PGA Championship 2011 Leaderboard: Steve Stricker and Biggest Flukes at Atlanta

Take everything you thought you knew about the 2011 PGA Championship and throw it out the window. Your dark horse, your surefire winner and all of your sleeper picks were all wrong. It's no fault of your own, as the last major of the year has been unfairly unpredictable.

Case in point: The field is chasing Steve Stricker.

Stricker remains one of the most puzzling players on tour. His ability to win comeback player of the year in consecutive years speaks volumes about how up-and-down he is. At the moment, he's certainly up. Stricker shot a 63 in the opening round. Who would have thunk it?

Not only is Stricker a fluke within himself, he's part of a greater fluke. Stricker and three other Americans currently hold the lead.

Position	Golfer	Score
1	Steve Stricker	-7
2	Jerry Kelly	-5
T3	Scott Verplank	-3
T3	Sean Micheel	-3

Not only did most people expect players from overseas to be atop the leaderboard, those certainly aren't the Americans anyone expected to be making a push for the lead.

Jerry Kelly is another huge fluke. The guy is 44, and was the ultimate underdog coming into this tournament. As an American and a middle-aged man, it's safe to call his first round the most unlikely of anyone's.

While Stricker and Kelly both fall into the same demographic in that sense, we all knew Stricker had that low score in his bag if he put everything together, but the same can't be said for Kelly.

Another unlikely occurrence at this tournament was Rory McIlroy encountering the world's strongest tree root. He swung and bent his seven-iron on the root of a tree, injuring his wrist and arm.

A doctor gave him the go-ahead, saying that his wrist can't be injured any further by playing, but it's completely changed the complexion of his tournament.

With the favorite wincing through every swing, Tiger Woods on the brink of missing the cut, Americans dominating and elite players being lost in the middle of the pack, this entire tournament could be classified as one big fluke.