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.

“Young Guns” lead the way at Champions Tour ’s Pebble Beach stop

The PGA Tour Champions Northern California stop, the PURE Insurance Championship, usually finds the fairways and greens of Pebble Beach Golf Links and Poppy Hills Golf Course inhabited by pairings of youth players from First Tee chapters around the country playing with Champions Tour pros, but like everything else in this pandemic year, things have changed. This year the event is playing as a pro-am, with First Tee teens replaced by well-heeled amateurs, and all three rounds are at Pebble Beach. There is still a “youth movement” of sorts underway at the 2020 event, though, as Champions Tour rookies are dominating the leaderboard.

Of course, “rookie” is a relative term in this case, as every player in the field has a wealth of experience behind them, and some are very familiar names, but the first-round leader and two of the three players who were tied for second after 18 holes are 50-year-old rookies on the tour, and the three players who rounded out the rest of the top-five spots are aged 51.

First-round leader Jim Furyk, one of those 50-year-old “rookies”, is a former FedEx Cup champion (2010) and the 2003 U.S. Open champion, and has an additional 16 PGA tour wins on his CV. Another familiar name near the top of the leaderboard is Ernie Els. Probably the second name, after Gary Player, that comes to mind when South African golf is mentioned, Els has two U.S. Open victories to his credit (1994, 1997), two Open Championship titles (2002, 2012), and 15 additional PGA Tour wins—not to mention his 47 international victories.

Less well-known, except perhaps to the deep-knowledge pro golf cognoscenti, is the remaining 50-year-old who was sitting T2 after 18 holes—Cameron Beckman. A three-time winner on the PGA Tour, Beckman turned pro in 1993, played on the Nike Tour (now the Korn Ferry Tour) developmental circuit, Beckman went to the PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament 10 times before locking up his card for the 2008 season with a T20 finish at the Children’s Miracle Network Classic.

After 18 holes Furyk, Els, and Beckman were sitting just ahead of another 50-year-old, Stephen Leaney of New Zealand, and a couple of 51-year-olds, Dicky Pride and Gene Sauers. By the end of the second round they had been joined by another 50-year-old, Canadian lefty and 2003 Masters champion Mike Weir; and 60-year-old Fred Couples had snuck into the mix.

In the second round Weir, who has battled elbow problems for many years after an ill-advised change to the “stack-and-tilt” swing method, found a gear that he might not have known he had, and after a 1-over 73 in the first round, ascended the leaderboard at nose-bleed speed, picking up 38 spots on the strength of a clean-card 7-under 65 that included a string of three birdies in a row on holes 14 – 16.

Fred Couples, the only player over 51 years of age to crack the top seven after 36 holes, woke up from something of a trance, it seems, after Friday’s desultory four-birdies, two-bogeys, two-under 70, and knocked together a bogey-free five-under 67 to vault 15 spots up the leaderboard into a five-way tie for third.

The field, including the twelve amateurs who made the pro-am cut, will assemble Sunday starting at 7:35 to decide the issue.