If you are going to gripe about the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, get your facts straight.

On the Monday after the final round of the 2021 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, a GolfWRX.com contributor named Ronald Montesano pulled up his soapbox and summed up the event, taking the opportunity to laud the absence of amateurs (thank you, COVID-19), take shots at the native Californians in the event who didn’t win, and generally pitch in his uninformed two-cents worth from a part of the country where golf courses lie sleeping under blankets of snow from October to May.

PEBBLE BEACH, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 13: Tom Hoge of the United States plays his second shot on the ninth hole during the third round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am at Pebble Beach Golf Links on February 13, 2021 in Pebble Beach, California. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

I read his piece (Berger wins at Pebble, golf world wakes up) with much head-shaking, and considered scrolling down to the Comments section to set him straight on a few points—but then I decided that I would get a bigger audience here.

This is what I have to say to Ronald: 

“You really should do some research before you sit down at your computer in the frozen tundra of Buffalo, New York and start pounding, monkey-like, at the keyboard, Ron.

“Referring to the Crosby Clambake in your latest Tour Rundown article, you wrote, ‘That event went through an evolution, from a few friends in the California desert to a move to the coast, to a short stay in North Carolina (without the PGA Tour, of course) when AT&T took over the title on tour.’ This sentence runs the gamut from grossly misconstrued to factually incorrect, so let me enlighten you.”

The Crosby Pro-Am was never held in the desert. The event that we now know as the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am can trace its earliest roots to 1934, to an informal gathering of Bing’s celebrity friends at the Old Brockway Golf Course on Lake Tahoe’s North Shore. In 1937 Bing moved the get-together to Rancho Santa Fe, just north of San Diego, where he had a house on the back nine. This is when the pro-am really began, with Crosby pairing touring pros with amateur players drawn from the ranks of his show-business friends, and the member of the Lakeside Golf Club in Hollywood, where he was a member (and five-time club champion).

“The Clambake” as the event came to be called, named for the closing-night beach party, ran for five years in Rancho Santa Fe before the Second World War called a halt, but in 1947 civic leaders in Monterey convinced Crosby to revive the event and move it to the Monterey Peninsula, where it became the National Pro-Am Golf Championship. From the beginning of its run at Pebble Beach, the tournament was a charity event that supported local causes, and it has remained so for 75 years.

As for “…a short stay in North Carolina”, well, when AT&T took over as the presenting sponsor in 1986, dropping the Crosby name (and Crosby family involvement) from the tournament, Bing’s second wife, Kathryn Crosby, started a somewhat look-alike charity tournament in the Winston-Salem, North Carolina area called the Bing Crosby National Celebrity Golf Tournament. Running from 1986 until 2001, this event did feature both amateur and professional players, but they did not play together in pro-am pairings. (Kathryn Crosby was responsible for the sell-off of the naming rights to AT&T, for a cool half-million dollars.)

Of course, in this COVID-19 year all golf tournaments have looked different, with, as of this writing, only one—the Waste Management Phoenix Open—allowing spectators (and then only a fraction of the usual number), and the Pebble Beach Pro-Am was no different.

For the first time, there were no crowds of spectators lining the fairways and clustered around the greens, and not only that, there were no amateur playing partners—so the event was a “pro-am” in name, but not in fact. Cutting down the field to just the 156 pros brought in another change from previous years—the move to two golf courses, Pebble Beach and Spyglass Hill, leaving the third course of recent years, the Monterey Peninsula Country Club’s Shore Course, off the roster.

Montesano had something to say about all this, too (another mixed bag of mostly bad takes):

“Should the amateurs return? In one word: No. We don’t love golf for the antics of the celebrities, and we don’t need to see corporate types […] play well on a big stage.”

While the 2021 event had a different look from its seventy-four predecessors, without the amateur participants it just looked like a better version of a regular PGA Tour stop (because, hey, Pebble Beach and Spyglass Hill). The pros might have liked the (relatively) quicker pace of play and shorter rounds, but those who play this event regularly missed the networking opportunities that the tournament has always provided—many a lucrative sponsorship or other business relationship has had its beginning in a pairing at Pebble Beach.

And sure, this is no longer the Golden Age of radio, movies, and TV, and the celebrity roster has, in recent years, lost a bit of the glamour of the past. No longer do stars of the magnitude of Phil Harris, James Garner, Jack Lemmon, and Clint Eastwood stride down the fairways during the event, but there is a new generation coming up who have name recognition and a love for the game that matches the big names of yore.

The lone celebrity event that remained on the schedule this year, a Wednesday five-hole charity shootout, included stars of the worlds of movies and TV (Bill Murray, Alfonso Ribeiro, and Kathryn Newton), music (hip-hop recording artist Macklemore), sports (Arizona Cardinals WR Larry Fitzgerald), and even a former Miss America (Kira K. Dixon). This mini field of celebrity golfers all have stick, and put on a good show while raising a wad of cash for the event’s causes.

PEBBLE BEACH, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 10:  Kira K. Dixon tees off on the 18th hole during the Charity Challenge at AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am on February 10, 2021 at Pebble Beach Golf Links in Pebble Beach, California. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

And even the corporate CEOs and other deep-pockets participants have their place. Sure these folks are almost all members at swanky private clubs, and while they may play more golf than many of us, on better golf courses, they don’t play for a living like the pros they are paired with. Watching them play alongside a pro in this event allows us to vicariously put our games up against the highest standard in the world—and that chance at comparison has entertainment value.

The celebrity watching which makes Saturday of tournament week (when the biggest names are scheduled at Pebble Beach) the best-attended day of the tournament broadens the scope of attraction for this event beyond golfers. I have seen a bigger gallery following a pairing which included a San Francisco Giants pitcher than I think I have ever seen following any of the pros.

“Why might the amateurs stay? Some would point to the origin of the event, as the Bing Crosby Clambake. It’s the last event that folks from past generations (little dig there, I think – GKM) associate with a celebrity host; [no other event has] had that staying power.”

I can sum it up in one word: tradition. Bing Crosby invented this format, and while imitators sprang up over the years, the Pebble Beach Pro-Am—the original and the greatest—is the only one that still survives. The Bob Hope Desert Classic came closest to the format of the Crosby, but that event, and all of the rest of the celebrity-name events on the PGA Tour over the years have either morphed into something else or faded away entirely.

I grew up in Salinas, an inland farming community not far from Pebble Beach, and though neither I nor any of my friends or family played golf when I was growing up, everybody knew the Crosby, and watched it on TV on those January or February weekends in the ’60s and ’70s.

“The AT&T has the opportunity to reimagine its event, (to) make the bold decision to eliminate the Am portion of the event. Return the Monterey Peninsula (Country Club) Shore Course to the rotation next year (and) add even more professionals…”

Here Mr Montesano is off-base in more ways than one. As I laid out above, the amateur participants are a huge part of this tournament’s appeal, and an enduring tradition that has no counterpart in the world of golf. Eliminating that aspect of the tournament would change it into just another PGA Tour event, albeit an exceptionally beautiful one, as no other venue that the Tour travels to can provide such scenic vistas.

Yes, we look forward to the return of the MPCC Shore Course to the event; it is a beautiful and strategic seaside layout that takes good advantage of its location, and being private, its inclusion provides golf fans with an opportunity to see the course that they otherwise would not have. As for adding even more professionals—while going back to three courses and a 54-hole cut with no amateurs might make it feasible, schedule-wise, to bump up the standard 156-player field, such a move would require approval from the PGA Tour, and, I warrant, the Players Advisory Committee.

To sum up: While I admit to a certain bias, having grown up in the area watching this event on TV, and now, as a golf writer, having attended the event in a professional capacity for eight years in a row, I look forward to a return to normality (hopefully) for the 2022 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am; a return to throngs of spectators, and amateur playing partners—both celebrities and CEOs; a return to three courses and a 54-hole cut; a return to the traditions that make this tournament stand out, head-and-shoulders above the rest of the cookie-cutter events on the PGA Tour.

A return to all the things that make this tournament the one that we who love it still call “The Crosby”.

(References for facts presented in this article: Cover Stories, a publication of the Monterey Peninsula Foundation Book Project Staff, 2009; 18 Holes with Bing, by Nathaniel Crosby with John Strege, Harper Collins Publishers, 2016)

Daniel Berger seals the deal, in style, for 2021 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am win

The eagle must be Daniel Berger’s favorite bird—especially after he made four eagles this weekend at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, including two in the final round. The second eagle of the fourth round, on Pebble’s world-famous par-five 18th hole, was clinched by a 31-foot putt that cemented his victory when two putts would have done the job.

PEBBLE BEACH, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 14: Daniel Berger of the United States celebrates his eagle putt to win on the 18th green during the final round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am at Pebble Beach Golf Links on February 14, 2021 in Pebble Beach, California. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

Local boy Maverick McNealy—very local, in fact, given that he grew up in a house overlooking Pebble’s 16th fairway before his family moved to Hillsborough, in San Mateo County—produced his fourth round in the 60s to take second, his highest finish on the PGA Tour.

Berger, who won at Fort Worth’s Colonial Country Club in the opening event of the post-lockdown return of professional golf last spring, trailed Jordan Spieth by two strokes going into the final round, but while Spieth wobbled to a two-under round of 70, Berger carded the low round of the day, a 7-under 65, to take the win.

An eagle three at the short par-five 2nd hole set the tone for Berger’s round, followed by birdies at the 3rd and 6th holes. The only misstep he made was a bogey at the notorious par-4 eight hole, where his approach shot landed long and left, on a slope above the green, leaving him a tricky pitch to a green that sloped away.

As Spieth and another contender, Patrick Cantlay, fell away in the latter stages of the round, journeyman pro Nate Lashley stepped up to challenge for the win. Lashley, whose sole victory on the PGA Tour is the 2019 Rocket Mortgage Classic, started the day in a three-way tie with Berger and Cantlay, two strokes back of Spieth. Four birdies on the front nine saw him briefly in the lead before Berger’s birdie on the par-4 ninth, then reclaiming the top spot with a birdie on the tenth hole.

Berger and Lashley remained tied, with Spieth and Cantlay struggling to right their ships and make a move, through the fifteenth hole. In the meantime, Stanford University alumnus McNealy put together a string of four birdies from holes 11 through 15 to make up ground on the two co-leaders, pulling within a stroke of the pair.

And then came the 16th hole. A downhill, left-to-right turning par-four with trees and a tank-trench bunker guarding the front of the green, #16 has rarely been cast in the role of a make-or-break hole in this tournament. Berger assayed the hole with a drive to the edge of the left rough, an approach to the bottom of the green and two putts from 25 feet—nothing special, nothing memorable. Lashley, on the other hand, will remember this hole for a long time; in fact, it may haunt his dreams for years to come.

Playing from good position on the upper tier of the fairway, about 150 yards from the flag, Lashley’s approach shot hit the back of the green just past the hole and bounded over the edge into the rough, leaving a touchy little punch-pitch to a tucked flag. His pitch back to the green rolled out to about 12 or 13 feet past the hole, from where he proceeded to putt one, two, three… and yes, four times before closing out the hole.

Just like that, the one-time real estate agent who is, appropriately enough, sponsored by Rocket Mortgage, played himself out of the running to win the tournament, and ultimately into a T5 finish that cost him $1,102,725 compared to a potential win, or $392,925 if he had parred in to finish tied for second with (as it turned out) Maverick McNealy. That’s $367,575 or $130,942 per putt, depending on the scenario.

With Lashley out of contention, Maverick McNealy, playing a group ahead, could potentially force a playoff with an eagle-three at the final hole. With the 18th hole playing from a more-forward tee position, the bold and the accurate were given the incentive they needed to risk a two-shot approach on the finest par-5 in existence.

McNealy did just that. After a 277-yard drive to the left fairway, he slung a high-draw three-iron shot (a three-iron!) 232 yards to the green, putting the club away with a flourish, like D’Artagnan sheathing his rapier, as he watched the ball soar toward its target through the California sky. That target is a 4,400-square-foot green guarded by bunkers and a cypress tree that looks like it was planted there by Mother Nature with her own two hands, and McNealy’s golf ball went after it like a lawn dart heading for your cousin Billy’s left foot.

Left with a 22-foot putt for eagle, McNealy narrowly missed his chance to force a playoff in the event of a birdie by Berger. His ball slid past the hole on the high side so closely that some of the left-side dimples were rolling over air, finishing less than a full turn outside the hole. He tapped in for a birdie and a mortal lock on solo second.

Now it was up to Berger. Taking on the right side of the fairway, as he had the day before with disastrous results, he squeezed his drive between the infamous fairway tree and the bunkers on the right, leaving himself a longer shot, at 253 yards, for his eagle try than McNealy had had just a few minutes before. What followed was, in Berger’s words, “…one of the best 3-woods I’ve ever hit in my life.”, a swinging draw that ended up 31 feet above the flag.

It was the type of finish that Tour pros dream of at night, tucked up in their Florida tax-haven mansions: two putts to win on the most famous finishing hole this side of St Andrews—and Berger played it like a boss.

For all its length it was a straightforward putt, straight down the fall line, as Johnny Miller used to say, and the young man from Florida who started out as a tennis player before switching to golf (which is a very Florida thing to do) rolled it in like it was the winning putt in a Saturday-morning Nassau.

The 2021 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am was one for the ages. For as much as we love this event, and the iconic landscape over which it is contested, it has produced some ho-hum finishes in the past—do you remember Ted Potter, Jr’s three-stroke win in 2018, or Vaughn Taylor in 2016? Neither does anyone else.

But despite the weak field, which had pundits (mostly of the sports-betting variety) wringing their hands and clutching their pearls in the lead-up to the event, and despite the lack of fans, and amateur playing partners for the pros, this year’s tournament had drama and pathos in equal measure: Jordan Spieth’s pursuit of a renewed grasp of his game, which had made a long-overdue reappearance the previous week in Phoenix; local kid Maverick McNealy’s dashing run for his first Tour victory, literally in his old backyard; and journeyman-pro Nate Lashley’s surge to the top and ignominious crash in four putts at the 16th hole, all eclipsed by Daniel Berger’s three-step climax—driver, 3-wood, 30-foot putt—on the most beautiful finishing hole in the game of golf.

A little rain, a little wind, a little luck—and once again Jordan Spieth sleeps on a 54-hole lead

Looking more and more like a man on the comeback trail since grabbing a 54-hole co-lead last week in the Waste Management Phoenix Open, Jordan Spieth took over the lead at the 2021 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am after the second round, 65-67–132, to lead by a single stroke over Daniel Berger, and two strokes over Patrick Cantlay. Memories of his final-round woes in Phoenix were coursing through people’s minds when he stepped up to the first tee this morning to start his third round, and for a while there it looked as though the spectre of the previous week’s collapse might be riding his shoulders.

PEBBLE BEACH, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 13: Jordan Spieth reacts to his tee shot at the par-three 17th hole during the third round of the 2021 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. (photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images)

The short par-5 second hole at Pebble Beach generally plays as the easiest hole on the course, but a stubbed 5-iron approach and a woeful performance on the green left Spieth with a bogey six, on a hole that players expect to birdie, and which, in fact, played nearly a half-stroke under par in the third round.

He appeared to set things right with birdies at the par-four 4th, where he drove just short of the green, chipped up to 7 feet below the hole and sank the putt; at the long par-five 6th, where he just missed an eagle three from the right-hand greenside bunker; and at the notorious par-four 9th, where a beautiful approach shot from 110 yards set him up for an 8-foot below-the-hole birdie putt.

Then came the turn. Strictly speaking Pebble makes the turn between 10 and 11, reversing course from SSW to NNW, and on days like today, turns into the chill, blustery wind. Pebble’s tenth hole, the final stanza in the three-hole stretch of rigorous par-4s that the late, great sportswriter Dan Jenkins dubbed “Abalone Corner”, is frequently to be found in the #1 spot when the course handicap is tallied—as it did today, playing to a stroke average of 4.209.

Number Ten started the string of holes where Spieth gave back the birdies he had earned on holes 4 through 9, with bogeys at 10, 12, and 14. Bad shots, bad judgment, and what appeared to be a growing level of confusion as to how hard to rap his putts set him back to where he had been when he walked off of #2—plus-1 on the day, and looking up at the top of the leaderboard from a few steps below where he had started in the morning.

Then came 16. One hundred and sixty-odd yards out in the fairway, two strokes behind Daniel Berger, wind in from the right and a bit of mud on the ball. He took eight iron, and slung it up and into that quartering wind and, in his words, “…kind of let the wind and the mud do most of the work.”

Mother Nature’s factors did a wonderful job, and as seen on the television coverage, the ball described a great tilted arc through the afternoon sky, slamming into the green about a flagstick’s length above the hole before trickling down ever so slowly, until, with its last erg of energy, it dropped into the hole for his second, and most impressive, chip-in eagle of the tournament.

Tied now with Berger, Spieth split the par-three 17th with his fellow 27-year-old, both making pars.

At 18, fate stepped in again. With Spieth in good position in the fairway, Berger’s tee ball rode that WNW wind far to the right, bouncing from turf to cart path to OB, effectively sealing his fate. Spieth laid up to a solid number short of the green, threw his approach above the hole, and two-putted his way to another 54-hole lead.

Sunday’s weather is forecast to be cool, dry, and breezy, with the winds increasing in the afternoon—the usual pattern. Speaking after Saturday’s round, Spieth sounded prepared for what he, and the rest of the field, will be facing in the final round:

“…it’s almost two different golf courses when the wind blows out here with that kind of out and in. But I think it’s a good lesson for tomorrow that there’s going to be some … guys are going to make runs and I just got to stay really patient, recognize that setting a goal for myself and sticking to it is important because things can change quickly out here.”

Like when your playing partner ties it up by slinging a banana-ball from 160 yards out for an eagle-two with two holes to play. Just ask Daniel Berger.

Young guns rule after 36 holes at 2021 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am

After the first round of the 2021 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am was played under a gloomy grey overcast, blue skies predominated for most of the day on the Monterey Peninsula during Round 2, but at the cost of breezy conditions. At Spyglass Hill, where 14 of 18 holes are sheltered by the massive pines and cypress trees of the Del Monte Forest, the average score increased by less than a full stroke from Day 1 to Day 2, but at Pebble Beach Golf Links, which runs in a narrow out-and-back band right along the shore of Carmel Bay, the scoring average jumped by a little over two strokes.

Pebble Beach, California – February 12: Jordan Spieth on the eighth tee at Spyglass Hill in the second round of the 2021 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am (Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images)

Statistically speaking, players who drew Pebble in Round 1 and Spyglass Hill in Round 2 enjoyed a one-stroke advantage over those who went the other way, a fact that is borne out by the composition of the top of the leaderboard after 36 holes. Of the 13 players between 1st place and T8, 11 played Pebble/Spy. After a lot of adding and subtracting and squinting at the numbers, the conclusion that comes out of all this is that Spyglass is harder than Pebble, but Pebble gets harder, by more, when the wind blows.

Another conclusion that jumps out from a long, hard look at the scoreboard is that the young guns are pretty much in charge of this tournament.

Of those top 13 players I mentioned before, one is 19 years old, five are in their 20s, five are in their 30s, and two geezer-codger 40-somethings snuck in there when no one was looking. Looking at the full field, players in their 40s that finished above the cut line were as rare as affordable housing in Carmel; Jim Furyk, at 50, is the elder statesman of the weekend crew, followed by 49-year-old Brian Gay. Furyk’s position comes as little surprise, though; he won the PGA Tour Champions event here last September, taking home a little more than what a two-way tie for 5th will net this weekend.

The name at the top of the leaderboard today, Jordan Spieth, is one that was much spoken of coming into this tournament. Spieth wowed PGA Tour fans and sent the golf-betting tyros back to their spreadsheets last week at the Waste Management Phoenix Open when he went 67–67–61 before losing the plot and closing with a 1-over 72. Despite the stumble in the final lap, that performance showed that his long search for the game that abandoned him after seeing him to eleven wins in his first four years on Tour, including three majors, is finally bearing fruit.

On the strength of the showing in Phoenix, and keeping in mind that he is a past champion of this event, in 2017, there were high hopes for his performance this week. After closing out the first round with a more-than-respectable 65 at Pebble Beach, which was still three strokes behind 18-hole leader Patrick Cantlay’s record-tying 62, Spieth backed it up with the low round of the day today, on either course, a 5-under 67 at Spyglass Hill, for a two-day tally of 12-under.

First-round leader Cantlay found Spyglass Hill a more difficult proposition than Spieth did, having a much tougher day there than he did on Thursday at Pebble. After opening his round with a double-bogey six at the 10th hole, he could only set three birdies against the double and two bogeys, to card a 1-over 73, leaving him leaning heavily on his first-round 62 to keep him within three strokes of the new leader, Spieth.

The third twenty-something in the top four is 27-year-old Daniel Berger. Playing the tougher Spyglass/Pebble draw, Berger managed to better his first-round score by a stroke at Pebble, even in the breezy conditions, bucking the trend that saw Pebble play two strokes more difficult today, on average, than it had on Thursday. His 67-66–133 sees him in second-place behind Spieth, whom he will join in the final grouping, along with third-place Henrik Norlander, tomorrow.

The other Spyglass/Pebble player who bucked the scoring trend today was Paul Casey, who posted 68-67–135 to share T4 with Cantlay, fellow Brit Tom Lewis, and Scotsman Russell Knox. Casey also bucked the youth trend as the only player over 40 sitting T4 or better after 36 holes.

Rounding out the under-30s at the top end of the scoreboard are Stanford alum Maverick McNealy, 25, and 19-year-old Akshay Bhatia, of Wake Forest, North Carolina.

McNealy, the oldest son of Silicon Valley tech legend and Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy, put together rounds of 68 and 69 at Pebble Beach and Spyglass, respectively; at 7-under he heads into the weekend five strokes back of leader Spieth.

Bhatia, who joined an elite group that includes Jack Nicklaus and Davis Love III when he hit all 18 greens in regulation at Pebble Beach in the first round, found Spyglass Hill a tougher row to hoe in Round 2, carding a 1-over 73 to put up against his first-round 64. Bhatia and McNealy are tied with Americans Brian Stuard, Nate Lashley, and Tom Hoge, and 46-year-old Aussie Cameron Percy, in 8th place going into the weekend.

With no amateurs in the event this year, and only two courses in play, the usual 54-hole cut is by the board, and Saturday and Sunday will see all 69 players remaining in the field playing Pebble Beach Golf Links both days. Saturday’s forecast is for intermittent light-to-moderate rain in the morning, clearing but turning breezy in the afternoon—conditions that do not bode well for players who are hoping to make a move up the leaderboard before the final round.

Dustin who? Patrick Cantlay leads after a record-tying first round at Pebble Beach

Sixty-two is a magical number in golf. Maybe not as magical as 59, but when you put up a 62 at Pebble Beach in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, you’re in pretty good company, sharing that distinction with the likes of Tom Kite and David Duval. Patrick Cantlay did it today in the first round, putting up the kind of stats that generally result in a spot atop the leaderboard: 16 greens in regulation, 18 putts, leading the field in strokes gained tee-to-green, and T4 in strokes gained putting.

PEBBLE BEACH, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 11: Patrick Cantlay of the United States plays a shot from a bunker on the fourth hole during the first round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am at Pebble Beach Golf Links on February 11, 2021 in Pebble Beach, California. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

Another record-tying performance was turned in today by 19-year-old  Akshay Bhatia, who joined Jack Nicklaus, Peter Jacobsen, Tom Lehman, Davis Love III, and Ryan Palmer on the roster of players who have hit all 18 greens in regulation in a round at Pebble Beach. Bhatia, a native of Northridge, California, currently resides in Wake Forest, North Carolina. He was an accomplished junior player who played on winning Junior Presidents Cup and Junior Ryder Cup teams before deciding to pass up college golf and turn pro.

Bhatia, who weighs in at a wispy 6-feet tall and 130 pounds and may be in trouble if the winds pick up over the weekend, capitalized on his record-tying tee-to-green performance, posting a final score of 64 to close out the day tied for second with Swede Henrik Norlander.

Another player who has the eyes of the golf world watching him closely this week is Jordan Spieth. The young Texan, who notched up 11 wins in his first four years on Tour, including three majors, has been laboring under the twin burdens of a two-way miss off the tee and an on-and-off ice-cold putter, resulting in a winless drought since his 2017 Open Championship victory at Royal Birkdale. 

Spieth raised the hopes of his fans last week at the Waste Management Phoenix Open, posting a third-round 61 at TPC Scottsdale after opening with a pair of 67s. Tied for the 54-hole lead with Southern California’s Xander Schauffele, Spieth couldn’t muster the magic on WMPO Sunday, staggering home in 1-over 72 to finish T4, his best finish since his solo 3rd-place at the 2018 Masters, and one of only eight top-ten performances in that time.

Today at Pebble Spieth showed some more of the spark that was on display through 54 holes last week, carding a 7-under 65 on the strength of six birdies and an eagle against a lone bogey, the result of three putts on the notoriously difficult eighth hole. The eagle came two holes later, when his approach from 113 yards out landed just past the hole, checked up, rolled back, and dropped in the hole for a two. Spieth currently sits T-4, three strokes behind Patrick Cantlay.

Overnight rain in the area is expected to clear off before sunrise tomorrow, with Friday forecast to be partly cloudy and slightly breezy, with even windier conditions anticipated for the weekend. The wind is Pebble’s best defense against low scores, so we may not see any repeats of today’s record-tying performances.

Don’t give up on the 2021 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am

 Circumstances have really piled it on to the 2021 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Public health restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic mean that there will be no fans allowed on the property this year. There will be no amateurs—celebrities or CEOs— playing in the event, and the resulting reduction in the size of the field means that the scenic Monterey Peninsula Country Club Shore Course will be left out of the mix, leaving just the pros to duke it out on Pebble Beach Golf Links and Spyglass Hill. Not only that, but the field is not just lacking star power of the celebrity kind; for the most part the stars of the golf world are staying away, too.

Still, for the fans watching from home—which is all of them—there are still a lot of reasons to tune in Thursday through Friday. With a polar vortex and yet another oddly named winter storm pounding much of the country east of the Rockies, the prospect of seeing golf being played on your TV set against the backdrop of the picturesque coastal scenery of the Monterey Peninsula isn’t a bad thing to look forward to.

Of course, the weather is always a consideration here in Steinbeck Country in early February—they don’t call it “Crosby Weather” for nothing—but the forecast as I am writing this is calling for a chance of rain Thursday after sundown, partly cloudy skies Friday, another chance of rain Saturday, and partly cloudy conditions again on Sunday. Compared to the deep freeze most of the country is being subjected to, this forecast is heavenly.

But who are the fans going to be seeing this week? One of the criticisms that has been leveled at this year’s event is a less-than-stellar gathering of golf talent. The tournament could initially lay claim to only one player in the Top 10 of the World Golf Rankings, World No. 1 Dustin Johnson, a two-time winner of this event; the next highest ranked players in the field were #11, Patrick Cantlay; #15, Daniel Berger; and #17, Paul Casey.

With ranking points available in the event determined by the strength of the field, and Pebble’s points running down in the low 30s, the tournament was starting to look like an opposite-field event—one of those also-ran tournaments like the Puerto Rico Open or Puntacana that are put on against a WGC event to give the “other” players something to do that weekend.

The dearth of higher-ranked players can be partially attributed to the absence of the CEOs and other high-rolling hotshots that make this tournament a top-tier networking event. Pebble has always been a draw for Tour players who are on the lookout for corporate sponsorships to carry them over those hard times when the top-ten finishes aren’t coming thick and fast. The fact that Pebble is followed in short order by the Genesis Invitational at Riviera Country Club, an event sponsored by Tiger Woods; and a WGC event in Florida is another excuse—oh, I mean reason—that has been cited by some of the higher-ranking players for taking this week off.

And then the somewhat weak field at this year’s event got even weaker with the withdrawal of Dustin Johnson, who cited jet-lag and a need to rest after winning a European Tour event in Saudi Arabia the previous weekend. Johnson’s withdrawal dropped the OWGR points for Pebble to 30—an all-time low.

Still, there are a number of players in the field that have drawing power for even the casual golf fan. Phil Mickelson, who shares the record for most wins in the event, at five, with Mark O’Meara, will be there. Jordan Spieth, who last week in Phoenix showed some of the fire that powered him to 11 wins in his first four years on Tour, including three majors: the Masters and U.S. Open in 2015, and the Open Championship in 2017, is in the field. Former World # 1 Jason Day, who has placed T5 or better in five of his last six starts in this tournament, is back, along with 2018 Open Championship winner Francesco Molinari. Both are looking to break long-running winless streaks. Perennial fan favorite Rickie Fowler is making his first appearance in the AT&T Pro-Am since 2012.

For Bay Area golf fans the chance to see some locally familiar names is also a draw. Former Stanford Men’s Golf standouts Patrick Rodgers, Maverick McNealy, and Joseph Bramlett are in the field, along with former Cal players Max Homa, and James Hahn, and San Jose State Men’s Golf alum Mark Hubbard.

It’s been a tough year since the previous AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, but I trust that the event that has weathered World War II, hail storms, tornados, and even a snow delay in 1962, will still put on a great show for golf fans this week.

Golf Pride Concept Helix grip: Innovation at the other end of the club

 The folks at Golf Pride, Winn, Super Stroke, Lamkin, and all the other grip manufacturers aren’t going to like hearing this, but golf club grips are kind of, well… boring. I mean, let’s face it, the really exciting stuff happens at the business end of the club—the club head—right? And even shafts (which only have to be stiff and light, despite all the fancy talk that goes on about them) get a lot of attention for how they (supposedly) affect ball flight.

But grips—what’s exciting about grips? As long as they’re not slippery, they’re doing their job, right? How much room for innovation is there in the design of a tapered rubber sleeve that fits over the end of a club shaft to make it easier to hold onto the golf club? Well, based on what I have seen with the new Concept Helix grip from Golf Pride, there’s plenty.

The Concept Helix grip does away with the adhesive tape and solvents that conventional grips depend on to secure the grip to the shaft, utilizing instead some sort of mechanism that mechanically tightens the grip to the shaft (about which more later).

When I first learned about these grips I read that they require a minimum inside diameter in the shaft. I thought, “Surely they must mean outside diameter”, having in mind the idea of gripping the OD of the shaft, but upon inquiring, I was informed that the mechanism at the butt-end of the grip requires a minimum .480-inch inside diameter to fit inside the shaft. So what mechanism had they come up with that fits inside the shaft yet secures the grip to the outside of the shaft? My engineer’s curiosity was piqued.

The inquiry that answered my minimum-installation-diameter question led to an offer to send me a sample kit—three Concept Helix grips and an installation tool—to try out for myself. When they arrived I had just acquired a 3000-gram-capacity (6.6 pounds) precision scale and a swing weight scale for another equipment-related project, so I was all set to try out these intriguing new grips and get some quantitative data at the same time.

Installation

Installing these grips is a mechanically simple process, but it is also a pretty good hand and forearm workout. After removing the old grip and all traces of tape and adhesive from the target club, you slip the installation tool (the “horn”) over the club shaft just above the ferrule, prongs up. The horn is then slid up the shaft to the butt end and inserted into the open end of the Concept Helix grip.

Bracing the club head against the ground with your feet, you then slide the grip down the shaft, with one hand pushing the horn down while the other guides the top end of the grip. You will hear/feel a bit of a thump when the top of the grip is seated on the end of the shaft, at which point you remove the horn, reverse it, and place the tool’s hex over the “nut” in the end of the grip.

This is where the workout begins. Gripping the club head in one hand and holding the horn in the other, you twist the horn clockwise (remember—“right-tighty, left-loosey”). The instructions tell you that about 30 full turns of the club will do the trick, but then you remove the horn, and while gripping the club head again, twist the grip itself—bottom, middle, top—and then the white end cap, repeating until you can’t twist anymore. A few final turns with the horn on the nut (eight or ten will do it), and you’re finished.

All told, the install time for the Concept Helix for the first time was comparable to installing regular grips—maybe a bit longer if you are well-practiced with the usual grip-tape and solvent drill—the big advantage being the non-messy, non-smelly process.

How do they feel?

While I wasn’t able to get out and play with the two clubs I used in my installation trial, I made quite a number of trial swings with them out in the yard, and the grips felt very secure. The good news is that if the grips do loosen a bit, a few twists will snug them up again. (Whether this constitutes an illegal adjustment during play is a question for the USGA rules people.) The diameter of the installed Concept Helix grips fell somewhere between the Golf Pride Tour Velvet Standard and Midsize grips, and felt comfortable in my Cadet-Large glove-size hands.

Other factors

In preparation for this test I had weighed the two clubs on which I was going to be installing the Concept Helix grips—a six iron and a nine iron—and checked their swing weights. Those clubs, forged cavity-back designs fitted to True Temper Dynamic Gold S300 shafts with Midsize Golf Pride Tour Velvet grips, weighed in at 430.1 grams and 449.7 grams respectively, with swing weights of D4 and D3. The grips themselves weighed in at 55.1 grams for the regular Tour Velvet grip and 65.3 grams for the Concept Helix grip.

I rechecked the swing weight of the clubs after installing the Concept Helix grips and found that they had each gone down about one point, to D3 and D2, respectively—about what you would expect for adding 10 grams or so to the grip end, but not really noticeable to a normal golfer.

How do they work?

Lacking an x-ray machine to take a non-invasive look at the inner workings of the Concept Helix grip, I did what curious reverse-engineering investigators have always done—I disassembled one. (Actually, what I did was more of a dissection, because it involved sharp instruments and a patient that wasn’t going to be getting off the table under their own power.)

What lies under the butt end of the Concept Helix grip, I found, is a threaded rod running inside a rubber sleeve, with a nut (bonded to the rubber sleeve) at the end toward the club head, and a plastic ratchet mechanism at the other end. The rubber sleeve has an at-rest diameter of about .480 inches (hence the shaft ID requirement), and expands to grip the inside of the shaft when the nut is turned.

When I first saw the ads for these grips, influenced I guess by the graphics in the ads, I envisioned a helically wound mesh of wire or fiber which necked down and squeezed the rubber body of the grip against the club shaft. What I found when I opened one up was that the main body of the grip is just rubber, so the rest of the manner of operation of the Concept Helix grip lies, I believe, within the mysteries of the properties of the rubber that makes up the grip.

The properties of polymer materials (rubber, plastics, etc.) is not my area of expertise; in my career as a mechanical engineer I have most often dealt with, and am much more comfortable with, metallic materials. I do know that some rubber materials react to physical strain in interesting ways, and the engineers at Golf Pride, who obviously know a thing or two about rubber, have figured out how to make these properties work for them.

Does the pattern on the outside of the grip, a cross-hatch of shallow grooves about 4/10 of an inch in length, pointing up and to the left at an angle of about 45º to the long axis of the grip/shaft, crossed near the midpoint by much-shorter V-shaped perpendicular notches, have anything to do with it? I’m guessing that the answer is “yes”, but I’m also guessing that the Golf Pride engineers would change the subject if one were to ask.

The bottom line

It will be interesting to see whether the Concept Helix grips catch on. They are not necessarily that much quicker to install than conventional glue-on grips or compressed-air grips—but they are much less messy, can be very easily removed, and require only one tool, albeit a very specialized one: the horn. They offer no modification options—there is no putting a few extra wraps of tape under the grip here or there to fine-tune the fit—and they come in only one size (so far), but they offer a fit and feel that is right in the sweet spot of Golf Pride’s Tour Velvet models.

Their primary attraction may lie in the clean, simple installation process, for golfers who want to, or have to, be able to re-grip their own clubs but who lack the facilities—a workshop, garage, or a spare room and an understanding spouse—which conventional grips require. Whether that is enough to sustain them in the market, only time will tell.

(Cost of the Concept Helix grips is $9.99 each, with a minimum purchase of three grips, including the horn. For more information, and to order, go to www.concepthelix.com.)