Pebble Beach, CA – 9/26/2021
While the 2021 European Ryder Cup team were hanging on grimly and putting on brave faces back in Wisconsin at Herb Kohler’s “Monster on Lake Michigan”, Whistling Straits, on the final day of the 2021 Ryder Cup, a former European Ryder Cup stalwart was out on the West Coast making a bid for a victory at a much more hospitable venue – Pebble Beach Golf Links – in the PGA Tour Champions event, the 2021 PURE Insurance Championship (AKA The First Tee Open).
“The PURE Insurance Championship Impacting The First Tee”, to give it its full name, is a low-key event that should be on every Central California golf fan’s go-and-see list. With free admission, small crowds, and a September schedule slot that pretty much guarantees good weather, this event is the best way to watch golf at Pebble Beach Golf Links.
The last three years have seen the event butting up against the PGA Tour’s season opener in Napa in 2019, the rescheduled U.S. Open in 2020, and this year, the Ryder Cup — a PGA Tour Champions event is a hard sell against that kind of competition.
Speaking of the Ryder Cup, the 2021 PURE Insurance event saw a former European Ryder Cup stalwart, Bernhard Langer, in the thick of things, even while his former team were taking an historic drubbing at Whistling Straits, going down 19–9 in the most lopsided result in modern-day Ryder Cup history.
Following a first-round 71 with a six-under 66 on Saturday, Langer came into the final round trailing leader K.J. Choi by two strokes. Choi, who was chasing his first PGA Tour Champions win, opened with rounds of 67 and 68, ultimately posting a final round 68 to cement his first win on the senior tour. That “two stroke” number figured strongly in the final result, both as Choi’s final margin of victory over T-2 finishers Langer and fellow countryman Alex Cejka, and as the value of the biggest stumble of Langer's round.
After starting the final round with a two-stroke deficit, Langer fell further behind Choi through the opening nine, going out in three-under 33 with birdies on holes 1, 5 and 6, while Choi went out in 31 with a birdie on 2 and a string of four more on holes 5 through 8. At Hole #10, the 437-yard par-four that marks the farthest point of the course, his drive came afoul of the left-side fairway bunker complex and he could do no better than coming out to the primary rough with his second shot, from which he took two more shots to get to the green and one-putt for a double-bogey six.
After playing to a birdie on the deceptively difficult par-four eleventh hole on the strength of a beautifully placed approach to five feet below the hole, and two-putting for par on the par-three twelfth, Langer again came to grief at the 403-yard par-four thirteenth hole.
With the hole located in the new “annex” to the green in the back right that is so tempting, and testing, Langer fired his approach shot right at the flag, but couldn’t hold the green. The ball skipped off the back of the putting surface and rolled through the closely mown area before coming to rest just inside the main cut of rough. A delicate chip into the closely mown upslope still carried enough speed to roll out on the down-sloping green to about 12 feet below the hole, but his superbly paced uphill putt performed a 90º lip-out and came to rest two inches from the hole, resulting in a hard-fought bogey that dropped him further off of Choi’s pace.
Fighting back over the remaining five holes, Langer made up another stroke with a birdie on the long, tough par-five 14th hole, shooting from 130 yards out to perfect position on the dining-room-table-sized flat area on the right side of the putting surface that is a traditional Sunday hole location, rolling in a dead-straight six-foot putt for a four
Putting out for par on #15 (and though he could not have known it, just as Collin Morikawa was finishing up with a tie on the 18th hole to clinch the Ryder Cup for the United States), Langer followed up with another par on 16 after his 30+ foot uphill birdie putt drifted right to miss by a bare two inches.
A laser-like approach shot to six feet or so above the traditional back-left flag on the par-three 7th hole led to a welcome birdie for Langer, who then ran into a little bit of trouble off the tee on Pebble’s iconic par-five closing hole. Though Langer, not being a notable long-ball hitter off the tee, would not be expected to go for the 18th green in two, his tee shot’s placement took away any possibility.
Coming to rest toward the right side of the fairway and well clear of the bunker complex, Langer’s ball was nevertheless dead blocked by the remaining fairway tree about 35 yards ahead. While this second shot from that location was a conundrum that might have stumped a lesser player, Langer solved it with a stunning 180-yard stinger that went under the canopy on the right side of the tree, shaping itself along the right-hand curve of the fairway’s edge and never rising higher than perhaps a dozen feet off of the ground.
Langer’s second shot on #18 today might be the best shot seen and noted by the fewest people in the history of this golf hole.
Following his second shot with a well-placed 130-yard pop to the green, the Münchener rolled in the birdie putt from above the hole to finish with a four-under 68 and a three-round total of 205, 11 under par.
In the meantime, leader K. J. Choi was holding onto, but not extending, his lead. Choi ultimately finished his round with a back-nine 37, bookmarking a bogey on 14 with matching sets of four pars before and after to finish at 13-under and clinch his first win on the PGA Tour Champions.
In terms of Bernhard Langer’s round, the difference between him racking up his 42nd senior-tour win (to equal his 42 European Tour wins) and K. J. Choi notching his first came down to the double-bogey on 10, and the bogey on 13 – a fairway bunker and a lipped-out putt. This shows that, even on the 50-plus circuit, the talent pool is deep and the competition is still fierce.
