Donnie Hammond, the upstart leader of golf's richest tournament, didn't even expect to be playing in the Nabisco Championship.
Three weeks and two tournaments ago, he was mired in 92nd place.He had booked himself into a tournament in Japan on the same dates as the Nabisco, which takes only the top 30 money-winners for the year.
But the journeyman Hammond, who had won only once before in a seven-season PGA Tour career, got a win in the Texas Open with the second-best 72-hole score in Tour history, and a runner-up finish last week.
Those two tournaments provided him with $194,400 in winnings, vaulted him into 26th place on the money list and put him in the 30-man field that is chasing almost $3.5 million in individual prize money, almost three times as much as any other American event.
A 6-under-par 65 - the seventh time in his last nine competitive rounds that Hammond has had a 65 or better - gave him a two-shot, first-round lead Thursday.