Odds are high Spieth enjoys Pebble Beach
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Jordan Spieth rarely sees a shot as impossible, sometimes when he doesn’t even have a club in his hand.
Walking off the 15th tee at Pebble Beach earlier this week, he noticed a golf ball that had gone well over the 14th green. Spieth offered to throw it back to the group behind him, only that would have been too simple.
“Give me some odds,” he said to caddie Michael Greller.
The challenge was to throw the ball into the hole. He was 75 feet away looking down to a back pin on a green that sloped severely away from him. Impossible. Spieth cupped the ball in his left hand and flipped it underhanded, high and with backspin. It landed in the rough, hopped onto the green and … missed by a few inches.
He also wanted odds on getting up-and-down from a plugged lie in the bunker to a short-sided pin at No. 8 (missed again).
Think back to last summer at St. Andrews when Spieth was going for the Grand Slam. After his third round Sunday, he engaged in a tense duel with Greller on who could throw a golf ball some 20 yards away into a carton on the practice range (Spieth made).
It’s a way to laugh a lot and keep it light, and a big part of the Pebble Beach Pro- Am is all about that.
Some see this tournament as a burden.
The rounds can approach six hours because they are played in foursomes with amateurs. Saturday at Pebble Beach can be a distraction because it’s all about the celebrities, like the time Bill Murray tossed an elderly woman into a bunker. The weather can be dicey (not this week).
Others see the Pebble Beach Pro-Am for what it is — a week that brings together the professional and amateur game, sprinkled with the entertainment and corporate.
Spieth played his first year with Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, and the last two with country star Jake Owen. Dustin Johnson plays with Wayne Gretzky, his future father-in-law. And nowhere else but Pebble will you see this on a tee sheet — Tim Herron and Larry the Cable Guy.
“This week, it’s so unique and it’s so much fun,” Spieth said. “I say that because of the pairings that I’ve had now the last four years. How can you not have fun? But as we’re out there — Jake will tell you, he’s seen me at the happiest and some of the most … a couple of years ago I was tied for the lead with Jimmy Walker and three-putted Pebble seven times on Saturday.
“Yeah, that was a fun round,” Owen said.