U.S. Open: Full moon, stellar field promise high drama at Pebble Beach
The 2019 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach draws to a close on Sunday afternoon. Could the full moon be a sign of the drama to come in the final round?
It’s been a uncanny U.S. Open at Pebble Beach already, what with runaway driverless golf carts sending patrons to the hospital, mysterious hidden rakes gobbling up Jordan Spieth’s escape shots, and marauding seagulls attempting to steal Phil Mickelson’s golf ball. But buckle up, superstitious sports fans, all the signs and a full moon say it’s about to get weirder.
Pebble has been sufficiently socked in with marine layer over the first three rounds that locals are to be forgiven if they’ve overlooked the waxing moon, set to gleam as chaste and white as new Top Flite early Monday morning, just four or five short hours after the leaders finish late Sunday night.
For those keeping score at home a full moon in June is known as a Strawberry Moon in the U.S. and yes, Justin Rose fans, a Rose Moon in Europe. Combine the sweetness of the Strawberry/Honey/Mead/Rose moon set to reach maximum golf ball roundness over Monterey Bay at 1:30 a.m., add the high emotion of the final round of America’s Open, and mix in a national holiday, Father’s Day, and you have a potent recipe for high drama.
Golfers are a superstitious lot prone to reading both tea leaves and tides, both of which will be in play at Pebble Beach come Sunday night. Astrologers and New Agers have this to say about the Strawberry Moon: “Things can easily get out of hand during the days surrounding this full moon—when the lines between reality and fantasy can get easily blurred.”
Astrologer Linda Stardust claims the Strawberry Moon in the skies above Stillwater Cover and elsewhere on Planet Golf is prone to make us “fascinated with glamour—and yes, role playing.” Lead astrologer on horoscope.com, Narayana Montufar, points out that this June moon is happening in the sign of Sagittarius, which means it’s influenced by “expansive Jupiter and dreamy Neptune.”
What all this means for the players on the back nine of the U.S. Open on Sunday is anyone’s guess, though one can’t help but sense a come-from-behind charge from superstition-minded Irishman Mcllroy in the offing, or perhaps a second major of the year (and third straight U.S. Open) notched by a golfer of Jupiter-esque strength, Brooks Koepka. Will McIlroy reprise his come-from-behind win at the Canadian Open, or will Chez Reavie, he just 10 days shy of being a true Sagittarian, role-play his way into victory as 2019’s version of 1992 U.S. Open winner Tom Kite?
The full Strawberry Moon will bring epic high tides to Pebble’s shores, too, predicted to be peak at six feet just a couple of hours after the leaders sink their final putts.
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Years ago I had the opportunity to sit down with Michael Murphy, author of the mystical cult classic Golf in the Kingdom, in Sausalito. The meeting was a lucky bit of serendipity, a true fluke, one of several that eventually lead to my book Let There Be Pebble: A Middle-Handicapper’s Year in America’s Garden of Golf. I’ve long since forgotten most of our lunch together, other than the fact that we both ordered Arnold Palmers, appropriately enough. I do remember asking, in a moment of Arnold Palmer-inspired courage, whether Murphy, who grew up on the Peninsula, ever felt Pebble might be haunted.
“It’s immensely evocative,” he told me that day. “The course is so luminous and prismatic. I wouldn’t call it haunted. I would call it enchanted.”
He’d said much, much more that day about the haunt that is Pebble Beach, all of which I dutifully put in the book, but suffice it to say he had me convinced that the place was like Circe, which gets me thinking: does it mean anything that three of the four men most likely to win the tournament, Woodland, Koepka, and McIlroy, were all born in May?
Next. U.S. Open reaches scoring stalemate at Pebble Beach. dark
Will it be the Jupiter-like Koepka, the mercurial Woodland, or the lucky Irishman McIlroy hoisting the trophy as dusk descends over the Pacific? Who knows? In the end the superstitious sap in me can’t resist predicting a (Justin) Rose Moon come Sunday evening, just before the tide rolls in.