Who Are These Guys? Get to Know the PGA Championship Cinderella Stories

Among the early leaders of the season’s second major are an Australian and an American, and you’re forgiven if you don’t know much about either one.

Cam Davis (left) and Ryan Gerard are unlikely early co-leaders at the PGA Championship. / Imagn

Note: This article has been update to reflect the final Round 1 leaderboard, where Jhonattan Vegas grabbed the lead with a 64 in one of the final groups of the day.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — If you’re a casual golf fan who only drops in for the four majors, you can be forgiven if you don’t recognize many of the names on the first page of the leaderboard after Round 1 of the PGA Championship.

Thursday was just a strange round at Quail Hollow, where the majority of the game’s stars complained about mud balls from soaked fairways and, for one day at least, didn’t show their best.

So that left a leaderboard largely made for Google, including the two players sitting two shots back of leader Jhonattan Vegas.

And if you’re wondering who Cam Davis and Ryan Gerard are, we’re here to help.

Cam Davis

1. The Australian is the more accomplished pro of the two, turning pro in 2016 with two PGA Tour wins. One was the Rocket Mortgage Classic and the other was the … Rocket Mortgage Classic. Perhaps the 30-year-old has honorary Michigan citizenship after winning those events in 2021 and 2024.

2. He only has one top-10 finish in a major (T4, 2023 PGA) yet has been among the top five on the leaderboard at the end of a major round four times: T2 after Round 1 at the 2021 PGA, the aforementioned 2023 PGA, T5 after Round 2 of the 2024 Masters and Thursday at Quail Hollow.

3. According to his PGA Tour bio, Davis marks his ball with a 20-cent Australian coin. So if you see one of those on a PGA Tour course, maybe it fell out of Davis’s pocket.

Ryan Gerard

1. The 25-year-old American won’t be completely unfamiliar around Quail Hollow as he is from Raleigh, N.C., and played college golf at North Carolina.

2. While Davis is making his 167th PGA Tour start (the PGA Championship counts as a Tour event), Gerard is just making his 39th. He turned pro in 2022 and won on PGA Tour Canada and the Korn Ferry Tour before earning full PGA Tour status.

3. According to his PGA Tour bio, he received his first set of golf clubs at age 2 and his parents said he’d sneak out of the house all the time to hit balls in the yard. If that counts as mischief, it worked out O.K.