Power Rankings: Charles Schwab Challenge

For the golfer who wants his resume to be the envy of his fellow professionals, there are certain venues that capture attention. Obviously wins at Augusta National come not only with a Green Jacket but yards of cache. Really, wins at any major, of which Mark O’Meara has a pair including one at the Masters, look good on a resume. But what about other venues? Where does it really matter if a guy has won outside of the four majors? Surely, TPC Sawgrass is on the short list. And so is Pebble Beach, home of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am on the PGA TOUR and the PURE Insurance Championship on PGA TOUR Champions, otherwise known as O’Meara’s personal playground. O’Meara, 65, won an event at Pebble Beach in each of three decades beginning with the 1979 California State Amateur. He won the PGA TOUR event played at Pebble five times, including the last time it was called the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am and four times after AT&T became the title sponsor. “Sometimes you hear people say O’Meara won 16 times but five were at Pebble Beach,” O’Meara said Wednesday. “Well, with all due respect to the great venues out there, where would you rather win five? Unless you win a major or The Players Championship, Pebble is probably next on the hit list.” Phil Mickelson joined O’Meara in 2019 as a five-time winner at Pebble. O’Meara said he texted Lefty in the aftermath and said, “Congratulations but I think that’s enough, young man.” O’Meara has been hitting Pebble hard since his first trip to the Monterey Peninsula, for the California State Amateur in 1979, when he was a senior at Long Beach State. He was immediately taken by the beauty and mystique of the area. It also didn’t hurt that he won the 36-hole final match 8&7. O’Meara credits that first trip as being a cornerstone of his success at Pebble Beach. Before he had even turned pro, he had good vibes for the place. He also didn’t mind the poa annua greens. They can be very bumpy and tricky to read, but O’Meara grew up in Mission Viejo putting on poa annua. “It was a combination of factors that lead to my success at Pebble,” said O’Meara, who added that he’ll play about a dozen events on PGA TOUR Champions this season, including the PURE Insurance Championship. “First for me to go back there and have all the fond memories of the State Amateur. And a lot of great players won the California State Amateur. I also love to play so much in the natural beauty and growing up on poa annua greens that are very bumpy and knowing you have to be very patient. “You also have to be patient because being in the final group it can take almost six hours to play. You’re playing with amateurs. I love amateurs. My dad was a real people person, a sales guy. I had more fun playing with amateurs than I did my pros. They were an escape for me to not always worry about what was happening with Mark O’Meara on the golf course. It took my mind off what I was doing right or wrong on the course. Instead of just focusing on me, if I could engage with the amateurs it took my mind away. I just used them as a positive, not a distraction. Other guys don’t feel the same way about it. That’s why I had a lot of success at Pebble.” O’Meara won the tournament once with his dad as his amateur partner. He cited that as one of the most cherished memories of his life. The year was 1990. They had first played together in 1986, the year after his first victory at the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am. And they made the cut. After O’Meara won in 1989, he invited his dad to come play with him one more time. “I gave it to him as a Christmas present,” O’Meara said. “I flew him and mom out and then I won the tournament playing alongside my dad. I put that right at the top of the list of great things, winning at Augusta with a putt on the final hole, winning the U.S. Amateur. But to play with my father and coming up the last hole, the 18th hole at Pebble, you can’t do better than that.”

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Typically, a career year for any professional athlete isn’t identifiable until there’s agreement that the glory days have passed. For the best talent at any time, evidence suggesting future greater achievement is filed regularly, so it’s a fool’s errand to argue that a career year already has been cemented. Yet, there are exceptions. RELATED: Play Pick ‘Em Live | The First Look In professional golf, winning a major constitutes candidacy for a career year, but Hideki Matsuyama is only 30 years old, so classifying his career year as 2021 when he became Japan’s first male major champion at the Masters, could be rushing to judgment despite the historic accomplishment. However, the year also included his participation in the Olympics in his native Japan where he was edged for a medal, and it ended with victory at the ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP, also in his homeland. It was a lot, and it was great. The moral of the matter is that it would be unfair to expect any golfer to convert on a combination of those successes when the stars align like that. So, while it may prove not to be Matsuyama’s career year in the context of an overall body of work, it likely will be the most special year of his career personally, so it demands this moment to appreciate it because he defends the last of those highlights at Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club in Chiba this week. POWER RANKINGS: ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP Corey Conners, Cam Davis and Shriners co-runner-up Matthew NeSmith will be among the notables reviewed in Draws and Fades. The ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP opens a fortnight reserved for 78-man invitationals. THE CJ CUP in South Carolina is on deck. Both are rewards to the top 60 in the previous season’s FedExCup standings and neither has a cut. (Each field reserves space for the top 60 eligible among those who qualified for the Playoffs.) The event’s location in Japan is a giveaway that the ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP is conducted in conjunction with the Japan Golf Tour, although it’s not an official event for the latter. Fifteen JGTO members are in the field, the majority of whom can be found at the top of their money list. Another is Keita Nakajima, who is making just his third start as a professional after an extended stretch atop the World Amateur Golf Ranking. Narashino is a par 70 with five par 3s and three par 5s. The nines are respective pars of 34 and 36. After debuting in 2019 with a scoring average of about one-half stroke under par, it returned in 2021 standing taller at 70.484. (Because of the pandemic, the 2020 edition was held at Sherwood Country Club in California.) After Matsuyama grabbed outright possession of the 36-hole lead, he sprinted through the finish line and posted 15-under 265 to win by five. The composite routing of the King and Queen Courses is 38 yards longer this year at 7,079 yards. The extensions occurred at the par-3 fifth that now can play as long as 205 yards after an increase of 14 yards, and at the par-4 10th that’s an even 400 yards with 24 yards of added length. Thursday’s opening round almost certainly will be a wet one, but dry conditions are expected for most of the remainder. Wind won’t trouble much and daytime temperatures will climb into the mid-70s, eventually, so scoring projects not to be harder than it was a year ago, but asking for another field average that’s a red number might be aggressive. Weather permitting, bentgrass greens are poised to crank at 12½ feet on the Stimpmeter. The first two editions were prepped for 11½ and 12 feet, respectively. Members of the JGTO typically aren’t tested as often on this kind of pace. Also, because the tournament is scheduled a couple of weeks earlier than its first two spins in Japan, the thickest of the 3½-inch rough figures to be lusher than how returning entrants remember it. Course management is the priority, but now that there’s experience on the greens, ball-strikers aren’t benefited as much as they are on a new track. They’re going to need to roll in some putts, too. Matsuyama wasn’t going to be denied, so citing the fact that he led the field in greens in regulation and ranked second in scrambling presents and unrealistic benchmark for all. (ShotLink isn’t utilized at Narashino.) Speaking of hitting greens, the layout at Narashino serves as living history of golf in Japan. Each of the 18 holes has two greens. It was designed that way to extend playability across seasons of the year. The local rule is that when a golfer lands on the wrong green, he is allowed a free drop off the shortest of grass and no nearer the hole. For deeper detail on the possibilities this week, read this. Last year’s ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP began at 8:30 a.m. local time on Thursday. Chiba is 13 hours ahead of Eastern Time in the United States, so it teed off at 7:30 p.m. EDT on Wednesday. Consider this adjustment for how you monitor the action. ROB BOLTON’S SCHEDULE PGATOUR.com’s Rob Bolton recaps and previews every tournament from numerous perspectives. Look for his following contributions as scheduled. MONDAY: Power Rankings TUESDAY*: Sleepers, Draws & Fades WEDNESDAY: Pick ‘Em Preview FRIDAY: Medical Extensions, Reshuffle SUNDAY: Qualifiers * – Rob is a member of the panel for PGATOUR.COM’s Expert Picks for PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf, which also publishes on Tuesday.

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