Power fades, Hossler hustles, and Spieth makes a giant leap on Saturday at the AT&T Pro-Am

In your run-of-the-mill PGA Tour event, Friday is Cut Day, when players have to play their way into the weekend, and Saturday is Moving Day, when the lucky 60+ who survived to play for a paycheck are playing to attain, or hold, a position close to the top of the leaderboard and be poised for a run at a high finish. As it is in so many ways, the Pebble Beach Pro-Am is exceptional in this regard. Played on three courses—Pebble Beach Golf Links, Spyglass Hill, and the Shore Course at Monterey Peninsula Golf Club—this tournament cycles the players through all three courses, with the cut coming on Saturday, after 54 holes of play.

This unique configuration turns Saturday into a combination of “moving day” and “cut day”. This unique circumstance becomes even more significant when, as has happened this week, the 36-hole leader rides a record-tying five-stroke lead into the weekend.

Ireland’s Séamus Power opened his run at an AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am title on Thursday with a noteworthy bogey-free eight-under 64 at Spyglass Hill, which is acknowledged to be the toughest of the three courses in the tournament rota. Rotating to Pebble Beach on Friday, Power kept the pedal down, and with two bogeys against ten birdies, carded a second eight-under 64 to set a new 36-hole scoring record of 128.

The new record is one stroke better than the previous record of 129, jointly held by Nick Taylor (2020) and Phil Mickelson (2005)—each of whom went on to win.

Power’s pursuers got the help they needed as the firm and fast MPCC course kept a lid on the Irishman’s game. Beau Hossler, Patrick Cantlay, Jordan Spieth, and Andrew Putnam playing at Pebble, and Tom Hoge, at Spyglass, all made moves to close the gap.

Hossler, who led the 2012 U.S. Open at the Olympic Club briefly in the third round as an amateur, caught up to Power in the latter part of their respective rounds. The Texan traded off between co-leading and trailing by one over a run of several holes before Power sputtered to a 3-over 74 on the Shore Course, eventually falling to T-7, while Hossler ascended to a tie for the lead with Andrew Putnam and first-round leader Tom Hoge. Hossler carded a 7-under 65 on five birdies and an eagle, on the par-five 6th hole.

A few groups behind Hossler, Patrick Cantlay endured a string of pars and one bogey, at 15, on the back nine before a 22-foot putt at the 17th hole yielded a timely birdie and gave his game a boost that had been missing to that point. He followed it with a birdie at 18 after getting on in two with driver–3-wood, cementing a 4-under round and -14 for 54 holes, good enough for T-4 going into the final round.

The biggest move on the day was made by the 2017 Pro-Am champ Jordan Spieth, who rode a run of sterling iron play to a 9-under 63, lifting him to 14-under for the tournament and into a three-way tie for 4th going into the final round.

Cantlay and Spieth were joined at T-4 by Joel Dahmen, who posted a sneaky-good six-under 66 at Spyglass Hill to join Cantlay and Spieth in the three-way tie for fourth.

NorCal notables who made the field include 2021 runner-up Maverick McNealy; Nick Watney, who squeaked in with 4-under, T-65 finish*; Austin Smotherman, who opened 65-68 in the first two rounds and sputtered to a 3-over 75 at Spyglass today, and former San José State golfer Mark Hubbard, who stitched a light-running 7-under 65 on MPCC Shore for an 8-under T-21 placement going into the final round.

Sunday promises to be a long day on the course, with 77 pros in the field*. Interestingly, the fate of the twelve other players who were tied with Sahith Theegala at 4-under lay in his hands when he got to the 18th hole. If he birdied the final hole to move to 5-under and solo 65th, the dozen at 4-under would fall to the wrong side of the cut line; par or worse and they are all playing for a paycheck tomorrow.

Theegala placed his third shot in the back fringe, 28-1/2 feet from the hole, and then missed that birdie putt. There are twelve guys in the field tomorrow* who owe Theegala a steak dinner.

* (Late update – Given the size of the field, and the presence of amateurs, the PGA Tour invoked the MDF rule—so just the top 64 pros are playing on Sunday. It would have been very difficult to get a finish in before dark, otherwise.)

Friday is a Power-play day at the 2022 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am

At the end of the first round of play at the 2022 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Fargo, North Dakota native Tom Hoge stood atop the leaderboard after posting a 9-under 63 at Pebble Beach Golf Links—but as anyone who is familiar with this tournament knows, not all rounds are created equal here in the Del Monte Forest.

It is generally acknowledged that of the three courses in the tournament rota—Pebble Beach, Spyglass Hill, and the Shore Course at Monterey Peninsula Golf Club—Spyglass Hill, with its more severe elevation changes and coastline to forest routing, is the toughest test of golf, with Pebble and the Shore Course trading off second and third depending upon the strength and severity of the wind.

That being the case, it was generally acknowledged among the cognoscenti that Hoge’s Friday 63 at Pebble, under clear skies and in calm conditions, had to take a back seat to the 8-under 64 put up by Irishman Séamus Power at Spyglass Hill in the first round. Starting on the tenth hole, Power opened with a 3-under 33 for nine holes, opened the front nine with another birdie and caught another gear toward the end of hit round, dropping a string of birdies in the last four holes to close out the round in style.

Teeing off at #1 at Pebble Beach on Friday morning, Power kept his foot down, coming out of the gate with another 3-under 33 on the home course’s front nine, with birdies at the second, sixth, seventh, and ninth holes, marred only by a three-put bogey at #5.

The momentum from his birdie at the intimidating par-4 ninth, the centerpiece of the three-hole string of cliff-top par fours—eight, nine, and ten—that sportswriter Dan Jenkins dubbed “Abalone Corner”, carried over to the next three holes as the course turned inland. Birdies on both of the back nine’s par-fives, 14 and 18, and the par-four 16th hole, rolled back by a tough bogey from a green-side bunker on the par-three 17th, brought Power home in 31, for back-to-back 64s, 16-under for the tournament, and a new 36-hole tournament scoring record of 128.

The previous holders of the 36-hole scoring record of 129, Nick Taylor (2020) and Phil Mickelson (2005), each went on to win the tournament.

Meanwhile, a mile or two or three down the 17-Mile Drive, first-round leader Hoge was slipping off the pace a bit with a two-under 69 at the par-71 Shore Course that dropped him to second, five strokes back of Power at 11 under, after 36 holes. Andrew Putnam, who posted a 6-under 65 on the Shore Course in the first round, carded a 5-under 67 at Spyglass Hill and moved up into a tie with Hoge for second; they were joined by Canadian Adam Svensson who followed a first-round 69 at Pebble with a blistering 8-under 63 at the Shore Course.

Power’s five-stroke lead after 36 holes ties another record; former Cal golfer Charlie Wi held a five-stroke lead after 36 holes in 2012—only to lose to Phil Mickelson, and Bob Rosburg held a five-stroke lead after 36 holes in 1958, but lost to Billy Casper (Rosburg would go on to win the Pro-Am in 1961.)

A five-stroke lead is nothing to sneeze at going into the third round, but there are some players not so far behind that are capable of putting up a low score late to pounce on any potential missteps that might be made by Power, Hoge, Putnam, or Svensson. Patrick Cantlay put up a second-round 68 at Spyglass to wrap up 36 holes at 10-under, T-5, while a resurgent Jason Day followed up Thursday’s 4-under 68 at Pebble with a 5-under 66 at the Shore Course and is currently seven strokes back—but with the tougher test of Spyglass Hill to come on Saturday.

Something to consider for a look ahead to Saturday’s round is the fact that Power, who seems to be thriving under the benign conditions that have prevailed so far, and which should continue through the weekend, will be playing the easier of the three courses, MPCC’s Shore Course, while his closest competitors, Hoge and Putnam, will be at Spyglass Hill and Pebble Beach, respectively.

That’s something to look forward to for Saturday/cut day at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

Thursday at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am: Who are those guys?

It’s a recurring theme at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am: the first round goes into the books on Thursday evening, and the universal reaction to the name at the top of the leaderboard is “Who?”

Mind you, I’m not talking about the fans walking back to their shuttle buses at the end of the day, or the punters propping up the bar at the 19th Hole—I’m talking about in the media center, where some of the finest minds writing about golf today are gathered to ponder, pontificate, and promulgate their wisdom via the various forms of media, social and otherwise.

This phenomenon has been known to extend through Friday and Saturday, and even persist to the final round—who can forget Vaughn Taylor in 2016; or maybe the ultimate “Who dat?” winner, Ted Potter, Jr., the Orlando Mini-tour King, in 2018? (Potter’s win is even more remarkable when you consider the group that tied for second behind him, which included Jason Day, and multiple Pebble Beach champions Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson.)

This year’s first-round leaderboard treated fans and the media to such well-known names as Knous, Hoge, Putnam, Malnati, Lipsky, and Eckroat. You can be forgiven for thinking that this lineup sounds more like a firm of auto-accident lawyers that advertise on local cable than the top of the leaderboard at a prestigious PGA Tour event.

To be fair, the absence of most of the biggest names in PGA tour golf has left the venerable Del Monte Forest beach bash awash in lesser-known players, so the odds are good that this year’s winner could be someone with a low recognition factor.

A veritable who’s-who of men’s professional golf, most of whom could have been reliably counted upon to be in the field here at Pebble Beach, decamped to Saudi Arabia to play for a smaller purse ($5M vs $8.7M) but big appearance fees (reportedly larger, in some cases, than the winner’s share here at Pebble Beach).

The list includes five-time Pebble Beach winner Phil Mickelson; two-time winner Dustin Johnson; Graeme McDowell, the winner of the 2010 U.S. Open, held here at Pebble Beach; and sundry other golf luminaries and recognizable names such as Bryson DeChambeau, Tony Finau, Sergio Garcia, Henrik Stenson, Ian Poulter, Bubba Watson, Patrick Reed, and several more.

The biggest names in the field this week at the Clambake are Jordan Spieth, who is among the stable of players affiliated with presenting sponsor AT&T; #3-ranked Patrick Cantlay, a California kid (if SoCal…) who acknowledged, but resisted, the temptation of Saudi gelt and came to Pebble Beach this week because he loves the place; Maverick McNealy, local boy and Stanford Men’s golf star who grew up in a house on Pebble’s 16th fairway before his family moved to Hillsborough; and former World #1 Jason Day, who showed some long-missing form at the Farmer’s Insurance Open at Torrey Pines last week before fading over the closing holes of the final round.

There is an old saying that goes: “The race doesn’t always go to the swift, nor the battle to the strong—but that’s the way to bet”, so the chances are good that one of the four names I mentioned in the preceding paragraph will top the leaderboard come Sunday evening. The odds are even better that, even if none of them do top the field, one or more of them will be in the hunt on Sunday, and will end up in the Top 5 after 72 holes are played.

As far as Round One went, an 11-year pro from North Dakota by way of Texas Christian University (“Go Frogs!”) named Tom Hoge (pronounced “hoagie”, like the sandwich) topped the leaderboard after 18 holes.

Starting on the tenth hole at Pebble Beach Golf Links under clear skies in a dead calm, Hoge opened with birdies at 10 and 11, carded another at 18, and went on a six-hole birdie run on holes 3 through 8 after pars at 1 and 2. His clean-card 9-under 63 is one off of the tournament course record of 62 that is jointly held by Dave Kite (1983 – win), David Duval (1997 – runner-up), and was most recently equaled by Patrick Cantlay in last year ’s first round.

Hoge is trailed by Irishman Seamus Power, who carded an 8-under 64 at Spyglass Hill, and NorCal’s own Austin Smotherman, a native of Loomis, CA, a small town straddling Hwy 80 just east of Sacramento, who carded a 7-under 65 at Pebble Beach, more than offsetting a pair of bogeys with eagles at the par-5 sixth and eighteenth holes. Swede Jonas Blixt, who played at Spyglass Hill today, is tied with Smotherman at 7-under.

Patrick Cantlay is the highest-place of the bigger names in the field, T-5 at 6-under after his opening round at Spyglass Hill; Jason Day is T-14, 3-under at Pebble Beach; Jordan Spieth sits at T-31 after a 3-under round at MPCC, and Maverick McNealy is T-51 with a 2-under round, also at MPCC.