Byron Nelson: Top five sleepers at TPC Four Seasons

This week’s AT&T Byron Nelson features a handful of golf’s biggest stars, but there are plenty of guys with less name recognition who have a chance to bring it all home.

The Byron Nelson memorializes one of the game’s legends. In golf, few names stand out above the rest. This week, the name alone connects past to present, and likely the future for years to come. Let take a look at 5 dark horses in the Byron Nelson field who could make a bit of golf history of their own.

73 years ago, Nelson won what was then known as the Texas Victory Open by a whopping 10 strokes over Jug McSpaden. No, I’m not making that up. McSpaden (born Harold Lee – I’ll go with “Jug”), won 17 times on the PGA Tour between 1933 and 1945. In 1994, at the age of 85, McSpaden still shot lower than his age, firing a round of 81 at the Senior PGA Championship in his last appearance.

Following McSpaden’s death, Nelson recalled a conversation in which Jug told him “if you [Nelson] wouldn’t have been born, I’d be known as a pretty good player.”

There’s some truth to that, but that’s it for today’s history lesson. What does that have to do with our sleepers this week? They’re all pretty good golfers, who would all like to be looked at as being stronger than they typically get credit for. Just one of our top five players is inside the world’s top 100 this week. No, none of them have 17 Tour wins, but that won’t stop them from fighting for the top of the leaderboard this weekend.

Can any of these guys make some noise at Las Colinas in its last year as tournament host? Let’s get into it.