It was challenging to tell if we were playing a major championship or TPC Craig Ranch on Thursday, as 64 players fired one-under or better to kick off the 106th rendition of the PGA Championship.
While scoring came from bunches by many in the field, Xander Schauffele continued his quick starts to events in 2024, firing a course-breaking 62 to grab a three-shot lead over Mark Hubbard, Tony Finau and Sahith Theegala. 
We will see if Valhalla can add some extra bite Friday to ramp up the difficulty, but this is why soft courses are always in danger of being picked apart by the best players in the world. There is only so much you can do in these situations.
If you haven't already, you can find me on Twitter (@TeeOffSports). There, I provide a link to my pre-tournament model, a powerful and interactive data spreadsheet that allows user input to create custom golf rankings. That sheet is released every Monday, so be sure to check it out and construct your own numbers from my database of information.
2024 PGA Championship Round 2 Predictions
Kurt Kitayama -125 over Adam Hadwin (FanDuel)
I talked a lot pre-tournament about some of my concerns with Adam Hadwin's stylistic fit for Valhalla Golf Club. I am well aware that a three-under 68 to jump into 18th place after day one doesn't show that downside I had discussed, but my model believes most of his round was the epitome of smoke and mirrors.
Hadwin struggled with his irons specifically, losing 1.69 stokes to the field en route to placing 129th in that section. The off-the-tee metrics delivered more optimism, gaining 0.31 shots, but we got a return that ranked Hadwin 105th in this field when taking his actual ball striking and combining it with his expected short-game output.
While I don't expect Hadwin to continue his scorching +2.62 total with the putter again Friday, it would be a biased article to not at least note that my model saw a positive trajectory in his anticipated results pre-event with the flat stick after grading as the 38th-best putter in this field on similar green types historically.
That will give him a fighting shot since it helped my model to grade him 58th in weighted strokes gained total, but I am going to fade that profile against a golfer that my math liked a lot when diving into Kurt Kitayama.
Notably, the former UNLV product also shot a three-under 68 on Thursday, demonstrating remarkable consistency. He was among a select group of only 12 players who gained strokes in all four critical areas of the board.
I always like these spots where the pre-tournament information aligns with the round one data but didn't appear on the leaderboard. We get that spot here for a matchup that should have seen Kitayama eclipse Hadwin on Thursday by 3.8 strokes but instead ended in a draw.
Let's bet this to win one unit.
