AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am Recap: Unheralded Potter Beats the Best

Dustin Johnson, Jason Day, Phil Mickelson and Ted Potter Jr. – one of these is not like the others.

Johnson, Day and Mickelson are major champions en route to the Hall of Fame. Potter is not.

Johnson, Day and Mickelson have each earned in excess of $40 million in their careers. Potter has not.

Johnson, Day and Mickelson tied for second at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am on Sunday. Potter did not.

That's because Potter won.

Every so often in golf, and in sports, we see someone who seemingly doesn't belong on the same field as the competition yet somehow, some way emerges as the winner.

Potter is 34 years old. He's been toiling mostly in the underbelly of professional golf since he was a teenager. In 2004, he played 24 tournaments on the Web.com and made no money. Zero. He missed all 24 cuts. He went to the Hooters Tour, came back to the Web, crashed, went back to the Hooters. And so on.

And yet Potter held off Johnson, Day and Mickelson on Sunday, following a third-round 62 with a very steady final-round 69 to win, rather easily, by three strokes. On the PGA Tour, that's close to a romp.

After years doing his back-and-forth Web/Hooters dance, Potter reached the PGA Tour in 2012 and, amazingly, won a tournament, the Greenbrier Classic. He didn't win again, but hung around until he suffered a devastating injury, breaking his right ankle walking off a curb on a Canadian street in summer 2014. Multiple surgeries, screws and metal plates, he was out for two years. Now in his 30s, Potter returned to his old stomping grounds, the Web.com Tour, where he played well enough to get his PGA Tour card again. And that's how he got to Pebble Beach, arriving with an OWGR ranking of 246th.

He won about $1.3 million Sunday, roughly half of his previous career PGA Tour earnings.

So Potter has another title, his life has changed – again, he's in the Masters, he has his card for the rest of this season and then two more.

But for our purposes, fantasy purposes, does it matter? It's hard to discount someone with such determination to keep coming back. And for all the minor league golf Potter has played, he is now a two-time champion on the PGA Tour. There are a lot of pretty decent golfers who can't say that.

On the other hand … after winning the Greenbrier, Potter didn't get another top-50 the rest of 2012. In 2013, he missed half his cuts. In 2014, he missed almost two-thirds of them before his injury.

So we'll say: Ted Potter Jr., you are a great story. You are to be commended. You slayed three Hall of Fame giants Sunday. You showed that there is hope for the little guy, the everyman.

But we'll also say: Gamers, Ted Potter Jr. has had his moment in the sun. His second moment in the sun, in fact. Don't get blinded by the light.

MONDAY BACKSPIN

Dustin Johnson

The day began with Johnson's pro-am partner, Wayne Gretzky, withdrawing with a bad back. But Johnson still had a share of the lead, and only Potter stood in his way. Johnson never got anything going, and now has won with at least a share of the 54-hole lead only once in three tries this season. That doesn't sound great, but perhaps speaks more to the depth of golf than Johnson's inefficiencies. He now heads to Riviera, where he's the defending champion and will be favored to win again. He could easily do it.

Jason Day

Day shot a 2-under 70, not nearly enough get it done on Sunday. But this co-runner-up affirms Day's win in his prior start at Torrey Pines. He's always one awkward movement away from his back injury recurring, but Day looks his best in almost two years. He's up to No. 8 in the world and can be considered every time he tees it up. At least until that next awkward movement.

Phil Mickelson

On the brink of falling out of the top 50 for the first time in 15 years, Mickelson has turned in back-to-back top-5s to jump to No. 35 in the OWGR. Pretty remarkable for a couple reasons, not the least of which is that Mickelson did it playing in his third and fourth consecutive weeks. He'll now make it five in a row at Riviera this week, and you wonder if that's too much for a 47-year-old.

Chez Reavie

Reavie was the fourth golfer in a four-way tie for second. It was his second runner-up in as many weeks. So Reavie astoundingly has strung together two of the best four weeks of his career in consecutive weeks at age 36. Like Johnson and Mickelson, he also now heads to Riviera, where he's missed the cut five times in seven career visits. But he's not the same old Reavie and, in fact, did tie for seventh there two years ago.

Jimmy Walker

Walker's tie for eighth is as surprising as it is heartwarming and encouraging. Trying to continue his career after being diagnosed with Lyme disease, Walker opened 2018 with two missed cuts and then a T63. He didn't look good. Yes, Walker is a former Pebble champ and has many good finishes there, but some people with Lyme disease can't get out of bed. So we can't just say Walker likes the course. We also can't say that Walker has learned to play with the disease. We'll have to see what lies ahead, beginning this week at the Genesis Open.

Paul Casey

Casey has altered his schedule to make a run at the European Ryder Cup team, so this was his 2018 PGA Tour debut. And at a track he hadn't played since 2010 (T41). But the Englishman showed that none of that matters, that he continues to be a top-25 machine. In fact, he tied for eighth at Pebble, giving him four top-20s in four PGA Tour starts in 2017-18. Casey, too, will be at Riviera this week. He tied for second there in 2015.

Sangmoon Bae

Like with Walker, Bae's week was heartwarming and encouraging. But for a different reason. After missing two years for a military commitment in South Korea, Bae returned last fall. He arrived at Pebble having missed the cut in eight of his nine starts. Bae tied for 15th. He not only jumped more than 1,000 spots to 920th in the OWGR, but he showed that maybe all that he needed to regain his game after such a long layoff was time.

Jordan Spieth

The defending champion tied for 20th, and he did so by finishing 38th in the field in strokes gained putting. That's been the part of Spieth's game most off in 2018, and he can't really win, or even contend, without it getting better. Spieth has three top-20s in four starts in 2018, and that speaks to the rest of his game. Spieth has had mixed results at Riviera, so unless he finds something with his putter right away, it's hard to envision him contending.

Matt Jones

Jones had made five consecutive cuts at Pebble and 6 of 7, including four top-25s. So he understandably was a popular DFS long-shot pick this past week. But going back to last summer, Jones had missed 10 of 18 worldwide cuts. At Pebble, he missed the cut – by a lot. We pay a lot of attention to course history. But nothing is more important than current form. And by current, we certainly mean more than the last week or two.

Charley Hoffman

We've heard nothing more about Hoffman's back injury since his Saturday WD. Actually, haven't heard anything other than it is a back injury. We don't know whether it had been bothering Hoffman before Saturday, but he didn't have a great start to 2017-18, with only one top-25 in four starts. Hoffman is not in the field for Riviera, and he isn't among the early commitments for the Honda Classic in two weeks. After that comes the WGC-Mexico, for which Hoffman has already qualified. We may not know more until then.