2024 AT&T Pro-Am, Day 2: Almost boring…

There is a distinct lack of drama during the Friday round of a no-cut golf tournament. With the exception of the original-format Pebble Beach Pro-Am, which featured a Saturday cut because of the three-course rota, Friday is traditionally go-big-or-go-home day, when players at or near the top of the leaderboard are trying to continue their good play and hang on to their spots, and back-markers are looking to find another gear, up their games and get, or stay, above the cut line in order to make a paycheck.

Five of eight of the PGA Tour’s new limited-field Signature events, of which the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am is now one, have no cut (the exceptions are the three player-hosted invitationals: the Genesis Invitational, Arnold Palmer Invitational, and the Memorial Tournament), so that Friday drama (or desperation, in some cases) that made it my favorite tournament day, after Sunday, is gone.

Of course, even in a guaranteed-payday tournament like this there is an incentive to play well. After all, with a total purse of $20 million, 1st-place money is a life-changing (at least for mere mortals) $3.6 million, and 10th-place still nets the player something north of half a million dollars. Even DFL* money is a mere $32,000, but that will at least cover your expenses for the week with a nice chunk of change left over – and you got to play Pebble Beach and Spyglass Hill.

When you add to that picture a near-total lack of wind, and rain-softened greens that held every shot that hit them, the drama factor on the second day of the 2024 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am was, well – low.

That being said, in some ways the new-look Pro-Am stayed true to its roots, because from early in the day Friday, despite the Signature Events’ promise of “more big names” and therefore “more excitement”, two less-than-familiar names – Thomas Detry and Ludvig Åberg, a Belgian and a Swede, respectively, held sway at the top of the leaderboard throughout the day.

Playing at Pebble, Detry laid a 2-under 70 (which included bogeys at holes 4 and 5) on top of the 9-under he carded Thursday at Spyglass Hill to hang on to a share of first place, while Åberg took serious advantage of the benign conditions at the tournament’s namesake course to rack up an impressive 7-under 65, second-lowest score on the day to join Detry at the top of the leaderboard.

Also crowding onto the top step, at this point, was Scottie Scheffler, who has come a long way since his 2013 USGA Jr. Amateur Championship victory at Martis Camp in Truckee. Scheffler took low-round-of-the-day honors, helped to a tidy 8-under 64 by a 35-foot birdie putt on 17. He rose thirteen spots up the leaderboard today to muscle in on a share of first place.

Where were the rest of the big names?

Rory McIlroy, current world #2 who was touted as the event’s biggest draw, couldn’t buy a putt all day (SG-Putting: 2.6), and seems to have lost the ability to hit any kind of a draw; he doubled down on his previous day’s troublesome 1-under round at Spyglass with a weak-sauce 2-over 74 at Pebble, dropping to T65 at 1-over. Of some consolation, perhaps, is the fact that McIlroy and his amateur partner, Jeff Rhodes, a managing partner at TPG Capital, won the pro-am competition with a 17-under total.

Patrick Cantlay, who sat one stroke behind Detry at the end of the first round, clung on with a 2-under 70 today, also at Pebble Beach; he is currently alone in 4th place.

Justin Thomas, who hasn’t stepped foot on this course in a decade, added a 3-under round on Pebble today to yesterday’s 6-under at Spyglass for a comfortable 9-under T5, two strokes back of the leading trio. Thomas shares the T5 spot with Argentinian Emiliano Grillo, and Frenchman Matthieu Pavon, who was last week’s winner on Tour in the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines.

AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am 2023 champion Justin Rose managed just one more birdie than bogeys today, netting a 1-under 71 that dropped him fifteen spots down the leaderboard to T23, while AT&T spokesperson Jordan Spieth managed a 3-under 69, climbing six spots to T44.

The NorCal-associated golfers in the field finished the day as follows:

• Collin Morikawa and Mark Hubbard – 7-under, T10
• Maverick McNealy – 3-under, T44
• Kurt Kitayama, Chico native and UNV grad – 1-under, T55
• Max Homa, 2013 Cal grad – 2-under, T53
• Patrick Rodgers – 6-over, T78

*  (Dead f--king last)

Thursday at the 2024 AT&T Pro-Am: Detry in the lead, McNealy makes a big recovery

What a difference a day makes. Wednesday at Pebble Beach, the final practice day before competition rounds began, was a day of high winds and little rain – until the evening, when another “Pineapple Express” atmospheric river pounded the Central Coast with over an inch of rain. Thursday morning dawned with a mix of towering cloudscapes, rain showers, and patches of blue sky – a day when a jacket, an umbrella, and sunglasses would all come into play.

It was in this mixed bag of weather conditions that the first day of competition began in the “new look” Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Even with just 80 pairings and two courses in play, the traditional two-tee (#1 and #10) start was still in play; tee times ran from 8:45 to 10:33 at comfortable 12-minute intervals – still a desirable procedure when amateurs are in the mix. With the weather outlook for the weekend looking less than rosy – and positively nasty on Sunday, conversation around the lunch table in the media center touched on the possibility of play delays, one 36-hole day, a shortened event, or even the dreaded Monday finish. For today’s opening round, however, players and spectators alike enjoyed the light breezes and crashing surf, with – for most of the day – just the occasional brief rain shower bringing out jackets and umbrellas.

Big names in the mix

Ulster’s Rory McIlroy, back at Pebble Beach for the first time since the 2019 U.S. Open, rose to the top of the leaderboard briefly as he hit 6-under through 14 holes at Spyglass – before a bogey, double-bogey, bogey finish dropped him well down the leaderboard (the double-bogey on #8 involved a penalty for an improper drop.) Patrick Cantlay, meanwhile, playing three groups behind him, took over the top spot at 6-under after a birdie on #13, a string of four birdies at holes #17 through #2, and another at hole #5.

Cantlay went on to birdie his 16th and 17th holes to take over the top spot at 8-under. A late charge by Korea’s Si Woo Kim came up short, as a bogey at #9 dropped him to 6-under – but wait, there’s more…

Another “who is that guy” early leader at the AT&T Pro-Am

Late in the day, Thomas Detry of Belgium, also playing at Spyglass Hill, was 6-under through 16 holes and challenging for the outright lead. A birdie at #17 put him level with Cantlay – and then he took sole possession of the top of the leaderboard with a dramatic chip-in birdie from the right rough at Spy’s par-four 18th. With the new format dictating only one round at Spyglass Hill for all players, can Detry, an eighth-year pro still looking for his first win on Tour, follow up with three good rounds at Pebble Beach?

Maverick McNealy’s up-and-down round

Former Stanford Men’s Golf great Maverick McNealy coasted through most of the front nine on pars, with a lone birdie at #6, the par-five hole that plays up a five-story cliff on Arrowhead Point, but came to grief at holes 9 and 10. These two daunting par-four’s form part of the three-hole stretch (holes 8, 9, and 10) that sportswriter Dan Jenkins dubbed “Abalone Corner”, echoing the “Amen Corner” moniker given to Augusta National’s 11th through 13th.

After a par on #8, McNealy bogeyed #9 after going down the left side of the hole bunker-rough-green; he then flipped the script on #10, sailing his approach shot wide right, over the cliff but hanging up in the rough, luckily not falling all the way to the beach below. His recovery shot sailed over the green to the left rough, thence to the green and two putts for a double-bogey six and a mid-round score of 2-over.

After his adventure at #10, another string of routine pars got McNealy to Pebble’s picture-postcard closing hole, the par-five 18th, where in 2021 he narrowly missed a shot at forcing a playoff against Daniel Berger. That year, on the 72nd hole of the tournament, he sailed a beautiful high-draw 3-iron shot to 22 feet above the hole, only just missing the eagle putt that would have put the tournament into extra holes (after Berger did make eagle there, a few minutes later.)

In today’s round he followed a 304-yard drive to the right edge of the fairway, threading the needle between the cypress tree and the bunker complex there, with an absolutely stiffed second shot, a hybrid from 236 yards, to a scant eight feet above the hole. This time he made the eagle putt, making up the two-shot deficit from #10 to finish even for the round. A little more in the way of play of that caliber and we may see another high finish here at Pebble Beach from the young man who literally grew up on this golf course though his early teens.

The other NorCal-associated golfers in the field finished the day as follows:

• Collin Morikawa, former Cal golfer and 2020 PGA Championship winner at Harding Park – 5-under, T5
• Kurt Kitayama, Chico native and UNV grad – 3-under, T15
• Max Homa, 2013 Cal grad – 3-under, T15
• Former SJSU Men’s Golf standout Mark Hubbard – 3-under, T15
• Patrick Rodgers, Stanford Men’s Golf star who tied Tiger Woods’s 11-victory record – 4-over, T77