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.
No comments:
Post a Comment