Who Is Trace Crowe? The 2026 Austin Championship Leader After a 62

Trace Crowe is a 30-year-old PGA Tour pro from South Carolina who shot a 10-under 62 on Thursday, November 12, to lead the 2026 Austin Championship by two shots. He started the week 117th in the FedExCup Fall standings, outside the top 100 who keep full cards, with one event left after this one. He is a better player than that ranking says. He is also not a bet at +475.

Who is Trace Crowe?

Trace Crowe was born October 9, 1996, in Greenville, South Carolina, played four seasons at Auburn from 2015 to 2019, and turned pro in 2020, per his PGA Tour and ESPN profiles. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. He has two Korn Ferry Tour wins and none on the PGA Tour.

The PGA Tour bio fills in the rest. He grew up on Smithfields Country Club in Easley, South Carolina, in a house on the 10th hole, and won the club championship there at 14. He won three individual titles at Auburn and made the All-SEC second team twice.

The pro wins both came the hard way or the easy way, nothing in between. The first was the 2023 NV5 Invitational on the Korn Ferry Tour, which he took in a playoff. The second was the 2025 UNC Health Championship in Raleigh, his home event, where he closed with a 65, finished at 21 under, and won by five. That season got him back to the PGA Tour for 2026 after he lost his card following his rookie year in 2024.

Why is Trace Crowe 117th in the FedExCup Fall standings?

Trace Crowe is 117th in the FedExCup Fall standings mostly because he missed the first part of 2026. The Associated Press report on the PGA Tour’s site says wrist surgery kept him from starting his season until April. Only the top 100 after next week’s RSM Classic keep full PGA Tour cards for 2027.

So Thursday was a round played with a job on the line, and it did not look like it. Crowe made 10 birdies and no bogeys. Per the PGA Tour, he had a birdie putt on every hole except the par-3 11th, where he missed the green and chipped it close. “It didn’t feel fluky at all,” he said afterward.

The math is simple enough. The PGA Tour’s standings page on Friday morning, November 13, had Crowe at 409 points, with the projected 100th spot at about 535. A win is worth 500 points and would project him to 63rd, which is not just safe but within sight of the top 60 and the first two Signature Events of 2027. The same AP report says the surgery also earns him a few extra starts early next year, so it is not win or go home. It is close to it, though.

How has Trace Crowe played in 2026?

Trace Crowe has played much better this fall than a ranking of 117th suggests. He tied for third at the Bank of Utah Championship on October 4 at 23 under and closed the VidantaWorld Mexico Open with a 63 to tie for 11th. The problem was never the golf. It was the number of starts.

The table below shows Trace Crowe‘s five PGA Tour starts this fall before Austin, as listed on both the PGA Tour and ESPN results pages on November 13.

Finished	Event	Finish	Score to par
September 20	Biltmore Championship Asheville	T24	-15
October 4	Bank of Utah Championship	T3	-23
October 25	Butterfield Bermuda Championship (54 holes)	T34	-8
November 1	VidantaWorld Mexico Open	T11	-17
November 8	World Wide Technology Championship	T50	-11

The stats say ball-striker. The PGA Tour’s betting profile, published before the Austin Championship, had Crowe seventh on Tour in greens in regulation at 71.88 percent and second in par breakers, the share of holes played in birdie or better. That is who shot 62 on Thursday. He hit greens, and on a soft course in no wind the putts went in.

None of this was a secret to people who build rankings for a living. Crowe sat in the top 10 of all four published models we tracked in this week’s notes, and he was a popular top-20 and DFS play at a salary in the 7,000s. If you want to see why a stat-weighted model had a player ranked 117th in its top 10, this is how the Rabbit Hole model builder works.

Trace Crowe odds: what a 62 did to the price

Trace Crowe is +475 at DraftKings to win the 2026 Austin Championship as of Friday, November 13, at 5:02 AM Central, down from +6500 on Wednesday morning. FanDuel is +440 and Fanatics is +400. That is a fair reward for the player and a poor price for the bet, with 54 holes left and a weekend forecast that looked nothing like Thursday.

The table below compares Trace Crowe‘s prices before the 2026 Austin Championship, from the Wednesday, November 11, board at 8:07 AM Central, with the board pulled Friday, November 13, at 5:44 AM Central.

Market	Book	Wednesday	Friday
To win	DraftKings	+6500	+475
To win	FanDuel	+8000	+440
Top 20	FanDuel	+300	-600
Top 10	DraftKings	+610	-180
Top 5	DraftKings	+1350	+115
Top 5	FanDuel	+1300	-115
Leader after Round 2	DraftKings	Not offered	+162

One line in there does not match the others. DraftKings has Crowe at +115 for a top-five finish while FanDuel is -115 and Fanatics is -110 on the same bet. Three books, and one of them is paying plus money on something the other two make a favorite. If you believe the 62, that is the ticket, not the outright. Dead-heat rules apply to that price, so a tie for fifth pays less than the full amount, and our guide to what each golf prop market costs walks through how that works.

The outright is a different conversation. Wednesday’s forecast in our notes had Friday calm and sunny again, then gusts in the 20s and a chance of rain on both weekend days. A two-shot lead on a soft course does not buy much, and Blades Brown, who won last week, is three back. The book almost always shortens the Thursday leader too far, which is the whole story of how a first-round lead gets priced.

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Trace Crowe questions

What does Trace Crowe get if he wins the 2026 Austin Championship?

The winner of the 2026 Austin Championship earns 1,080,000 dollars from a 6 million dollar purse and 500 FedExCup points. For Crowe the points are the prize, because they would settle his 2027 card on the spot. The full payout table is in our Austin Championship purse breakdown.

Did anyone catch Trace Crowe in Round 1?

No. Darkness stopped Round 1 on Thursday with 25 players still on the course, and they finished Friday morning. Nobody got closer than Max Greyserman and Erik van Rooyen, who both shot 64, per the ESPN leaderboard. Crowe is the outright first-round leader, so first-round leader bets on him pay in full with no dead heat.

Is Trace Crowe related to anyone in pro sports?

His father, Dale Crowe, played college basketball at Furman, according to his PGA Tour bio. Trace came to golf at 10, when his dad bought him a six-club set during a travel baseball trip to Myrtle Beach.

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