2015 TOUR Championship: Tee times, pairings for Friday’s 2nd round at East Lake

The one guy inside the top five in the FedExCup standings that nobody was talking about managed to steal the spotlight on Thursday at the TOUR Championship. All of the pre-tournament hype rightly centered on Jason Day and Jordan Spieth and their last-minute jostling for Player of the Year honors. Rickie Fowler won the FedExCup event sandwiched between Day’s two wins and played with those top two last week in a “young guns” trio. And Bubba Watson is a UGA product and local favorite in Atlanta.

So most of the crowds were following those four, leaving Henrik Stenson as the under-the-radar player from the top five. That top-five status is so critical because it’s the only category that holds the much-publicized “control your own destiny” card. If you win the Tour Championship, you win the FedExCup. Everyone outside of that top five would need help in one form or another. Stenson is the one player from the group who has not won this season and came into the tournament almost unnoticed in that top five.

Well, after just one round, he’s now the headliner. Stenson put twitter on #59Watch, and even #58Watch with his start Thursday afternoon. He was 8-under through his first 12 holes and needed just three birdies (and obviously no bogeys) in his last six holes to become the seventh player to break 60 on the PGA Tour. We often prematurely sound the magic number 59 watch alarm, but the way Stenson was lighting it up, and with this East Lake course gettable coming into the house, this seemed like the best opportunity we’ve had since Jim Furyk posted 59 two years ago in the FedExCup.

Stenson stalled out over those final six holes and posted a 7-under 63, but he’s still in the driver’s seat. The Swede has played five rounds at this event and led after every single one of them. He’s won the FedExCup before and obviously knows how to make his way around this East Lake setup. He’s the only player from the top five in the FEC standings near the bottom of the tee sheet, which is re-paired for the second round.

This event is the only tournament of the season that re-pairs the players by score on Friday, which makes sense given the extremely limited field. The field size shrunk even more on Thursday, when Louis Oosthuizen withdrew with a hamstring injury early in his opening round. Jim Furyk, who qualified based on his season-long points accrual, backed out on Tuesday after testing the wrist injury that forced his withdrawal last week at the BMW. So we’re down to 28 players for the remaining three rounds.

The small field size gives the Tour a ton of cushion when it comes to scheduling, and they will not send them out until almost noon on Friday. Everyone plays in twosomes and goes off the first tee and with the course relatively clear, the rounds all come in around or even under four hours. Stenson will play with Paul Casey, who shot a 5-under 65 and is two shots off the pace. They tee it off at 2 p.m. ET, an hour after Golf Channel’s afternoon broadcast goes live. Here’s the full tee sheet for the second round (all times ET):

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