PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Rory McIlroy felt like he was enjoying within the AT&T Pebble Seaside Professional-Am he used to observe on TV, minus the novice and celebrities filling up the time on Saturday.
The climate introduced again romantic photographs of the outdated “Crosby Clambake,” with a chilly wind whipping off the Pacific Ocean and light-weight rain, usually depressing climate for golf besides at Pebble Seaside — at the least for these watching.
Sepp Straka watched his shot on the tenth sail over the cliff and onto the seaside, beginning a stretch of three straight bogeys. He rallied with 4 birdies over the ultimate 5 holes to salvage a 2-under 70 and a one-shot lead over McIlroy and Shane Lowry.
“You possibly can’t keep dry, ball’s not going the place you need it to go, placing is hard. It is actually laborious to sort of keep within the second,” Straka stated. “Yeah, I used to be fairly pleased about how I did that right this moment.”
Tom Kim punched a 7-iron from 103 yards down the hill on the seventh. Scottie Scheffler posed after a purely struck 5-iron that was proper on track and could not consider when it stopped 155 yards away from the place he was standing.
“I bogeyed 9 and parred 10 and I felt like I used to be gaining on the sector, to be sincere,” Lowry stated. “It won’t seem like that on TV. However if you’re on the market, it was brutal.”
After they trudged off the course, Straka was atop a leaderboard that regarded just like the European roster for the Ryder Cup — Straka, McIlroy, Lowry, Justin Rose — because the Austrian-born Georgia Bulldog goes for his second straight PGA Tour title.
McIlroy was virtually flawless, at the least within the nasty situations, by getting via the uncovered stretch of Pebble Seaside with out dropping a shot and chipping his manner round for a bogey-free 65.
“It is a extra genuine expertise of what the Pebble Seaside Professional-Am is like,” stated McIlroy, enjoying the event for less than the third time.
Lowry received off to a birdie-eagle-birdie begin that allowed for a couple of errors across the flip and he completed with two birdies on the final three holes for a 65.
Simply do not get the thought Irish climate was well-suited for McIlroy (Northern Eire) and Lowry (Eire), particularly as a result of they now are neighbors in south Florida.
“It’d go well with me considerably, however I do not take pleasure in it,” Lowry stated. “I dwell in Florida for a purpose. I feel my sport is well-equipped to deal with these situations and I’m going on the market, sort of no concern, and I do know I simply must batten down the hatches and make pars after I can.”
Straka, coming off a win within the California desert, blasted out of the sand to 4 ft for one final birdie that putt him at 16-under 200, one shot forward of McIlroy and Lowry, his Ryder Cup teammates from Marco Simone.
Rose, a Pebble Seaside winner in 2023 and a part of Crew Europe later that 12 months, was one other shot behind together with Kim and Cam Davis.
Scottie Scheffler, in his 2025 debut delayed by his hand surgical procedure from a freak puncture wound, held it collectively for a 69 and was six pictures behind.
Gone are the times of the outdated Crosby Clambake, with amateurs having left on Friday. However it was harking back to the Clambake climate, not the prettiest photos however a delight to see golf’s finest gamers have their fingers full with a wind robust sufficient to bend flagsticks.
McIlroy had an appropriate sport plan. When the wind arrived as he was on the sixth gap, he stated he turned to caddie Harry Diamond and stated, “Let’s attempt to chip the ball round right this moment.”
“I really feel like I did not make a full swing after that,” McIlroy stated.
He needed to save par six instances from the tough and bunkers, none extra priceless than from down within the excessive grass under the tenth inexperienced to six ft and a key par putt.
“That was a key up-and-down to only to maintain the momentum of the spherical going,” he stated.
The tenth gap is the place Straka practically got here undone. His strategy sailed properly to the correct, over the cliff and onto the seaside. He went all the way down to the sand and picked up his golf ball, taking the penalty shot as a substitute of making an attempt the dramatic shot off the seaside, and did properly to salvage bogey.
However he bogeyed the subsequent two holes, going from a four-shot lead early within the spherical to trailing by two pictures. Straka, although, is provided with newfound confidence and steadied himself on the way in which in with birdies on the 14th and fifteenth holes, a 30-foot birdie putt for the one birdie of the day on the par-3 seventeenth and his closing birdie.
It units up a remaining spherical during which six gamers are separated by two pictures and Scheffler, the world’s No. 1 participant, hanging round on the sting of competition. He did not birdie a par 5 till the final gap — two par 5s on the entrance had been in benign situations — however made a pair of birdies late.
“I hung in there on a day the place I did not have my finest stuff,” Scheffler stated.
McIlroy and Lowry each started the week making a hole-in-one — Lowry on the seventh gap at Pebble Seaside, McIlroy on the fifteenth at Spyglass — and now the longtime pals from Irish golf might be within the remaining group with Straka.
“There’s a couple of programs on the planet that you just wish to win on and that is undoubtedly considered one of them,” Lowry stated. “So that you strive not to consider stuff like that and hopefully it involves you sometime.”
