The second signature event of 2025 will bring out the PGA Tour’s stars as Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth make their season debuts at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, beginning Thursday in Pebble Beach, Calif.
Scheffler was scheduled to make two starts earlier this month, but he had to pull out after he injured himself cooking at Christmastime. He explained Tuesday that he was using a wine glass, of all things, to cut dough for homemade ravioli.
“It’s one of those deals where immediately after it happened I was mad at myself because I was like, ‘Gosh, that’s so stupid,’ but you just don’t think about it when you’re in the moment,” Scheffler said.
He cut his hand on the stem of the glass and shards of it became embedded into his palm, requiring surgery to clean out. Scheffler couldn’t play golf or even work out for a spell.
“Tried to work out some of that soreness and the scar tissue and stuff that goes in there after surgery,” he said. “So I tried to push myself pretty hard in the cold last week and it continued to get better and better each day. So figured I might as well get back out and start playing.”
The only man who might be able to slow down Scheffler is Scheffler himself. He was the star of the show throughout 2024, cementing himself as the best golfer in the world with seven official PGA Tour victories — including the Masters and the Players Championship — and an Olympic gold medal and FedEx Cup, to boot.
Spieth is competing for the first time since undergoing surgery to repair a wrist injury that had bothered him for about a year and a half. He hopes that will help his game get back on track after a few disappointing seasons.
“Shortest term (goal) is to feel like I get through these three weeks and I feel as good or better than I did when I started, as far as physically,” Spieth said. “That’s (a) not very exciting goal, but one that would mean a lot. And then I would love to work myself into contention before the Masters at least once. And then maybe a lofty goal this year would be to make the Ryder Cup team.”
Spieth won at Pebble Beach in 2017, but he’s nearly three years removed from his last tour victory (April 2022 at the RBC Heritage).
Then there’s McIlroy, who started his season in Europe and hasn’t played on the PGA Tour since the Tour Championship in late August. The Northern Irishman tied for 66th at Pebble Beach last year but won the pro-am portion of the event with businessman Jeff Rhodes.
“Yeah, I got my name on the wall, just not the portion that I wanted,” McIlroy said. “Yeah, Jeff and I had a good time over 36. He obviously did most of the heavy lifting in those two days.”
The Pro-Am introduced a set of changes last year: Once played at three different courses, the field now plays one round at Pebble Beach Golf Links and one at Spyglass Hill before Pebble Beach hosts both weekend rounds. The pro-am itself was brought from 54 holes to 36.
But stormy weather brought an anticlimactic end to the 2024 event. The final round was canceled, and 54-hole leader Wyndham Clark was declared the winner of the shortened tournament, one stroke ahead of Sweden’s Ludvig Aberg. Clark shot a 12-under-par 60 on Saturday to take the lead just in time.
“Last year we had tons of rain leading up to it and during the week and it played its traditional very soft and slow and bumpy,” Clark said. “These last couple days we’ve been practicing here, the ball’s bouncing quite a bit, the greens are a lot faster, it’s firmer.
“So if the weather stays like this, I actually think it will be tougher this year. I think the scores won’t maybe be as low.”
–Field Level Media
