One man who certainly won't be sweating the price of premium seafood purchased along the famed stretch of beach, rocks and foam, is the 32 year-old Snedeker, whose triumph at Pebble Beach was his 5th career PGA Tour win. And while this week's winner's check may pale in comparison to his season-ending haul for winning the Tour Championship last September, Snedeker won't have to sweat any more questions about finishing runner-up to golfing royalty in back-to-back weeks.
But even had Tiger bothered to show up, or Phil's white-hot putter remained even red-hot, Snedeker's four sub-70 rounds of 66-68-68-65 would have been incredibly hard to beat. Snedeker simply refused to finish second this week, making it known to any competitor who dared to inject any shred of doubt into the eventual outcome by slamming home birdie putt after birdie putt. His last birdie, a 10-footer at the par-3 17th, served only to punctuate his winning performance just before second place finisher Chris Kirk tried to apply a modicum of pressure with a birdie of his own at the 18th. On this day, Snedeker was simply "bette-ker" than the field and probably anyone else who may have even considered putting a peg in the hallowed ground of Pebble Beach Golf Links this first full week of February.
For Snedeker, today's round of 65 marked his 10th consecutive round in red figures, and completed a remarkable run of superb golf over the course of six weeks and five tournaments that saw Sneds snatch up four top-5 finishes, a near flawless win at Pebble, loads of cash, a bushel full of FedEx Cup points and the Tour's scoring average lead on the strength of an aggregate-stroke total that is, season-to-date, an astounding 82 strokes below par! And while both course conditions and weather were mostly ideal for scoring along the way, no one can question how well Snedeker has played thus far in 2013. And if the stringy-haired blond from Tennessee keeps playing at such a high-level, it won't be much longer before he is being mentioned in the same breath as Tiger, Rory, Luke and Phil in many a post-round discussion of golfing excellence in country club grill rooms across the country.
The only thing missing from Snedeker's impressive list of accomplishments over the past two years is that elusive major title, but any golf fan would be gravely remiss if he or she failed to put Sneds into their Top 5 of players favored to win a major in 2013. And with his win, Snedeker will jump up to #4 in the Official World Golf Rankings, behind only Rory, Tiger and Luke Donald. But the rarefied air doesn't seem to be affecting Brandt at all as his game seems to get better and better with every passing week. As Sneds pushes closer towards the top of the World Golfing Rankings, he's also pushing for the respect of even the staunchest Tiger fans when it comes to accepting arguments for Sneds as the best American golfer on the current golfing landscape. He even has as many wins as Tiger (4) since the start of the Tour's 2011 season. One thing is certain though: Sneds has supplanted the likes of Jason Dufner, Matt Kuchar and even Tiger as the game's most lucrative "ATM", earning 18 top-10 finishes and the most purse earnings on Tour since the start of 2011.
But before I get into arguments about inflation, the price of clams or the fact that Rory and Luke haven't even started their PGA Tour seasons, let me just say that the play of Brandt Snedeker, especially since his hip repair surgery in late 2011, has been nothing short of fantastic. And while critics may point to lackluster finishes over his past eight major appearances, it's not as though he has played horribly, what with a tie for 3rd at the Open Championship last summer, three Top-12s in the last four U.S. Opens, and a couple of Top-20's at Augusta, where he nearly broke through with a win in 2008.
But Snedeker will be the first to tell you that it's time for him to take the next step and build off of his success-teasing performance at Royal Lytham & St. Anne's, where a couple of wayward tee shots, and consecutive double-bogeys took him out of contention for that coveted Claret Jug on Sunday. However, Snedeker has been working hard with his coach to eliminate that fatal miss off the tee and the early results of 2013 would seem to indicate that he is well on his way to achieving his goal of hoisting a Major Championship trophy.
Any lingering doubters of Snedeker's prospects have evaporated like an early spring marine layer of fog over Pebble Beach, as he seems more immune than ever from complacency. Despite $11 million season-ending reasons to take his foot off the proverbial pedal, Sneds has stormed to both the top of the Tour money list and FedEx Cup rankings with a vengeance. Time will tell, but the combination of Snedeker's dead-eye "pop-stroke" on the greens and his machine-like consistency with his irons makes him a bona fide favorite as April and Augusta approaches. Having watched Sneds learn how to win, then learn how to become one of the game's most consistent players, I have certainly become a believer in not only his desire, but also his ability to be one of the best players on the planet. And should he finally capture that elusive major trophy this year, he will certainly elevate himself from well-esteemed, accomplished Vanderbilt Commodore to a true Admiral of Golfing Adoration.
