Pebble Beach

Even stranger: The fact that I’d made the turn in 41, after managing bogeys at the seventh, eighth and ninth — a trio of treacherous holes along the cliff. My mind started to race, and George’s caddie, Eddie, could tell.
“You’ve gotta keep your focus out here,” he said as we walked down the long par-four tenth, waves crashing below the crag to our right. “You can’t go to sleep and start staring at the views.”
I heeded Eddie’s advice and stuck to my routine. I also leaned heavily on the knowledge of my brother — who played here the day before — at the fourteenth, a 572-yard par-five that is both long and tricky.
“It’s one of the two toughest par-fives in the U.S. Open rota, along with twelve at Oakmont,” said Davis. “First of all it’s a blind tee shot. The second shot you've got to make sure you get it in the fairway because when you get to that third shot, I think it's definitely the hardest shot at Pebble Beach in terms of needing to be exact. The way that little green — at least the left side of it — sits up on a pencil... players are going to have issues.”
Tour pro Paul Goydos already has. In February, during the final round of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, he took a nine there to fall out of contention. Mike carded the same number by failing to find the dance floor’s flat spot on three successive chips.
“No wonder you applauded my fourth shot to 20 feet,” I said to Eddie. “That green is nasty.”
I stood seven-over for my round as I teed it up at 15, a rather short (396 yards) par four. I wasn’t only on pace to shoot my handicap, I was four closing pars from breaking 80.
But a long, deep gully in front of the tee box and a yardage card illustrating a row of gnarly bunkers on the left side of the fairway can wreak havoc on a hack’s psyche. My drive was evidence — a soaring slice OB right that is most likely still in a ditch along 17 Mile Drive.
The double bogey six erased any legitimate chance I had of a 79, but no matter — it’s how you finish that counts. I played 16 to perfection, then took advantage of a front right pin placement (read: accessible) on the 178-yard, par- three seventeenth, where Tom Watson famously chipped in for birdie to beat Jack Nicklaus in 1982. I knocked a 6-iron to the apron, ran the putt up to a foot and tapped in.