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how does the pebble pro am work

The Pebble Beach Pro-Am is a PGA Tour event where professionals team up with amateur partners over multiple courses and a mix of team and individual formats.

Basic structure

  • Field of around 80 PGA Tour pros and 80 amateurs.
  • Tournament usually runs Thursday–Sunday across the Monterey Peninsula (Pebble Beach Golf Links plus other nearby courses, depending on the year).
  • There are effectively two competitions happening at once:
    • The professional individual stroke-play event.
    • The Pro-Am team event (pro + amateur best-ball).

Courses and rounds

  • For the first three rounds, each pro-am team rotates through the three host courses (traditionally Pebble Beach, Spyglass Hill, and another course such as Monterey Peninsula CC).
  • The professional scores from all days count toward the individual tournament total, regardless of which course they’re on.
  • The Pro-Am team score is tracked separately using the best-ball format (explained below).

Pro-Am team format (how the “am” part works)

  • Each pro is paired with one amateur for the week.
  • On each hole, both the pro and the amateur play their own ball all the way into the hole (standard stroke play for each).
  • For the Pro-Am team leaderboard, the team’s score on each hole is the better of the two scores (best ball). Example:
    • Pro makes a 4, amateur makes a 5 → team score is 4.
    • If the amateur makes a net 3 (after handicap) and the pro makes 4 → team score is 3.
  • Amateurs receive handicap strokes based on their index, so their net scores can help the team even if they aren’t close to PGA Tour level.

Cut and weekend format

  • After the first three rounds, a cut is made in the professional field based on individual scores (top portion of pros advance).
  • Traditionally, only the pros continue into the final round at Pebble Beach; many recent formats limit the amateurs to the first three rounds only.
  • From that point, the remaining pros play a regular final round at Pebble Beach to decide the individual champion.
  • The Pro-Am team competition usually ends after 54 holes (three rounds), and the winning team is crowned based on those team best-ball totals.

Scoring example

Imagine a pro with an amateur partner on a par-4:

  1. Pro makes 5.
  2. Amateur gets a handicap stroke on that hole and makes a raw 6 (net 5).
  3. Team score is 5 (best of 5 and 5).

If the amateur had made a raw 5 with a stroke (net 4) and the pro made 5, the team score would be 4.

Vibe and “why it’s a thing”

  • It’s one of the PGA Tour’s most celebrity-heavy weeks: actors, musicians, and CEOs play alongside the pros, which gives it a more relaxed, entertainment-driven feel compared to a normal Tour event.
  • Still, the pros are playing for full FedExCup points and a standard Tour purse, so the individual event is serious even while the Pro-Am side has a lighter vibe.
  • Television coverage often jumps between star-studded groups and the leaders in the professional tournament, which is why viewers sometimes find the format a bit confusing.

TL;DR: The Pebble Beach Pro-Am runs as a regular PGA Tour stroke-play event for the pros, layered with a separate best-ball team competition where each pro is paired with an amateur and the better score per hole counts for the team, with amateurs typically only playing the first three rounds before the pros finish the tournament alone at Pebble Beach.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.