AP Photo/Eric Risberg
By Jeremy Harness
PEBBLE BEACH – Jim Furyk was a little off the mark in preparation for his round Saturday at Pebble Beach. As soon as he hit the course, however, he was on point, and it showed.
Furyk took control of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am on Saturday, as his bogey-free 63 at Pebble Beach planted him on top of the leaderboard heading into the final round at Pebble. He currently sits one stroke ahead of both Matt Jones and Brandt Snedeker.
He got himself three birdies on the front nine, and after the 10th hole, he went on an absolute tear. He ran off three straight birdies on holes 11 through 13 before going back-to-back at the 15th and 16th. Following a par at the 17th, he stuffed a wedge shot at the par-5 18th to six inches to close with another birdie.
After a bogey-free opening round at Monterey Peninsula, he had a pair of bogeys tagged to his card Friday at Spyglass Hill but still managed to finish with a two-under 70 to keep his good momentum going and set him up for his third-round performance.
However, Furyk said that he didn’t hit the ball very well on the practice range prior to Saturday’s round, which can drain a player’s confidence rather quickly. On the other hand, he said that made him focus a bit more, and the results proved his point.
“When I’m hitting it (good on the range), when I got a lot of confidence and I feel like I’m clicking and firing on all cylinders with my swing, sometimes we get a little greedy,” he said. “We try to hit a shot that we shouldn’t try to hit, get a little lackadaisical at times and make a bad swing from loss of concentration.
“That’s happened to me in the past,” he continued. “I tended to play some of my best tournaments when I was really close to being on, but just a notch off.”
Furyk’s last win came in the 2010 Tour Championship, a victory that netted him $10 million.
Unlike Furyk, however, Jones’ ball-striking issues showed up on the golf course. He was in the fairway only five times on Saturday and only hit 11 greens in regulation, putting a lot of stress on his short game.
“It was just a battle of my ball striking that made the course tougher than it had to be for me,” Jones said. “Not being able to hit the drivers I wanted or control the ball flight or trajectory or the distances with my irons, I just put myself in bad positions off the tee, which makes it tougher to get access to these pins.”
He had his struggles on the back nine, where he started his round, but he heated up in a huge way as soon as he made the turn. He ran off six birdies in the first seven holes of the back side before stumbling into the clubhouse with back-to-back bogeys.
“I’m in a good position,” said Jones, who finished with a 67 to get himself into the final grouping on Sunday with Furyk.
Furyk and Jones are scheduled to tee off at 10:05 am PST, and one group ahead of them will be Brandt Snedeker and Sacramento-area native Nick Watney, a die-hard San Francisco Giants fan who has been paired with Giants catcher Buster Posey for the first three days of this event.
For much of Saturday morning, Snedeker either had – or was tied for – the lead, but was surpassed by Jones and Furyk. The putts did not roll in for him like they were during his opening-round 64 at Monterey Peninsula, but he nonetheless finished with a five-under 67 and has continued to put himself in position to win.
“I kind of scraped it around a little bit today,” Snedeker said. “You’re going to have a bad stretch of golf, when you’re not playing your best. I was able to survive that and kind of get up and down when I needed to.
“I was able to gut out a good round. You kind of have to do that.”
Like Furyk, Watney birdied holes 11 through 13 as well as the 18th and shot a 65 and did not drop a single shot the entire day.
“It was a great day,” said Watney, also referring to the fact that Posey also made the cut and will be playing Sunday. “It’s beautiful weather, and the courses are there for the taking, but you can still make bogeys if you get too aggressive.”
One player who will not be playing Sunday is John Daly, who missed the cut by a single stroke. After shooting an opening-round 65 at Pebble, he could not sustain that momentum the next two days and culminated in a one-over round of 73 at Spyglass Hill.
He would have fallen out of contention quicker had it not been for his playing partner, effervescent former NFL cornerback-head coach Herman Edwards, a Seaside native whose never-ending positive attitude had a definite effect on Daly.
A particularly-telling moment came at the par-3 sixth, after Daly’s pitch shot off the green rolled past the hole and down a steep slope, leaving him with a 20-foot putt for par and compelled him to tear up the grass in the immediate area out of frustration.
He missed the par putt and dropped a shot when he could least afford to, after which Edwards walked over to him and put his arm around the struggling pro, offering words of encouragement in the process. It seemed to have an immediate effect, as Daly was smiling again by the time they hit their tee shots at the next hole, which Daly birdied.
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