PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — The PGA Tour could use a win.
It’s been an odd start to the season, after all. What’s been your favorite storyline thus far? World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler suffering a bizarre ravioli-related palm injury that kept him out of his first two starts? World No. 2 Xander Schauffele suffering a rib injury that still has him on the shelf? How ’bout a jetlagged World No. 9 Viktor Hovland accidentally kicking his bedframe in Hawaii, breaking a toe and limiting his comeback season?
Perhaps it was last week’s flu, which ran wild through the locker room at the Farmers and led to a string of high-profile WDs? Or the discourse that kicked up around slow play? How ’bout the discourse around low ratings, which kicked up the week before?
I’m being unfair, of course. There have been terrific tournament winners, like Nick Taylor with a flourish in Hawaii or Harris English in a slog in San Diego. But plenty of what’s happened on the course has been drowned out by what hasn’t. It’s safe to say that, as football season winds down, professional golf’s on-course action hasn’t quite gone mainstream.
This week, though, that’s primed to change. Despite all its permutations these last few years, professional golf at its best requires a pretty simple formula: its best players at its best courses in its most significant events. A Tuesday evening walk around Pebble Beach was enough to restore some sense of optimism around the entire operation.
There was Scheffler walking out of the media room for the first time this season, a session in which he could safely joke about the ravioli-cooking incident (“Even if you’re like me and you don’t drink wine, you’ve got to be real careful with wine glasses”) having emerged on the other side of a speedy recovery.
There was Ludvig Aberg, admittedly a few pounds lighter but mostly relieved to be on the up-and-up after suffering through that Torrey Pines illness. He finished runner-up here last year. He finished runner-up at Augusta National, too. Safe to say he’s a big part of this Tour’s future plans.
There were others returning to play, too: Hovland (from his toe) and Jordan Spieth (from his wrist) and Collin Morikawa (from his illness) and Tommy Fleetwood (from Europe). You could stage most of a Ryder Cup on pros making their respective comebacks here this week.
There was Sellers Shy, CBS’s lead producer, eyeing with approval the elevated zipline that’ll hold some sort of camera as it cruises the length of the par-3 17th, just one of the network’s latest toys. Golf fans have turned broadcast complaints into a recreational sport but CBS largely avoids their ire thanks to an obsession with innovation; lately that obsession has centered around showcasing the game’s best venues from an elevated perspective, from the cliffs of Pebble to the ravines of Riviera to the crowds at TPC Scottsdale and beyond. Hello, drone tracers. And hello, zipline.
There was Keegan Bradley, raving about the previous night’s TGL match, his first league experience, which was a victory even in a loss. Nobody’s pretending TGL is some sort of real-golf replacement, but Monday night’s Boston-Jupiter showdown pitted Tiger Woods, Tom Kim and Kevin Kisner against Rory McIlroy, Bradley and Adam Scott and went all the way to extra holes. Tiger vs. Rory (et al) in the arena doesn’t guarantee an epic Pebble Beach weekend any more than a shared plate of fried calamari guarantees a proper entree, of course. But in either case we can appreciate a nice start.
There was Rory McIlroy, arguably the Tour’s most important member, making his first U.S. start since the Tour Championship last August. He was the last player on the course on Tuesday, out late enough the volunteers apologized for taking away the snacks, racing daylight in a solo practice round but hitting the bottom of every cup in an effort to better the number — four under par — set by his caddie Harry Diamond.
And there was Dottie Pepper, walking her dog along a cart path, soaking in the day’s final rays. Pepper is the newly minted champion of the golfing public after she made a pointed comment about slow play on last weekend’s broadcast — a comment that resonated with everyone who plays or watches the sport. That doesn’t mean that golf is broken. But it sure could speed up.
But Pepper hit on another mood of the moment as she gazed out past the 17th green, where the sun was minutes from meeting the Pacific Ocean.
“A few more days of this would be nice,” she said.
That was a shared sentiment. The Tour has its best players in place. They’ll do battle on what this magazine considers the best public course in the United States. It’s the first full-on Signature Event of the season, capital S, capital E, one that’ll air on the first weekend without football in five-plus months. The only thing that could get in the way this year is the thing that got in the way last year: the weather. Pebble Beach is one of only a few dozen places in the U.S. where the locals say some version of: Don’t like the weather? Just wait five minutes! But in recent years here we’ve seen rain, hail, sideways rain, fog, unplayable rain, etc.
Last year’s event was a mess. The pros played with preferred lies and then, once the storm began, they didn’t play at all. Wyndham Clark set the course record and hung on to win when the tournament was called after 54 holes. It was bad for spectators, bad for players, bad for a Signature Event series looking for a signature moment.
It was a harbinger of disappointments to come. The Tour’s TV ratings plummeted with the change and never quite seemed to recover in the weeks that followed; one rain-shortened tournament threatened to infect the whole slate.
But this year? The clouds appear to be parting. On Tuesday temperatures climbed into the mid-50s, hardly recliner-on-the-beach weather but more than pleasant enough for a sweater and a stroll. The weekend forecast, one volunteer gleefully noted, has gone from 80 percent chance of rain to less than 20. We could even see temperatures in the 60s.
The PGA Tour is back. And professional golf is eager for some clear skies.
Dylan Dethier welcomes your comments at dylan_dethier@golf.com.
