World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler opens one of the worst rounds at Pebble Beach Pro-Am

PEBBLE BEACH – Two fans in puffy vests, holding “transfusion” cocktails, walked upstream through the gallery of the 10th hole as the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am opened Thursday.

“Ah, Scheffler. That’s why there’s a crowd,” one of the middle-aged men said to the other.

Scottie Scheffler, the world’s No. 1 golfer as of May 2023, should indeed be the No. 1 attraction this week, heavenly scenery aside.

He was the odds-on favorite until his even-par debut left him tied for 64th in the 80-man field, while almost everyone else benefited from idyllic sunny weather, with rain forecast for Sunday’s final round.

Leader Ryo Hisatsune went 10 under in his very first round at Pebble, and of the 10 golfers who finished 7 under, six played at Pebble Beach while the others conquered Spyglass Hill.

Only two other golfers, each with 2 over, scored higher at Pebble than Scheffler.

“I feel like I’m usually good at scoring and today I felt like I wasn’t scoring at all,” Scheffler said after birdieing the 18th. “Everything that was going wrong seemed to be going that way, and I just felt like I was scoring poorly.

“I actually feel like I’m playing pretty well. Just one of those days.”

The day came and went without a sighting of Taylor Swift, whose fiancée, Travis Kelce, worked the Spyglass Hill pro-am circuit, along with 49ers legends Steve Young and Alex Smith – the few recognizable faces in what had been an annual celebrity carnival but now serves as the PGA Tour’s first Signature Event this season.

Also present at Spyglass was defending champion Rory McIlroy, who holed from the front bunker of the 14th hole and went from 4 under to five, and that was where his final score rested.

The scores were so low that a third of the field – 27 golfers – finished 5 under or lower.

Scheffler’s line: three birdies, three bogeys and one putter flip in disgust after missing a birdie and settling for a tap-in par on the 15th. He also had a “huge mudball” that sidestepped his second shot on the second hole.

“If you play later in the day, it can be difficult to hole on these greens,” said Scheffler, who played most of the back nine into the wind before finishing at 3:25 p.m. “I have to take advantage of the holes early in the round and I couldn’t because I knew the wind was going to pick up and we would turn into it on the back nine.”

Hisatsune, the leader in the first round, birdied 5 of 7. Even better were the six consecutive birdies opened by Chris Gotterup, Sunday’s winner of the Phoenix Open in a play-off against Hideki Matsuyama, who went five under as playing partner of Scheffler on Thursday.

One stunning shot below Scheffler’s even-par 72 cemented his status as world No. 1: After a southerly breeze carried him past the green and back bunker, his ball stopped three feet from the lateral hazard line and eight feet from an ominous pit, where a creek separates Pebble’s southernmost hole from a $40 million home once owned by the late actor Gene Hackman.

Scheffler’s delicate flop shot landed on the edge of the 10th green and he saved par with a 7-foot putt.

“If that ball lands on the green, no matter how soft the greens are, that’s probably a 15-footer for birdie,” Scheffler said of his wind-derailed 154-yard approach. “It lands about a foot into the rim and not only doesn’t it go into the bunker, it jumps over the bunker. Luckily, despite the danger, I was able to make a par. Little things like that are what I had to deal with today.”

A week earlier, Scheffler opened the Phoenix Open with a 2-over 71. He rallied to threaten the leaders and finished tied for third.

Can he repeat that drama here?