AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am: Weather, luck of the draw took a toll

One-third of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am field operated at a distinct disadvantage this week, as weather conditions made for some brutal play at Pebble Beach on Friday.

The AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am is the third tournament on the western swing that is played over multiple courses. Teams of professionals and amateurs rotate over the Monterrey Peninsula, Spyglass Hill and Pebble Beach links the first three days before those who survive the cut gather at Pebble on Sunday.

For the record, the other two tournaments using plural courses are the Desert Classic and the Farmers Insurance Open.

The use of multiple courses runs inherent risks for the tour, since the entire field isn’t playing the same course at the same time. Generally those risks are weather-related. Tour officials do what they can to compensate for any potential inequity; for example, the same tee and pin placements are used each day.

In places where weather is consistent – such as the California desert or San Diego – that reduces the chance of an inequity to something approaching zero. Indeed, at this year’s iterations of those first two split-site events, the day-to-day differences in scoring average on the courses were minuscule.

Weather, however, can be a consideration – indeed, a fairly famous one — in the Monterrey Bay area, and at this week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, it certainly was. The result, an unfortunate one for the tour and especially for the one-third of the field that happened to draw the worst routing, was literally a 3.5 stroke handicap.

The unfortunates were those whose routing took them to Spyglass Hill on Thursday, Pebble Beach on Friday and Monterrey Peninsula on Saturday. Among the 153 pros in the field, 49 drew that routing…and they paid for it.

To illustrate how much, consider this chart showing the average scores of each of the groups, those who played Pebble first, then Monterrey, then Spyglass; those who played Monterrey first, then Spyglass, then Pebble; and those woebegone 49 who opened at Spyglass, then went to Pebble, then finished at Monterrey:

Routing Average 3 round score

PB-MP-SH 71.29-70.92-71.33— 213.54

MP-SH-PB 68-89-71.59-73.13—213.60

SH-PB-MP 72.12-73.00-71.96— 217.09

There are, obviously, other possible rationales behind a 3.5 stroke difference in stroke average…except that none of them stand up under scrutiny. To that end, we’ve already eliminated changing course setups.

Maybe tournament officials loaded the field to ensure that the best players showed up on TV Saturday – that would be the Monterrey/Spyglass/Pebble routing. Maybe that biased the talent level of the three groups.

Indeed, that was pretty obviously attempted. Phil Mickelson was assigned to the Pebble-on-Saturday set, as were Jason Day, Matt Kuchar, Patrick Reed, Dustin Johnson, Adam Scott and Jordan Spieth. The biggest names in the Spyglass-Pebble-Monterrey group weren’t nearly that telegenic: Hunter Mahon, Jimmy Walker, Rafa Cabrera Bello, Jim Furyk, Cameron Champ, plus maybe James Hahn and Martin Piller. You know, Gerina Piller’s husband…the guy on the commercials.

Celebrity, however, isn’t performance. Using the current FedEx Cup standings, the average rank of the Spyglass-Pebble-Monterrey group is 117.6. The average of the better-known Monterrey-Spyglass-Pebble group is 112.33, a difference, but not a huge one. For the record, the average for the Pebble-Monterrey-Spyglass group is easily the worst of the three, 133.41.

So based on performance this season, he groups were, if anything, imbalanced against those who started at Pebble. Except, as noted above, they finished with the best three-round scoring average.

The chief difference was the weather swing at Pebble Beach between Thursday and Friday. Those at Pebble Beach Thursday played under idyllic conditions – and their scores showed it. That group averaged 71.29 strokes, easily the best performance by any of the three groups on that course.

Those players moved to Monterrey on Friday, where they averaged 70.92 strokes before finishing Saturday at Spyglass – the most forested and most protected of the three courses. While the other groups fought windier conditions, they averaged 71.33 there.

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Those who played Pebble on Friday – same course, but different weather – brought a 72.12 stroke average over from Spyglass, their Thursday stop. But in the rain and wind, they averaged no better than an even 73 strokes, a full stroke and three-quarters worse than Thursday’s group had done.

The impact was obvious on the leaderboard. Of the 13 players within six strokes of the lead through three rounds, only Cabrera Bello and Scott Stallings had drawn the most challenging Spyglass-Pebble-Monterrey circuit … and both were part of a seven-way tie for seventh, six behind the leader, Paul Casey. Casey, for the record, started at Pebble.

The results were even more evident at the other end of the leaderboard. Among the 49 assigned to the most difficult circuit, 33 missed the cut and five others technically survived but were still not allowed to play the fourth round. That left only 11 in the running Sunday, only four of them among the top 30. In addition to Stallings and Cabrera Bello, they were Adam Hadwin, tied for 14th, and Jim Furyk, tied for 18th.

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That was in sharp contrast to the results from the two other groups. Of those who opened at Monterrey Peninsula, seven stood tied for seventh or higher when play consolidated Sunday at Pebble Beach. There were 53 players in that group, 32 of whom had made the cut and 27 of whom had qualified to play on Sunday.

Among the 51 who began Thursday at Spyglass, 25 qualified to play on Sunday, among them Casey and Scott Piercy, who was tied for third.

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