Despite all the stunning views of Pebble Beach that can be so calming, Daniel Berger was unable to escape the tension when he reached the final hole on Sunday at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
He was tied for the lead, needing a birdie in par 5 18 to win. To his right were off-limits markers below a row of hedges, where Berger hit his shot on Saturday that led to a double bogey. To his left was the Pacific Ocean.
“I was going to swing down,” he said.
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Two of the best swings of his career, a driver on the fairway and a 3-wood at 250 meters in cold air at sea level, left him at 30 feet and two putts away. Berger crowned the match with an eagle stroke to 7 under 65 and a two-shot victory over Maverick McNealy.
“Getting there and hitting a big drive and then one of the best 3-woods I’ve ever hit in my life and then doing that putt is the best I can do for myself,” said Berger.
He finished 18th under 270 for his fourth career win.
Berger started his final round with a 4-20 foot iron for the eagle in the par 5 second hole to reach Jordan Spieth in the blink of an eye. And while the cast of candidates was constantly changing, Berger was never out of the mix until he had the final say with one last eagle, the fourth of the week.
He won for the second time since the PGA Tour Tour returned to golf in June of the pandemic COVID-19, starting with a playoff victory at Colonial, where half a dozen players had a chance to win in the final hour.
This was not much different.
Spieth went from being a leader to being left behind. He started with a two-shot lead and was three shots behind after six holes, missing the scoring stretch at Pebble Beach. He finished with two birdies for 70 and tied for third with Patrick Cantlay (68), who made all his putts on Pebble on Thursday. He had 10 birdies in the opening round when he tied the course record with 62. He made seven birdies and an eagle in two weekend rounds.
Berger saw a leaderboard leaving green 18 and knew he was tied. He just imagined it would be with Nate Lashley, unaware of the sad turn of events on the 16th.
Lashley, playing in the final group with Spieth, almost pierced his wedge on the 11th for a birdie that took him under 16 and led by one shot. He was tied with Berger with three holes to play when Lashley came in long on the 16th hole. He shot 3.6 meters, missed the putt pair and then missed the next two putts in the 3-foot range.
This gave him a triple bogey from which he could not recover. Lashley stuffed the underside of his club on the lawn and left without speaking to the media.
McNealy, who played at Stanford and lived in a house near the 15th green on Pebble Beach, quietly made five birdies in his last eight holes.
“I had adrenaline pumping in the final stretch and feelings that I haven’t really felt on the golf course in a while, trying to close it and give me a chance,” said McNealy.
The last was at 18, when his eagle shot stopped inches from the cup, giving him a 66 and a tie for the lead that didn’t last long. Berger was in the group behind him and he played the hole perfectly.
“I wanted to win the golf tournament. I didn’t want to lose the last one,” said Berger. “I just wanted to go out there and try to get the best of it and I wouldn’t be conservative when 3-wood arrived.”
The eagle shot was quick and broke both ways and Berger just wanted a two-shot birdie without stress. The fact that he fell in love with the eagle was a bonus that he was very happy to receive.
Spieth finished in the top four for the second week in a row, a strong sign that his game is returning after a drought that dates back to his British Open 2017 victory at the Royal Birkdale.
He hit a hybrid from a fairway bunker to get a good look at Eagle on the second hole and narrowly missed, and then he caught a strange lie in a No. 3 fairway bunker, his low long shot on the green, leaving Spieth fearful was out of the game. He did bogey. He bogeyed a bunker in par 3 fifth, and had to play sideways in a fairway bunker in par 5 six, taking the birdie out of the equation.
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“Actually, it was just six very bad first holes. And this is where you can score,” said Spieth. “I needed to have a couple under the age of six and I was over 1. And really, that was the difference.”
A course that featured only three players from the top 20 in the world took one of them as a winner – Berger, who was out of the top 100 in the world when golf returned last June, while trying to recover from wrist injuries.
“I think today has really solidified my position as one of the best golfers here and I just need to continue to do the things I have been doing,” said Berger. “And I feel like there are no limits to what I can accomplish.”