Iconic venues enjoy spotlight in signature swing

Always, the arrival of another PGA Tour season invites the usual curiosities of what’s new and 2024 is no different.

Justin Rose of England poses with the trophy on the 18th green during the continuation of the final round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am at Pebble Beach Golf Links on Feb. 6, 2023 in Pebble Beach, California. [GETTY IMAGES]

Always, the arrival of another PGA Tour season invites the usual curiosities of what’s new and 2024 is no different.

Tops on the list, perhaps, is this 24-year-old Swede Ludvig Aberg. He’s already won twice, once on the PGA Tour and once on the DP World Tour, but inquiring minds want to know just how great he can be.

Then there’s the wonderment about the dynamic duo — Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas. For the first time in the nine years they’ve both been on Tour together, the wunderkinds combined for zero victories in 2023.

That’s right, nada and zilch a season ago, and combined they’ve got just two victories in their last 86 tournaments. What gives? And can they get back on track?

Storylines with a newness to them, for sure.

But should you want a different slice of rich flavor with the early part of the PGA Tour schedule, shift your focus to a 1-2 punch of “Signature Events” out on the West Coast. What makes the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am (Feb. 1-4) up in Central California and Genesis Invitational (Feb. 15-18) down in Los Angeles tournaments you circle on the calendar are what would be old stories.

Matt Fitzpatrick of England putts on the seventh green during the third round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am at Pebble Beach Golf Links on Feb. 4, 2023 in Pebble Beach, California. [GETTY IMAGES]

Pebble Beach Golf Links and Riviera Country Club.

They offer definitive proof that golf is clearly different than professional team sports such as baseball or basketball or football. In those endeavours, the playing fields don’t generate much interest, given that each one pretty much mirrors the other.

A 100-yard football field in San Francisco looks like a 100-yard football field in Philadelphia. The basket in New York is 10 feet high, same as the one in Miami. Fans in these respective sports barely notice the venue.

Ah, but in golf, the playing field is the story.

Golf fans know that Pebble Beach Golf Links is a veritable mecca on par with the Old Course in St. Andrews. You simply don’t go to Pebble; you make a pilgrimage.

Fans also know that Riviera is not only a playground for Hollywood A-listers; it is a brilliant design that is so favored by the game’s greatest professionals that teeing it up at “the Riv” is circled on the calendar months in advance.

Well, that part of the equation has changed in 2024 because having been assigned with the “Signature” label, there is an even deeper sense of aura being directed toward the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and the Genesis Invitational.

Entry into these tournaments is limited to various categories — top 30 in the world, top 50 on last year’s FedExCup standings etc. — so fans are assured of top-to-bottom elite attractions.

Fans know they’ll get world-class action from the likes of Viktor Hovland, Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa and so on. But for all that firepower and all those major championship and marquee tournament winners, what sets this 1-2 West Coast punch apart are the views of Pebble Beach and the pure aura of Riviera.

First played on the Monterey Peninsula about two hours south of San Francisco in 1947, the famed Pro-Am at Pebble Beach has only missed one time — in ’66 when there was so much rain it had to be canceled.

It has been considered a “must play” from the time the late Bing Crosby made Pebble Beach the showcase of his pro-am rota. (Cypress Point, Monterey Peninsula, Spyglass, and Poppy Hills) have also been worked into play through the years. In 2024, players and their amateurs will compete one round at Pebble and one round at Spyglass, then professionals only will take on Pebble for two more trips.

Slightly different from past years when players and their amateurs played three different courses, then only the top 24 amateurs made it into Round 4 at Pebble on Sunday. But here’s one thing that hasn’t changed — greatness is likely to be crowned.

Last year the winner was Justin Rose, but the rollcall of winners at this Pebble Beach pro-am reads like the roster of World Golf Hall of Fame members — Sam Snead, Byron Nelson, Jack Nicklaus, Billy Casper, Tom Watson, and Johnny Miller from generations ago, Payne Stewart, Tiger Woods, and Jordan Spieth from more recent times.

Whereas the gaze out over Stillwater Cove and the majestic Pacific Ocean captivates you as you play the stretch of holes from Nos. 5 to 10 and Nos. 17 and 18 at Pebble Beach, Riviera comes at you with a different look.

There is the beguiling Kikuyu grass that even the best short-game gurus have not mastered. Then there’s a sequence of holes that are saturated in character — the par-3 sixth and it’s circular green that sports a bunker in the middle; the par-4 10th that players can try and drive, only misfires leave them with impossible wedge shots; and the dastardly, hard dogleg right 18th where misses right and left are penalized equally.

Like Pebble, Riviera’s greatness is defined by its wall of champions — Snead, Nelson, Watson, Miller, Ben Hogan, Lanny Wadkins, Fred Couples, Nick Faldo, Ernie Els, Adams Scott among them — although to be honest, it always is noted how Nicklaus and Woods have never won at Riviera.

Adam Scott of Australia plays his shot from the tenth tee during the third round of the The Genesis Invitational at Riviera Country Club on Feb. 18, 2023 in Pacific Palisades, California. [GETTY IMAGES]

That is a closed chapter on Jack Nicklaus, soon to be 84 and no longer adding to his playing record. But for Woods, recently turned 48, he is not only the “host” of the Genesis Invitational, likely he’ll be a competitor (with a sponsor exemption) should his surgically repaired ankle feel up to it.

It's hard to believe that Riviera playing host to a limited field of elite players competing for a whopping $20 million purse could generate an even greater buzz, but such would be the case were Woods to step to the first tee on Thursday with club in hand.

Woods would own the spotlight — at least for the early going. But here’s a guess that Rivera, as it always does, will shine brilliantly and that the “Signature Swing” to Pebble and “the Riv” will pack the punch that the PGA Tour has envisioned.

BY JIM MCCABE [kjdsports@joongang.co.kr]