Golfers will play three rounds at Pebble Beach and one round at Spyglass. So for all intents and purposes, we will focus on breaking down Pebble Beach.

Pebble Beach is a par 72, with a length just shy of 7,000 yards. Comparative to other PGA Tour courses in the yearly rotation, Pebble Beach is very short.

On the Rabbit Hole, you can filter for strokes gained data on all different length courses: very short, short, average, long, and very long.

Because Pebble Beach is considered a short positional golf course, here are the top 10 players who gain the most strokes on these type of courses:

We hit Tom Hoge at Pebble Beach in 2022, and while I’m not sure I see Tommy Tables winning twice in four years, this is a golf course I expect him to continue to succeed at. While Hoge won this event prior to it receiving Signature status, he also finished sixth last year in an elite field.

The name of the game at Pebble Beach is wedge play and putting from five to 15 feet, and these are two areas that Hoge reliably excels at. Pebble is not a golf course that really rewards driving skill at all, which plays right into Hoge’s hands. The iconic U.S. Open venue allows players to identify their favorite wedge distances on a plethora of short par fours and allow their second shot to do the talking. This is an ideal setup for Hoge, and I expect him to feast at Pebble for years to come.

Jason Day is one of the ultimate course horses at this tournament. He averages 2.5 strokes per round here, which is best in the field. It is hard to believe that he hasn’t won this tournament yet, but he has recorded 9 top 10 finishes.

Aside from his solid course history at Pebble, Day ranks inside the top 10 in the field from both 5-10 feet and 10-15 feet. These putting ranges are important on poa greens, a surface where Day has excelled on in his career.

He is coming off a T3 at the American Express and a T32 at the Farmers Insurance Open. The only part of his game that he lost strokes in over the last two weeks has been with the putter. If he can figure that out, he has a real chance to contend at the second signature event of the year.

I was very fortunate this past weekend to get to check out California Golf Club of San Francisco, or more commonly referred to as “Cal Club.” This was a golf course that has slid through the cracks for me on multiple occasions, and it has been high on my list to see for a number of years. The current location of the Cal Club was originally laid out in 1926 by Irish architect, A.V. Macan with help from Alister Mackenzie on the bunkering (a feature that defines the golf course, in my humble opinion.) Macan designed the original greens, tees, and bunkering and largely deserves the original design credit, but frankly, early images display that the routing and design left a lot to be desired.

After being officially open for less than two years, members urged a seemingly unknown architect in Alister Mackenzie from the new design firm of Mackenzie & Hunter (this was prior to him receiving critical acclaim for the likes of Royal Melbourne, Augusta National, and Cypress Point just to name a few) to redesign all of the bunkering and rebuild the 10th and 18th greens. This was only Mackenzie’s second project in North America, with the first being the nearby Meadow Club. Mackenzie did not change any of the playing corridors, but the distinct Mackenzie bunkering style that I have come to appreciate at courses such as Pasatiempo and Valley Club was an immediate standout. Mackenzie’s additions received immediate acclaim, and Cal Club was largely recognized as one of the best golf courses in the state prior to World War II. 

Like many Golden Age clubs, the Cal Club felt a desire to modernize, and they hired one of the biggest names in the industry at the time, Robert Trent Jones, to renovate Macan’s original conception for the routing. Luckily, the vast majority of Jones’ work does not exist today, as Kyle Phillips was later hired in 2005 to restore/renovate a golf course in need of a bit of a facelift. Phillips proposal was bold, which included the relocation of the practice area and the creation of five new holes, all on the front nine. To his credit, I preferred the front nine to the back, although it’s close, and Phillips is largely responsible for my favorite stretch on the course, holes five through eight. While wide-scale changes were required on the front, Phillips’ goal on the back was simply to harken back the spirit of Mackenzie. Phillips removed two small man-made ponds from the early 1990s, and he slid the fifteenth green to the right by 35 yards. 

Not to be hyperbolic, but I truly believe that Phillips’ work at Cal Club is one of the strongest restoration/renovation (a little of both were at play) of the last 50 years. Outside of the addition of five phenomenal, original golf holes on the front nine that fit perfectly with those on the back, Poa Annua grass were replaced by a Bent and fescue mix in the fairways. The strategic design, routing, and bunkering style at Cal Club is top notch, but it also may feature the best playing surfaces in all of California, and maybe America. I am a massive advocate for fescue playing surfaces, and the current grounds crew does a phenomenal job with course upkeep. Not a blade of grass felt out of place on the glorious Sunday morning that we had the opportunity to play. 

Phillips created a playbook that influenced much of the Golden Age restorative work we have seen over the past 20 years. The third hole was once a Trent Jones par three that played over a man-made lake. It was a hole that felt more fitting at a Florida housing developing than a Golden Age golf course. Phillips fittingly replaced it with a strikingly downhill, medium-length par four that fits ever so naturally with the terrain and reminded me of a mishmash of the second and sixth holes at San Francisco Golf Club. The third hole remains one of my favorites on the property. I deeply respond to golf courses with a distinctive sense of place, and the Cal Club has Northern California coursing through its veins. With its towering Cypress trees lining the fairways, this is a golf course that could only be in Northern California, and my mind was immediately spinning with how it stacked up to my other favorite Golden Age designs in the area, such as San Francisco Golf Club, Pasatiempo, and Olympic Club. Yes, there are aesthetic similarities, but the Cal Club is distinctively its own. The golf course flows beautifully, almost unassumingly, but there is nothing forgettable about the place. I can recall every hole to a tee a few days later, which is not always the case with my very fraught memory.

The seventh is one of the most remarkable Cape holes I have ever encountered, traversing some of the most dramatic terrain on the property, and it features one of the of the most exciting tee to green journeys I can recall. I love golf holes with strategic options off the tee, and any Cape template done well is a natural fit for these sensibilities. I took a bold line off the tee and executed my best tee shot of the day. Watching the ball roll down the hill toward the green was a thrill and an easy reminder after spending the weekend watching dull point-and-shoot, execution golf at Torrey Pines, that the best version of the sport we love is when the ball is on the ground. Other standouts for me on the front include the short, uphill, par four fifth, the uphill par three sixth, the thrilling, downhill par three eighth. Eleven, thirteen, fourteen, the postage sixteenth, and the downhill seventeenth were all standouts for me on the back. 

Rating: 8. Cal Club is the best golf course in San Francisco, and while I would say this with conviction, I admit that I have not seen Gil Hanse’s restorative work at Olympic Club. Cal Club is a better pound-for-pound golf course than San Francisco Golf for me. It has a far superior set of par threes, and there is not a weak hole on the property at Cal, while there are a few at SFGC that leave something to be desired. Both are near-perfect everyday walking courses. Cal Club is more challenging, but it is far from a grind. It’s a delightful walk, and one that you truly feel like you can go low at with your best stuff or beat the ball around with less than stellar ball-striking and still be engaged with the thrill of chipping and putting. Cal Club truly has some of the most remarkable bunkering and green complexes I have ever encountered, and I struggle to think of a place I would rather practice my short game at. While I give the edge to Cal as a pound-for-pound product, the margins are slim.

I also have San Francisco as an eight, and for context, my other eights are Seminole, Bandon Dunes, Tralee, Chambers Bay, Southern Hills, San Francisco Golf Club, Old Barnwell, the Tree Farm, and Riviera. Certainly not bad company to be in, and I would even put Cal Club at the top of my eights, bordering up against 8.5s such as Pinehurst No. 2, Pebble Beach, Valley Club of Montecito (a personal favorite), and Somerset Hills. It’s truly that good. I’ll leave my remarks on the club atmosphere and culture for another day, but there are a few clubs I would rather spend an afternoon at either. We watched the Conference Championships in the Grill Room after our round, and I’d be entirely fulfilled spending every weekend this way for the rest of time here.

I have heard all the positive and negative comments about the TGL since the league’s inception earlier this month. The negatives about the TGL have been centered around that the matches weren’t competitive. We finally got a competitive and intense match between the two founders of the league and their respective teams:

It was no surprise that the best match came from the two biggest names in professional golf. The night was filled with hammer throws, friendly banter, players bringing energy, and sometimes chirping back at the crowd. You could feel through your television screen that both teams genuinely cared about winning the match. 

Sportsbooks had Boston Common as a heavy favorite (-200) to take down Jupiter Golf Links. Tom Kim, aka Tom Sim, had other ideas, as he treated the match like it was a President’s Cup singles match. Tom Kim brought the energy the entire night, doing his ear celebration to the crowd at various points in the night.

In the end, Jupiter Links pulled off a miracle and took down Boston Common Golf in OT. Tiger, Tom Kim, and Kevin Kisner truly celebrated like the 1980 USA hockey team taking down the Soviet Union. 

Overal, this was the vision for the TGL from Tiger, Rory, and the rest of the TMRW Sports team: a made-for-tv event, in a primetime TV spot, showcasing the state of the art technology, competitive golf, and high-energy from the golfers.

During the final round of the Farmers Insurance Open last weekend, CBS on-course reporter Dottie Pepper called out the pace of play problem:

At the end of the clip Dottie stated, “it’s just gotta get better”. Dottie is completely right and is something that professional golf needs to do something about.

It took the final group on Sunday roughly an hour to complete the first three holes. There were a couple external factors like the groups in front taking too long that it held up the final group. It should also be noted that the playing through some tough conditions at Torrey Pines. However, it shouldn’t be any excuse.

It’s unfair for fans watching the tournament and for the Tour’s broadcast partners to have to navigate this problem. It’s just another reason for fans not to watch week in and week out.

Fans online have been calling for a shot clock to be incorporated into the professional game. I am not sure how feasible this is to do.

How about the players take more accountability on the course and speed up their play? Brooks Koepka hasn’t been shy to call out players in his career. I am skeptical that this issue will get resolved anytime soon because we have seen that the tour and the players are reluctant to change.

At this point, you probably think we are messing around. We are not!

RB has now hit 3 STRAIGHT OUTRIGHTS: Nick Taylor, Sepp Straka, and Harris English.

RB is on an all time heater, and so is our discord. Additional shoutout to our own Twitterless Steve, who also has an outright ticket on Harris English.

We are cooking in the discord and it’s not even February yet!