PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Rory McIlroy felt like he was enjoying within the AT&T Pebble Seashore Professional-Am he used to look at on TV, minus the newbie 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The climate introduced again romantic photographs of the outdated “Crosby Clambake,” with a chilly wind whipping off the Pacific Ocean and light-weight rain, usually depressing climate for golf besides at Pebble Seashore — not less than 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’ll be able to’t keep dry, ball’s not going the place you need it to go, placing is hard. It is actually arduous to type of keep within the second,” Straka mentioned. “Yeah, I used to be fairly completely satisfied about how I did that right now.”
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 sphere, to be sincere,” Lowry mentioned. “It may not appear to be that on TV. However whenever you’re on the market, it was brutal.”
Once they trudged off the course, Straka was atop a leaderboard that seemed 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, not less than within the nasty circumstances, by getting by way of the uncovered stretch of Pebble Seashore with out dropping a shot and chipping his means round for a bogey-free 65.
“It is a extra genuine expertise of what the Pebble Seashore Professional-Am is like,” mentioned McIlroy, enjoying the event for under the third time.
Lowry obtained 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 would go well with me considerably, however I do not take pleasure in it,” Lowry mentioned. “I stay in Florida for a cause. I believe my sport is well-equipped to deal with these circumstances and I am going on the market, type of no concern, and I do know I simply must batten down the hatches and make pars once I can.”
Straka, coming off a win within the California desert, blasted out of the sand to 4 toes 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 Seashore 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 photographs behind.
Gone are the times of the outdated Crosby Clambake, with amateurs having left on Friday. Nevertheless it was paying homage to the Clambake climate, not the prettiest photos however a delight to see golf’s greatest gamers have their arms full with a wind sturdy sufficient to bend flagsticks.
McIlroy had an appropriate sport plan. When the wind arrived as he was on the sixth gap, he mentioned he turned to caddie Harry Diamond and mentioned, “Let’s attempt to chip the ball round right now.”
“I really feel like I did not make a full swing after that,” McIlroy mentioned.
He needed to save par six instances from the tough and bunkers, none extra beneficial than from down within the excessive grass beneath the tenth inexperienced to six toes and a key par putt.
“That was a key up-and-down to simply to maintain the momentum of the spherical going,” he mentioned.
The tenth gap is the place Straka almost got here undone. His method sailed nicely 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 an alternative of making an attempt the dramatic shot off the seaside, and did nicely to salvage bogey.
However he bogeyed the following two holes, going from a four-shot lead early within the spherical to trailing by two photographs. Straka, although, is supplied 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 ultimate spherical by which six gamers are separated by two photographs 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 have been in benign circumstances — however made a pair of birdies late.
“I hung in there on a day the place I did not have my greatest stuff,” Scheffler mentioned.
McIlroy and Lowry each started the week making a hole-in-one — Lowry on the seventh gap at Pebble Seashore, McIlroy on the fifteenth at Spyglass — and now the longtime mates from Irish golf shall be within the ultimate group with Straka.
“There’s a couple of programs on the earth that you simply wish to win on and that is positively one in all them,” Lowry mentioned. “So that you strive not to consider stuff like that and hopefully it involves you sometime.”
