Big names not missed as AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am comes to an exciting climax

The absence of most of the PGA Tour’s big names this week didn’t take away from the excitement of professional golf’s most scenic tournament, the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

With the likes of Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson—both multiple winners of this event—and many others opting to take Saudi blood money just for showing up at the Saudi International, it was left to Jordan Spieth, Patrick Cantlay, Beau Hossler and a host of less recognizable names to bring the excitement from the Monterey Peninsula.

First-round leader Tom Hoge book-ended his tournament in the best fashion possible, facing down a surging Jordan Spieth to hoist his first trophy on the PGA Tour, bank a cool $1.5M, lock up two years’ worth of eligibility, and earn invites to the Masters and the Open Championship.

As many as five players were tied for first place mid-round as the likes of Patrick Cantlay, Troy Merritt, Beau Hossler and Jordan Spieth made moves early to mid-round.

Merritt was as low as seven-under after a birdie at the par-five 14th hole, even after a bogey at #8, but a double bogey at the par-three 17th killed his chances for a meaningful look at a win.

Cantlay came into the final round 65-68-68–201, 14-under and T-4, one stroke back of third-round co-leaders Tom Hoge, Beau Hossler, and Andrew Putnam. Strong iron play but poor putting stymied a move up the leaderboard by the SoCal pro, and a pair of late bogeys sealed his fate; a birdie on 18 boosted him into a share of fourth place alongside Troy Merritt.

First-round co-leader Beau Hossler stuttered early with a bogey on the par-five second hole and a bunker-to-fringe-to-three-putt adventure at the par-3 fifth hole. This usually relatively benign one-shotter played more difficult today as a new tee box, to the right of the usual position, was put into use for the first time. Birdies at 9, 10, and 11, and later at 17, buoyed his chances at a run for the win, but he still came to 18 needing an eagle to force a playoff. His last chance was a hole-out from the right-hand greenside bunker, which didn’t happen, and three putts later he had slipped from possible contender to solo third place.

Jordan Spieth was the hopeful story of the round for most of the day. Starting the final round 11 strokes out of first place, he marched ahead as the first-round leaders slipped back. His hopeful fans held their breath as he came to the 8th hole, where he danced with death at the edge of the cliff yesterday, his ball actually beyond the red line at the precipice. They clung to hope as he birdied 12 and 13 to take the solo lead; his birdie at the notoriously tough par-three 12th was only the second of the day.

Meanwhile, another first-round co-leader, TCU grad Tom Hoge, was struggling to an even-par front nine after a double-bogey on #5 and a bogey from the rough above the green on #8. Known as a player who doesn’t give up late in the game, Hoge righted the ship with birdies at 11 and 14, and pulled up on Spieth with another, at #16.

Now it was Spieth’s turn to stumble in the stretch. A slightly mishit 8-iron off the tee at #17 landed short, leaving him with a mediocre lie in the yawning front bunker. Not known for his excellent sand play in recent years, Spieth blasted out to five feet above the hole and missed the crucial par putt, handing the lead to Hoge, one hole behind him on the course.

More woes attended for Jordan Spieth on the 18th hole. His tee shot came to rest to the right of the strategically placed cypress tree mid-fairway, and a slight mis-hit off a bare lie resulted in a plugged lie in the seawall fairway bunker. Another poor shot left him short of the green, over 50 feet from the flag—long story short: chip short, par putt, solo second.

Hoge, in the mean time, played conservatively down the famously scenic fairway that curves around the blue expanse of Carmel Bay, getting to the green in a regulation three shots and taking two putts to get to the hole from 37 feet. It took Hossler’s botched run at the 18th hole (described above) to clinch the win for Hoge, but there was little doubt of the outcome once Hossler’s second shot landed in the greenside bunker.

In the final equation, it was two Texans and a man from North Dakota who went to school in Texas who provided the drama in the final round of the 2022 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am; three names that ranged in rank from well-known to “Oh, yeah—him,” to “Who?”, and nobody really missed the guys who bailed on one of the most historic, and certainly the most scenic, events on the PGA tour.

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.