The Quick Answer
Kalshi's FedEx St Jude Championship top 5 and top 10 finish boards (tickers KXPGATOP5-FESJC26 and KXPGATOP10-FESJC26) both reshuffled while Round 2 was still being played at TPC Southwind. As of roughly 12:00 p.m. ET Friday, August 14, Sungjae Im is 46¢ bid / 52¢ ask to finish top 5 and 67¢ / 73¢ to finish top 10, after opening the leaderboard up at 9-under through 16 holes of his second round. Scottie Scheffler sits second on both boards at 43¢ / 45¢ and 62¢ / 64¢, and he has not hit a shot yet on Friday. The top of each board, the two golfers sitting on the exact same score at nearly a 3x price gap, and the tie math that makes both boards add up to more than the spots they sell are all below.
Placement Boards Are Not Priced Off The Leaderboard
This is the FedExCup Playoffs opener, which means no cut. All 69 qualifiers entered a no-cut, 72-hole event with nothing to survive on Friday evening, though Robert MacIntyre has since withdrawn. One effect of that structure nobody thinks about until they trade one of these boards is that a bad Thursday no longer removes anybody. It only prices them out. Rory McIlroy shot his way to 4-over and T65, and he is still teeing off Friday afternoon, still theoretically alive, and still worth a price. A very small one.
That structure is why the top 5 and top 10 boards move differently than the Round 2 leader market, which settles tonight and dies. Placement contracts run all the way to Sunday, so they absorb two things at once: what the scoreboard says right now, and what the market believes about the man holding the club. On Friday afternoon those two inputs are pulling in genuinely opposite directions, and the clearest example of it is sitting in a tie for 19th. I will come back to that pair, because it is the most interesting number on either board.
First, the boards themselves.
The Kalshi Top 5 Finish Board
Prices below were pulled directly from Kalshi's live API at approximately 12:00 p.m. ET on Friday, August 14, 2026. "Market read" is the bid/ask midpoint expressed as a probability. On a board with spreads this wide, treat the midpoint as a rough read rather than a quote you can actually hit.
| Golfer | Yes Bid | Yes Ask | Market Read | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sungjae Im | 46¢ | 52¢ | 49.0% | 6¢ |
| Scottie Scheffler | 43¢ | 45¢ | 44.0% | 2¢ |
| Tommy Fleetwood | 39¢ | 40¢ | 39.5% | 1¢ |
| Hideki Matsuyama | 31¢ | 32¢ | 31.5% | 1¢ |
| Michael Thorbjornsen | 25¢ | 34¢ | 29.5% | 9¢ |
| Jake Knapp | 23¢ | 28¢ | 25.5% | 5¢ |
| Kurt Kitayama | 23¢ | 26¢ | 24.5% | 3¢ |
| Chris Gotterup | 21¢ | 26¢ | 23.5% | 5¢ |
| Xander Schauffele | 22¢ | 23¢ | 22.5% | 1¢ |
| Jordan Spieth | 20¢ | 24¢ | 22.0% | 4¢ |
| Adam Scott | 19¢ | 24¢ | 21.5% | 5¢ |
| Patrick Cantlay | 11¢ | 27¢ | 19.0% | 16¢ |
| Ludvig Åberg | 15¢ | 19¢ | 17.0% | 4¢ |
| Wyndham Clark | 13¢ | 19¢ | 16.0% | 6¢ |
| Viktor Hovland | 14¢ | 17¢ | 15.5% | 3¢ |
The row I would stare at is Patrick Cantlay's: 11¢ bid, 27¢ ask, a 16-cent canyon. Cantlay is T5 at 5-under through 14 holes of his second round, genuinely one of the better positions in the field, and the book still cannot decide what he is worth within sixteen cents. That gap is not a pricing opinion. It is the absence of one. When a spread runs that wide, the "market probability" on your screen is mostly an artifact of the two people willing to leave resting orders, and the only honest way to read it is as a range: somewhere between 11% and 27%, with the exchange happy to sell you the top of it.
Compare that to Tommy Fleetwood at 39¢ / 40¢ or Hideki Matsuyama at 31¢ / 32¢. Those are one-cent markets. Real money sits on both sides and the number means something.
The one structural rule for these boards: the spread tells you how much to trust the price. A penny-wide market is information. A 16-cent market is two people guessing. Our guide to what a Kalshi price actually means goes deeper, and maker vs taker explains why resting an order inside a wide spread beats crossing it.
The Kalshi Top 10 Finish Board
The top 10 board carries the heavier open interest of the two, and it is the one most bettors are actually shopping, because "top 10 finish" is the placement bet sportsbooks have sold for decades.
| Golfer | Yes Bid | Yes Ask | Market Read | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sungjae Im | 67¢ | 73¢ | 70.0% | 6¢ |
| Scottie Scheffler | 62¢ | 64¢ | 63.0% | 2¢ |
| Tommy Fleetwood | 58¢ | 59¢ | 58.5% | 1¢ |
| Hideki Matsuyama | 50¢ | 51¢ | 50.5% | 1¢ |
| Michael Thorbjornsen | 47¢ | 52¢ | 49.5% | 5¢ |
| Patrick Cantlay | 40¢ | 51¢ | 45.5% | 11¢ |
| Chris Gotterup | 39¢ | 45¢ | 42.0% | 6¢ |
| Kurt Kitayama | 41¢ | 42¢ | 41.5% | 1¢ |
| Jake Knapp | 37¢ | 45¢ | 41.0% | 8¢ |
| Jordan Spieth | 40¢ | 42¢ | 41.0% | 2¢ |
| Adam Scott | 36¢ | 42¢ | 39.0% | 6¢ |
| Xander Schauffele | 33¢ | 37¢ | 35.0% | 4¢ |
| Wyndham Clark | 28¢ | 36¢ | 32.0% | 8¢ |
| Ludvig Åberg | 28¢ | 31¢ | 29.5% | 3¢ |
| Viktor Hovland | 28¢ | 30¢ | 29.0% | 2¢ |
Hideki Matsuyama at 50¢ / 51¢ is the cleanest coin flip on the board, and he has not started his second round. His 4-under is 18 holes old and he tees off at 5:45 p.m. ET. A penny-wide market on a man whose day has not happened yet is the book saying it has no informational edge left to price. Everything from here is golf.
Both boards resolve on the same clock. The tournament finishes Sunday, August 16, and each contract settles once the final results are official. Kalshi carries an expected expiration of August 30 on these markets with a latest expiration of September 13, which exists as an administrative backstop rather than a real timeline. If you are new to how any of this works end to end, start with how Kalshi's yes/no sports contracts work, and check the state-by-state access rules before assuming you can trade it at all.
Worked Example: Why Both Boards Add Up To More Than They Sell
Here is the number I promised, and it is the one thing on this page you will not find on a competitor's.
Both markets resolve including ties. If four men tie for fifth, all four collect on a top 5 contract. So the sum of all 68 quoted contracts on the top 5 board should exceed $5.00. The real question is by how much, and how much of that excess is genuine tie probability rather than the exchange's spread.
Add up every quoted name on the top 5 board and you get:
- Sum Of All Bids: $5.10
- Sum Of All Midpoints: $6.12
- Sum Of All Asks: $7.14
The top 10 board does the same thing one tier up: $10.75 at the bid, $11.93 at the mid, $13.11 at the ask, against ten finishing positions.
Read the bid column first, because it is the honest one. Selling every name on the top 5 board at the bid collects $5.10 against five spots plus whatever ties land, which is barely a cushion and quite possibly a loss. None of that is a trade and I am not proposing it as one. You would need 68 simultaneous fills, ties can push the number of winners well past five, and Kalshi's fee schedule takes its cut on the way in and again on the way out. The arithmetic is diagnostic, not executable.
The takeaway from the arithmetic: on the top 5 board, $5.10 at the bid against $7.14 at the ask means a full sweep of asks costs 40% more than the same 68 contracts fetch at the bid. On top 10 it is $10.75 against $13.11, or 22%. The top 10 board is the cheaper of the two to trade.
Carry that 40% around rather than the midpoints. It is not a house edge measured in a couple of percent. Buy every ask and immediately sell every bid and you hand back $2.04 of the $7.14 you deployed, which is 28.6% gone the moment you turn around, and the wider the board the worse it gets. Normalizing a board for spread and fees before comparing it to a sportsbook number is the whole job, and our guide to de-vigging a Kalshi board walks through the mechanics. Raw prices flatter the market's confidence.
Same Score, Nearly Triple The Price
Now the pair I flagged at the top, the sharpest thing on either board.
Scottie Scheffler and Viktor Hovland are both T19. Both are 2-under. Both finished Thursday and neither has teed off in Round 2, Scheffler at 4:30 p.m. ET and Hovland at 5:45. Identical score, identical 54 holes remaining, identical golf course, identical weather window.
| Golfer | Position | Score | Top 5 | Top 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scottie Scheffler | T19 | -2 | 43¢ / 45¢ | 62¢ / 64¢ |
| Viktor Hovland | T19 | -2 | 14¢ / 17¢ | 28¢ / 30¢ |
Scheffler costs roughly three times Hovland on the top 5 board and a little over twice as much on top 10, off the exact same line of the leaderboard. Hovland traveled a long way to get there. A day earlier, during Thursday's first round, his top 5 contract was quoted 32¢ / 33¢ and his top 10 was 39¢ / 47¢. Scheffler's top 5 drifted only from 45¢ / 50¢ to 43¢ / 45¢ over the same stretch.
The read: that gap is not an error. The market is saying out loud that it prices 54 holes of Scottie Scheffler differently than 54 holes of anyone else in this field, and that a shared score line matters less than the name attached to it. Deciding whether that is wisdom or reflex is the actual bet here.
My own lean sides with the market being roughly right and Hovland being the cheaper ticket rather than the better golfer. Hovland's Thursday was fine, and his price collapse looks like the field simply going low around him. Even so, three-to-one is a lot of freight to pay for a reputation. If I am adding placement exposure into the weekend, Hovland at 17¢ to the ask on top 5 is the one I keep coming back to: the number that has moved most, on a player whose scorecard has not actually gone wrong yet.
For a wider view of the same field, our full 69-man FedEx St Jude top 20 board and the tournament winner market carry the same names at different tiers.
Who Moved While Round 2 Was Still On The Course
Comparing current quotes against where each contract sat a day earlier, during Thursday's first round, gives the clean list of what the last 24 hours repriced.
Up:
| Golfer | Top 5 (was → now) | Top 10 (was → now) | Where they stand |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sungjae Im | 8¢ → 49¢ | 16¢ → 70¢ | 1st, -9 thru 16 |
| Hideki Matsuyama | 8¢ → 32¢ | 14¢ → 51¢ | T10, -4, tees 5:45 p.m. |
| Michael Thorbjornsen | 10¢ → 30¢ | 19¢ → 50¢ | T5, -5, tees 4:00 p.m. |
| Jake Knapp | 6¢ → 26¢ | 12¢ → 41¢ | T2, -6 thru 13 |
| Adam Scott | 6¢ → 22¢ | 12¢ → 39¢ | T2, -6 thru 7 |
| Sudarshan Yellamaraju | 3¢ → 12¢ | 7¢ → 26¢ | T2, -6 thru 16 |
Down:
| Golfer | Top 5 (was → now) | Top 10 (was → now) | Where they stand |
|---|---|---|---|
| Viktor Hovland | 33¢ → 16¢ | 43¢ → 29¢ | T19, -2, tees 5:45 p.m. |
| Rory McIlroy | 15¢ → 3¢ | 29¢ → 7¢ | T65, +4, tees 4:30 p.m. |
| Collin Morikawa | 15¢ → 4¢ | 28¢ → 10¢ | T47, +1 thru 6 |
| Matt Fitzpatrick | 18¢ → 9¢ | 32¢ → 19¢ | T19, -2 thru 11 |
| Justin Rose | 8¢ → 1¢ | 15¢ → 1¢ | T61, +3 thru 11 |
| Ben Griffin | 9¢ → 1¢ | 19¢ → 1¢ | 67th, +5 thru 13 |
Sudarshan Yellamaraju is the row worth sitting with. He is T2 at 6-under with 16 holes of his second round in the book, and the market still pays him only 12¢ to crack the top 5 and 26¢ to crack the top 10, comfortably the lowest prices of anybody inside the top four on the leaderboard. Look at what that is: the same reflex that makes Scheffler expensive, running in reverse. The board is discounting the scoreboard because it does not recognize the name standing on it. Whether that discount is correct is genuinely unresolved, which is what makes it the most interesting contract in either market.
Ben Griffin sits at the other end of the same story. At 67th and 5-over he is quoted 0¢ bid / 1¢ ask on both boards: technically alive, because nobody goes home this week, and practically finished.
Robert MacIntyre Is Why You Read The Withdrawal Rule
That leaves one name on both boards with no price at all.
Robert MacIntyre shot 82 on Thursday and withdrew. His contracts on the top 5 and top 10 boards now show 0¢ bid and $1.00 ask. That is not a price. It is the book pulling every resting order and walking away from the name entirely.
Kalshi's rules for this event handle a withdrawal two very different ways depending on timing. Prior to teeing off, a non-participating golfer's market resolves at fair market price. After teeing off, it resolves to No. MacIntyre played his round, so anyone holding Yes on him holds a contract that will settle at zero rather than one refunded at whatever it was worth Thursday morning. Those two sentences are worth exactly the difference between your entry price and nothing, and they live in the event rules, not on the trading screen.
The withdrawal rule in one line: a golfer who pulls out before teeing off refunds at fair market price. A golfer who pulls out after teeing off resolves to No, and your ticket is worth zero. MacIntyre is the second case.
The MacIntyre case separates a placement board from a sportsbook ticket, where a withdrawal is usually just a void. Here, the timing of the withdrawal decides whether you get your money back or lose all of it.
How I'd Read These Two Boards Into The Weekend
Here is the thing the price tables do not show you, and it is the last piece of edge on this page. Look at the five most expensive contracts on the top 10 board: Im at 70¢, Scheffler at 63¢, Fleetwood at 58.5¢, Matsuyama at 50.5¢ and Thorbjornsen at 49.5¢. Only Im has hit a shot on Friday. Scheffler tees off at 4:30 p.m. ET, Fleetwood at 4:10, Thorbjornsen at 4:00 and Matsuyama at 5:45.
Four of the five priciest tickets on the top 10 board belong to men who have not played a hole today. Every one of those prices is a pre-round price carrying a full round of information risk that Im's 70¢ has already burned off. That is not an argument for or against any of them. It is the reason their numbers will look nothing like this at 8 p.m.
That asymmetry is what makes a mid-round placement board different from the first round leader board, where every contract carried the same single round of variance and the prices flattened accordingly. Here, half the board has news in it and half does not.
The fallers split the same way. Hovland has not teed off at all, so his drop from 33¢ to 16¢ is pure field movement around a scorecard that has not changed. Fitzpatrick is 2-under through 11 and still fading. Morikawa is the exception worth naming honestly: at 1-over through 6 he is going backwards under his own power, which is a different and worse reason to be cheap. In a no-cut event all three still have the rest of Friday plus 36 weekend holes to answer.
Before you take a placement price at face value, shop the same golfer against what the sportsbooks are showing.
See live golf odds shows every major book's number side by side, and a top 10 finish price that looks sharp on an exchange often is not once the book prices sit next to it. Our free expert picks today hub carries the same golfers from the handicapping side. For the full board, including the +EV screen, the odds comparison and the tools that flag when an exchange price and a book price drift apart, OddsShopper Pro is 20% off with code PLACEMENT20.
No outcome on these boards is settled in advance, and a placement read can be correct and still lose. Five spots is a small target and 68 men are aiming at it.
Watching Into Sunday
Our six-model panel scored the top 20 version of this same field against a 50¢ market on Hideki Matsuyama and lifted him to roughly 64%, its single biggest disagreement with the crowd. Matsuyama's top 20 contract now trades near 74¢, so the market walked toward our number rather than the other way around. None of it is graded yet, and I should name the panel read that bears on the lean I just gave you rather than only the one that flatters us. That same top 20 panel put Viktor Hovland at roughly 53%. His top 20 contract has come down from 61¢ / 70¢ a day ago to 50¢ / 52¢ now, which lands the market almost exactly on the panel's number, so that read is neither a win nor a loss yet. It is simply converged, on the very golfer I just called the cheapest ticket on the top 5 board.
That is the honest shape of a placement board mid-tournament. Sungjae Im at 49¢ is a real price on a real lead. Scheffler at 44¢ is a real price on a reputation. Yellamaraju at 12¢ is a real price on a scoreboard nobody trusts. And Robert MacIntyre's 82 is the reminder that the fastest way off one of these boards is not a bad number at all. It is a rule you did not read. Im has a little over two rounds left to protect his, Scheffler has three full ones to justify his, and the board will tell you by Sunday night which of those prices was closest.
