Tiger Woods isn’t in the field for this week’s AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, so other golfers actually have a chance of raising the trophy on Sunday.
Phil Mickelson is the defending champion at this event and the overwhelming WagerWeb.com favorite this week. Last year he won by five shots after a final-round 6-under 66 for the first of his four 2007 wins. He tied Mark O'Meara's 1997 tournament scoring record at 20-under 268 and also matched the record for winning margin.
Lefty has won this event three times in the past decade and is playing well, with top-10 finishes in both events he has entered. He lost last week in a playoff at the FBR Open.
"I played OK in my first week and I played better in Phoenix," Mickelson said. "I feel like my game is improving.
"I'm looking forward to Pebble. I feel like I'm starting to play better each round as the year goes on and I expect to improve my play this week, too."Mickelson is the leader among active players with 12wins at tournaments contested on multiple layouts, and he leads the PGA Tour in stroke average at 68.73.
Despite Woods not being there, it is a solid field (five of the world’s top 20). No. 6 in the world Jim Furyk, reigning British Open champ Padraig Harrington and 2004 AT&T winner Vijay Singh also are entered, as are last week’s winner, J.B. Holmes, and Daniel Chopra, who won the season-opening Mercedes-Benz Championship.
Davis Love III, sidelined since September with a severe ankle injury that required surgery, makes his first start of the season. Love has two victories at Pebble Beach -- in 2001 and 2003 -- among his 19 PGA Tour titles, but he has not won since the 2006 Chrysler Classic of Greensboro, and, last year, he slipped out of he top 50 in the world rankings for the first time in his career.
Someone to watch is Canadian Mike Weir – before missing the cut in 2007, Weir owned four consecutive top-four finishes at Pebble Beach.
The tournament is played over three different courses in the opening three rounds before it returns to the host course, the renowned Pebble Beach, for the final round on Sunday. Each member of the field will play one round at Spyglass Hill, Poppy Hills and Pebble Beach before the cut is made on Saturday evening. This also has the tour's largest field at 180 players.
EUROPEAN TOUR: The Euros make their first visit to India for the EMAAR-MGF Indian Masters. Ernie Els, who finished third at last week's Dubai Desert Classic, heads the field. Four Indians are in the field: Arjun Atwal, Shiv Kapur, Jyoti Randhawa and Jeev Milkha Singh.
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