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00:00So, let's get right to that tour championship action
00:06because let's look at the top of the leaderboard with the
00:09starting strokes and not a shocker once again to find
00:12Scottie Shepler's name at the top of the board. He started at
00:15ten under fired the round of the day, a six under sixty-five
00:19yesterday, and now has a seven shot lead at sixteen under over
00:24second place. Uh Xander Shafley started at eight under uh shot
00:29a one under seventy yesterday. He is at nine under and
00:32Kolmorkawa shot uh sixty-six yesterday. That's a five under
00:36round that moved him from four under to nine under. So, that's
00:40what you're gonna see kinda going out in those in the the
00:42the leader groups. We also have Adam Scott and Sam Burns uh
00:46Wyndham Clark, Hideki Matsuyama, and Keegan Bradley uh tied for
00:50fourth at that score of eight under but it's Scottie out to a
00:54big lead and that's one that uh if we've looked at tour this
00:57year, you spot Scottie seven strokes. Uh it's pretty much
01:01over. Uh you don't even need to spot Scottie Strokes for for
01:04the most part that we've seen a number of come from behind wins
01:07for Scottie Shepler on tour this year but I know it's a
01:09Friday. I know there's a lot of golf be played but we're we're
01:12in a good position for Scottie to finally convert on a tour
01:16championship win after coming up short each of the past two
01:19years. Now, I think the question, you know, must be
01:22asked, what's different for Scottie this year because this
01:24is a place where he struggled in the past and and and why do
01:27you get off to such a good start here? Uh to me, the story
01:30of Scottie's round on Thursday and really everyone in the
01:32field is the the state of this golf course and and the way
01:36it's been restored in this past year by Andrew Green who you
01:39just heard from in a couple of preceding segments and so uh
01:43what Andrew did is he took a 1949 aerial photograph of East
01:46Lake and he tried to take the course back as much as he could
01:50to that that vision and so that meant moving bunkers around
01:54messing with some different contours changing the shape of
01:57some greens that had gotten very circle circular but in in
02:00a more modern sense, it meant regrassing uh for both
02:05performance and grass health long term and anytime you do a
02:09regrassing on a course, no matter how good your resources
02:13are and and you know, what top notch the the equipment you're
02:16using is and the grass you're using is there is a a bedding
02:20in period that happens for that grass to sort of settle and and
02:23essentially what we're seeing is there is what is called
02:27thatch which is sort of a layer of organic matter that lives
02:30underneath the surface for those grasses that courses over
02:33time that build up happens and and it's sort of a there's a
02:37layer of give so to speak where that those green surfaces in
02:41particular are not so firm. So why does that matter? That
02:44feels like grass nerd stuff. We don't care. The reason why that
02:47matters is this is that these greens are exceptionally firm
02:51right now and so what the tour did yesterday was or I should
02:56say Thursday was they put a lot of pin locations in the middle
03:00of these greens which is easily accessible for tour pros, the
03:03best players in the game to score uh so and the reason they
03:07did that is is because with a lot of these approach shots,
03:09especially from longer distances, balls that are that
03:13are, you know, depending on the angle of attack, these balls on
03:16firm surfaces are going to land and roll out a ton and guys
03:19aren't going to be able to hold greens and then you're looking
03:21at the course and the tournament and wondering if
03:22it's a really a fair test of these guys. Uh what I heard
03:26from all these players coming off the course yesterday was
03:29that this was a good way to kind of ease into the
03:31tournament from a tour setup perspective. You you had, you
03:34know, pins that weren't insanely difficult. Um you were
03:37giving guys chances to score. That's reflected with most of
03:40the leaderboard here. Uh and and so I think what that means
03:43is heading into the weekend is we could see some T locations
03:47move back. We could see some pins pushed to more difficult
03:50places but the product of making the pins easy on a
03:54Thursday is that you let the best player in the world go
03:57out and go pin hunting and now he's seven shots up and this
04:00thing might be put to bed already. I don't think
04:02anything uh other than Scottie Scheffler hoisting his first
04:06FedEx Cup uh playoff trophy at the end of this weekend uh will
04:09be the end result at East Lake with this maiden voyage uh
04:13post Andrew Green's restoration.