Adam Scott, of Australia, hoists his trophy on the 18th green after winning the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera Country Club, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020, in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Kang)
Adam Scott, right, of Australia, poses with his trophy next to Tiger Woods on the 18th green after winning the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera Country Club, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020, in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Kang)
Adam Scott, of Australia, tees off on the second hole during the final round of the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera Country Club, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020, in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Kang)
Tiger Woods tees off on the 10th hole during the final round of the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera Country Club, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020, in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Kang)
Tiger Woods watches his second shot on the 11th hole during the final round of the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera Country Club, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020, in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Kang)
Adam Scott, of Australia, reacts after finishing the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera Country Club, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020, in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Kang)
Tony Finau tees off on the 10th hole during the final round of the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera Country Club, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020, in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Kang)
Rory McIlroy, of Northern Ireland, hits his second shot from the rough on the second hole during the final round of the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera Country Club, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020, in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Kang)
Tiger Woods tees off on the 12th hole during the final round of the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera Country Club, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020, in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Kang)
Matt Kuchar chips out of the rough onto the 10th green during the final round of the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera Country Club, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020, in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Kang)
Rory McIlroy, of Northern Ireland, hits out of a bunker onto the 17th green during the final round of the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera Country Club, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020, in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Kang)
Rafa Cabrera-Bello, of Spain, tees off on the second hole during the final round of the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera Country Club, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020, in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Kang)
Dustin Johnson hits out of a greenside bunker on the 16th hole during the final round of the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera Country Club, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020, in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Kang)
Chez Reavie hits his second shot on the second hole during the final round of the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera Country Club, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020, in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Kang)
Matt Kuchar tees off on the 17th hole during the final round of the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera Country Club, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020, in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Kang)
Dustin Johnson tees off on the 11th hole during the final round of the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera Country Club, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020, in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Kang)
Adam Scott, of Australia, waves to the crowd as he walks up to the 18th green during the final round of the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera Country Club, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020, in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Kang)
Adam Scott, of Australia, hits his third shot on the 11th hole during the final round of the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera Country Club, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020, in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Kang)
Adam Scott, of Australia, tees off on the second hole during the final round of the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera Country Club, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020, in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Kang)
Rory McIlroy, of Northern Ireland, chips onto the second green during the final round of the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera Country Club, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020, in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Kang)
Tiger Woods reacts after hitting his third shot on the 11th hole during the final round of the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera Country Club, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020, in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Kang)
Adam Scott, of Australia, reacts after finishing the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera Country Club, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020, in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. Scott won the tourney.(AP Photo/Ryan Kang)
Scott Brown, Patrick Cantlay and Vaughn Taylor shot 68. No one went lower. The average score was 72 on the nose. There were 42 over-par rounds Sunday, 26 more than Saturday.
This was technically the same course which Bubba Watson pulverized with a weekend 64-64 in 2014, but not really. That was quicksand. This was concrete.
Add some wind and the usual riddles of George Thomas’ architecture, and here was the perfect counterpoint to the Longball Blues.
The Royal & Ancient and the U.S. Golf Association came out with a Distance Report that catalogued the way that excessive tee-ball length turns the great old golf courses into rotary-dial phones. It’s a deep subject, but Riviera was the unquestioned star on Sunday.
“Firmness helps any golf course,” Max Homa said after he finished fifth. “Maybe we don’t need to be hitting the ball this far. But 11-under-par is going to win this tournament with the best players in the world.”
Homa, of Valencia, remembers coming here and “sitting on that hill” behind the 18th green as Mike Weir and Phil Mickelson and Craig Stadler found victory.
“It was sort of a pinch-me moment,” Homa said, “coming up 18 with an outside chance to win.”
In fact he was tied for the lead when he got to the sand-ringed par-3 16th and flew his tee shot into a bunker. “The ball always plugs there,” Homa said, and he couldn’t save par.
Then he flew his second shot on 18 into a tough spot behind the green and couldn’t scramble. A discourteous fan forced Homa to back off his putt.
“I had a nice contingent here, and also a lady who didn’t want me to make that putt,” Homa said. “But I love coming here. It’s my favorite golf course.”
Harold Varner III was also hanging in when he got to the 10th tee, the driveable par-4 that turns into a honey badger when you get out of line.
The best landing place was to the left of the green. No one envisioned where Varner put his.
As the bleacherites near the 10th green blinked, Varner walked 129 yards down the fairway and then stopped. That’s where his chunked 3-wood had landed. It automatically qualified Varner for next year’s Media Day.
“It’s not like I haven’t done it before,” Varner said. “I did the same thing in Korea, same club, same wind, everything. I just hit way behind the ball.”
A normal par-4, on a typical, two-lane blacktop PGA Tour course, would have allowed Varner to smack his next shot onto the green and survive. Not here.
“I was screwed,” he said.
He steered his second shot into the rough, and then across the green into a bunker and wound up making a 9-footer for double bogey. A bogey on the par-5 11th sent Varner into 13th place.
The No. 1 player in the world was not immune. Playing the par-4 fifth hole with Scott, Rory McIlroy drove into the rough and then lifted a “flyer” that bounded over the green and into a gully. Scott obligingly did the same thing.
Neither man could find the green with his third shot. The difference was Scott made his double bogey putt and McIlroy missed his.
Again, the aftermath was telling. McIlroy’s tee shot on No. 6 landed on the wrong side of the bunker, and he made bogey, although he rallied for a fifth-place tie.
Scott rolled in an 18-footer for birdie, and he shook his fist meaningfully, as if he knew this was bigger than most 6th-hole events.
“It’s so tough when it plays like this,” Brown said. “I was playing 15 yards short of some of these flags, banking on a 7-8-9 yard hop and then releasing out. You can’t get close to these pins.”
But Scott was so eager to get back to the elite that he whacked his drive on 15 while the previous group was still in the fairway.
Joel Dahmen gestured toward the tee, but then he birdied 16 and then 17 and wound up in the fifth-place scrum.
“So I guess that really fired me up,” he said, laughing.
The idyllic weather and the glittery field brought more folks than usual through these narrow neighborhoods. They were rewarded with golf played as it should be. The guy who hit the most greens in regulation (52 of 72) won.
“It’s a great test of golf,” Varner said. “And I guess they can throw away that Distance Report thing.”
