 strokes putting (data via BetspertsGolf).

That single round with the putter was worse than any full tournament he has had on the greens this season.

There is some good news.

Nobody in this field has been better in the second round this season than Young. He's gaining an average of +2.69 strokes on the field in Round 2, according to Betsperts. The next closest golfer is at +2.67, and then there's a pretty significant drop to +2.17.

Poor putting isn't exactly anything new with Young. He's had his issues with the flat stick throughout the season, but his ball-striking has usually been good enough to cover some of it.

And let's not forget what happened on these greens last season.

Young won this tournament while gaining across the board. He gained off the tee, on approach, around the green and dominated with the putter.

I'm naturally going to look toward both Bradley and Young's Round 2 unders because I don't believe either one is going to repeat what happened on the greens Thursday.

But at these live prices, you'd almost have to handcuff me to a chair to keep me from betting them.

Especially Young.

If you want a little more protection, Young Top 40 is obviously the safer route at a shorter price. For me, though, +345 for a Top 20 is simply too high. I think this number is probably a dollar, maybe even $1.50, longer than it should be.