{"id":31143,"date":"2026-07-03T11:41:48","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T11:41:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/31143\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T11:41:48","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T11:41:48","slug":"scottie-scheffler-opens-near-bottom-of-pebble-beach-pro-am-leaderboard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/31143\/","title":{"rendered":"Scottie Scheffler opens near bottom of Pebble Beach Pro-Am leaderboard"},"content":{"rendered":"

PEBBLE BEACH \u2013 Two fans in puffy vests, with \u201ctransfusion\u201d cocktails in hand, walked upstream among the 10th hole\u2019s gallery as the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am<\/a> opened Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cAh, Scheffler. That\u2019s why there is a crowd,\u201d one of the middle-aged men said to the other.<\/p>\n

Scottie Scheffler, the world\u2019s No. 1-ranked golfer since May 2023, indeed should be the No. 1 attraction this week, aside from the heavenly landscape.<\/p>\n

He was the odds-on favorite until his even-par debut sank him into a tie for 64th in the 80-man field, while almost all others seized on idyllic sunny weather, with rain forecast for Sunday\u2019s final round.<\/p>\n

Leader Ryo Hisatsune went 10-under in his first-ever round at Pebble, and of the 10 golfers who finished 7-under, six played Pebble Beach while the others conquered Spyglass Hill.<\/p>\n

Only two other golfers, each at 2-over, scored higher at Pebble than Scheffler.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like typically I\u2019m good at scoring and today I felt like I didn\u2019t score at all,\u201d Scheffler said after making birdie on the 18th. \u201cAnything that kind of went wrong seemed to be going that direction, and I just felt like I scored poorly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually feel like I\u2019m playing pretty well. Just one of those days.\u201d<\/p>\n

The day came and went without a sighting of Taylor Swift, whose fianc\u00e9, Travis Kelce,<\/a> worked the pro-am circuit at Spyglass Hill, along with 49ers legends Steve Young and Alex Smith \u2013 the few recognizable faces in what had been an annual celebrity carnival but now serves as the PGA Tour\u2019s first Signature Event this season.<\/p>\n

Also at Spyglass was defending champion Rory McIlroy<\/a>, who holed out from the 14th hole\u2019s front bunker to go 4-under through five, and that\u2019s where his final score rested.<\/p>\n

Scores were so low that a third of the field \u2014 27 golfers \u2014 emerged 5-under or lower.<\/p>\n

Scheffler\u2019s line: three birdies, three bogeys, and one putter flip in disgust after missing a birdie and settling for a tap-in par on 15th. He also had a \u201chuge mud ball\u201d that detoured his second shot on the second hole.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re playing later in the day, it can be tough to hole putts on these greens,\u201d said Scheffler, who played into the wind most of the back nine before finishing at 3:25 p.m. \u201cI need to take advantage of holes early in the round and I wasn\u2019t able to do that, knowing that the wind was going to pick up and then we were going to turn into it on the back nine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hisatsune, the first-round leader, birdied 5-of-7 out the gate. Even better were the six consecutive birdies to open by Chris Gotterup, Sunday\u2019s Phoenix Open winner in a playoff against Hideki Matsuyama, who went 5-under as Scheffler\u2019s playing partner Thursday.<\/p>\n

One magnificent shot among Scheffler\u2019s even-par 72 verified his world No. 1 stature: After a southerly breeze carried his approach past the green and back bunker, his ball stopped a yard shy of the lateral-hazard line and 2 yards from a pit of doom, where a creek separates Pebble\u2019s southernmost hole from a $40 million home once owned by late actor Gene Hackman.<\/p>\n

Scheffler\u2019s delicate flop shot landed on the 10th green\u2019s fringe and he saved par with a 7-foot putt.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that ball lands on the green with how soft the greens are, probably a 15-footer for birdie,\u201d Scheffler said of his wind-derailed, 154-yard approach. \u201cIt lands about a foot into the fringe and not only doesn\u2019t go in the bunker, it hops over that bunker. Fortunately, in spite of the hazard, I was able to make par. Little stuff like that is what I was going up against today.\u201d<\/p>\n

A week earlier, Scheffler opened the Phoenix Open with a 2-over 71. He rallied to threaten the leaders and finished tied for third.<\/p>\n

Can he repeat those dramatics here?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a little bit easier to do around that golf course versus this one, the way the scores are shaping up to be,\u201d Scheffler said. \u201cBut around these places, you never know what the weather\u2019s going to turn out to be like. I\u2019ll need a little bit of help up there from the weather. If we get a few more days like this, it\u2019s going to be pretty tough for me to be able to catch up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three weeks ago, he won the American Express tournament in La Quinta, his 20th PGA Tour win in a career that\u2019s seen him finish atop the world rankings the past three years.<\/p>\n

Scheffler has finished top-10 in 17 straight PGA Tour events. Here, he tied for sixth in 2024 and tied for ninth last year. This is a no-cut tournament for the pros, so Scheffler certainly can try climbing the leaderboard.<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately I needed to be a little sharper today,\u201d Scheffler said, \u201cand try again tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PEBBLE BEACH \u2013 Two fans in puffy vests, with \u201ctransfusion\u201d cocktails in hand, walked upstream among the 10th…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[1338,12626,182,44,12624,898,896,12625,12627,56],"class_list":["post-31143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-att-pebble-beach-pro-am","tag-att-pebble-beach-pro-am","tag-bay-area","tag-california","tag-golf","tag-inside-sports","tag-latest-headlines","tag-monterey-county","tag-pebble-beach-golf-tournament","tag-south-bay","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}