For the second straight week, the world No. 1 is off to a slow start.
Scottie Scheffler, who opened last week’s WM Phoenix Open in 2-over 73 before rallying to a T-3 finish, carded an even-par 72 Thursday at Pebble Beach Golf Links and sits T-62 out of 80 competitors, double-digit shots off the lead, at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
“I feel like typically I’m good at scoring, and today I felt like I didn’t score at all,” Scheffler said. “Like anything that kind of went wrong seemed to be going that direction, and I just felt like I scored poorly. I actually feel like I’m playing pretty well, just one of those days.”
Pebble Beach, one of two co-hosts for the first two rounds of the PGA Tour’s first signature event of the season, played to an average of around 3.7 strokes under par while nearby Spyglass Hill was slightly tougher at 2.4 shots under par. Leader Ryo Hisatsune fired a 10-under 62 at Pebble, one shot better than Sam Burns’ 63, also at Pebble.
Uncharacteristically, Scheffler missed seven greens and lost over two strokes on approach, ninth worst in the field and fifth worst among those at Pebble. He also lost over two shots with the putter.
Most of the negative came later in Scheffler’s round, as he had hit every green by the time he rolled in a 7-footer for birdie at the par-4 fourth to go 1 under. Scheffler bogeyed the next hole, birdied the par-5 sixth and turned in 1-under 35. But on the back, Scheffler hit only three greens, two on par-5s, including No. 18, which he birdied. He bogeyed the par-3 12th after missing a 3-footer and left his 81-yard approach from a nasty lie at the par-4 16th in a bunker 20 yards from the flag; he bogeyed No. 16 as well.
“The challenge is making a bunch of birdies,” Scheffler said. “That was a challenge for me today. I’m looking at the leaderboard ... and it looks like 7 under gets you in the top 10, so scores are pretty low. When you’re playing later in the day, it can be tough to hole putts on these greens. And, you know, for me, I need to take advantage of holes early in the round, and I wasn’t able to do that, knowing that the wind was going to pick up and then we were going to turn into it kind of on the back nine.”
Scheffler entered the week having made 17 straight top-10s on the PGA Tour, the longest streak since Billy Casper in 1965.
Now, he has opened consecutive tournaments with rounds of par or worse for the first time since 2020 (per Justin Ray), when he did so at the Tour Championship and Sanderson Farms Championship.
But can he come back like he did last week at TPC Scottsdale, where he was also 10 back after Day 1?
“I think it’s a little bit easier to do around that golf course versus this one the way the scores are shaping up to be,” Scheffler said. “But around these places, you never know what the weather’s going to turn out to be like. I’ll need a little bit of help up there from the weather.
“If we get a few more days like this (calm, comfortable conditions), it’s going to be pretty tough for me to be able to catch up.”