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.