PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. (AP) — Temperatures were plunging and the wind was whipping — not an ideal day for a walk on the beach. It turned out to be a par-saving moment for Scottie Scheffler on Friday in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
Scheffler pulled his tee shot on the par-5 18th hole at Pebble Beach toward the Pacific Ocean. He never saw it carom off the rocks or splash in golf's biggest water hazard.
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Scottie Scheffler hits from the fourth fairway at Pebble Beach Golf Links during the second round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am golf tournament, Friday, Jan. 31, 2025, in Pebble Beach, Calif. (AP Photo/Nic Coury)
Scottie Scheffler lines up a putt on the sixth hole at Pebble Beach Golf Links during the second round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am golf tournament, Friday, Jan. 31, 2025, in Pebble Beach, Calif. (AP Photo/Nic Coury)
Scottie Scheffler hits from the sixth fairway at Pebble Beach Golf Links during the second round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am golf tournament, Friday, Jan. 31, 2025, in Pebble Beach, Calif. (AP Photo/Nic Coury)
Scottie Scheffler reacts after missing a putt on the fourth hole at Pebble Beach Golf Links during the second round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am golf tournament, Friday, Jan. 31, 2025, in Pebble Beach, Calif. (AP Photo/Nic Coury)
His only other option was to take a penalty drop some 40 yards forward at the end of the tee box. So he figured he might as well walk 300 yards and take a look. Good thing he did.
“Saw a ball on the beach, went down there, found my ball, moved some rocks, hit it out, hit it on the green, two-putted,” Scheffler said, making it sound all so routine.
It took some good fortune, starting with find his golf ball. He had to take a long route to the beach, down a 5-foot rock shelf, walking back some 40 yards to find a smaller ledge to sea level, careful not to slip along the way. He also was able to move small rocks and seaweed around his ball.
Then it was a matter of hitting it cleanly enough with a wedge to get it over the cliff and back toward the fairway. Once he managed that, it was a 6-iron from 179 yards that he got to the back right of the green, leaving him two putts from 40 feet for a par and a 2-under 70.
Scheffler was seven shots behind going into the weekend, still very much in the mix, and a little lucky to not be further back.
“I've made good pars,” he said. “That one was more lucky than anything.”
Scheffler is not the only player to experience where Pebble Beach gets its name. Brandt Snedeker once made birdie from the beach in 2019.
Scheffler certainly would have taken a 5 from where he hit his tee shot, and he had few other complaints about his game considering this is his first real competition in nearly two months.
He had minor surgery on his right hand when glass punctured his upper palm while he was using a wine glass to cut homemade ravioli over Christmas. The swing looks good. He said his hand feels fine. But there is a small matter of rust he can detect.
One was obvious — a semi-shank on the 11th hole with a lob wedge from 82 yards away that led to his lone bogey on Friday.
There was also some brilliance, such as the 6-iron he hit across the ocean that settled about 2 feet away for birdie on No. 8, one of the toughest holes on the golf course.
“I think the last two days out here I haven’t felt at peak performance at all,” he said. “I think if you look at my strokes gained-ball striking numbers, they’re probably not near what they would normally be. And I think that’s just a little bit of competitive rust, kind of getting my feet back under me and playing tournament golf.
“To only have two bogeys, one of them being with a semi-shank, it’s pretty good.”
AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
Scottie Scheffler hits from the fourth fairway at Pebble Beach Golf Links during the second round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am golf tournament, Friday, Jan. 31, 2025, in Pebble Beach, Calif. (AP Photo/Nic Coury)
Scottie Scheffler lines up a putt on the sixth hole at Pebble Beach Golf Links during the second round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am golf tournament, Friday, Jan. 31, 2025, in Pebble Beach, Calif. (AP Photo/Nic Coury)
Scottie Scheffler hits from the sixth fairway at Pebble Beach Golf Links during the second round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am golf tournament, Friday, Jan. 31, 2025, in Pebble Beach, Calif. (AP Photo/Nic Coury)
Scottie Scheffler reacts after missing a putt on the fourth hole at Pebble Beach Golf Links during the second round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am golf tournament, Friday, Jan. 31, 2025, in Pebble Beach, Calif. (AP Photo/Nic Coury)
Russia’s nuclear-capable Oreshnik missile system has entered active service in Belarus, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday, as the U.S. efforts to broker a deal to end the nearly four-year war in Ukraine have entered a pivotal stage.
The ministry released a video showing combat vehicles that are part of the mobile intermediate range ballistic missile system driving across a forest as part of combat training. The ministry’s announcement followed a statement from Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who said earlier this month that the Oreshnik had arrived in the country. Lukashenko said that up to 10 such missile systems will be stationed in Belarus.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier this month that the Oreshnik would enter combat duty before the year's end. He made the statement at a meeting with top Russian military officers, where he warned that Moscow will seek to extend its gains in Ukraine if Kyiv and its Western allies reject the Kremlin’s demands in peace talks.
The announcement comes at a critical time for Russia-Ukraine peace talks. U.S. President Donald Trump hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at his Florida resort Sunday and insisted that Kyiv and Moscow were “closer than ever before” to a peace settlement.
However, Moscow and Kyiv remain deeply divided on key issues, including whose forces withdraw from where in Ukraine and the fate of Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, one of the 10 biggest in the world. Trump noted that the monthslong U.S.-led negotiations could still collapse.
Putin has sought to portray himself as negotiating from a position of strength as Ukrainian forces strain to keep back the bigger Russian army.
Russia first tested a conventionally armed version of the Oreshnik — Russian for hazelnut tree — to strike a Ukrainian factory in November 2024. Putin has bragged that Oreshnik’s multiple warheads plunge at speeds of up to Mach 10 and can’t be intercepted, and that several of them used in a conventional strike could be as devastating as a nuclear attack.
The Russian leader has warned the West that Russia could use the Oreshnik next against allies of Kyiv that allowed it to strike inside Russia with their longer-range missiles.
The Belarusian Defense Ministry said Tuesday that the Oreshnik has a range of up to 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles).
Russian state media boasted that it would take the missile only 11 minutes to reach an air base in Poland and 17 minutes to reach NATO headquarters in Brussels. There’s no way to know whether it’s carrying a nuclear or a conventional warhead before it hits the target.
Intermediate-range missiles can fly between 500 to 5,500 kilometers (310 to 3,400 miles). Such weapons were banned under a Soviet-era treaty that Washington and Moscow abandoned in 2019.
Russia previously has deployed tactical nuclear weapons to the territory of its Belarus, whose territory it used to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Lukashenko has said that his country has several dozen Russian tactical nuclear weapons.
While signing a security pact with Lukashenko in December 2024, Putin said that even with Russia controlling the Oreshniks, Moscow would allow Minsk to select the targets. He noted that if the missiles are used against targets closer to Belarus, they could carry a significantly heavier payload.
In 2024, the Kremlin released a revised nuclear doctrine, noting that any nation’s conventional attack on Russia that is supported by a nuclear power will be considered a joint attack on his country. The threat was clearly aimed at discouraging the West from allowing Ukraine to strike Russia with longer-range weapons and appears to significantly lower the threshold for the possible use of Russia’s nuclear arsenal.
The revised Russian doctrine also placed Belarus under the Russian nuclear umbrella.
Lukashenko has ruled the nation of 9.5 million with an iron fist for more than three decades. His government has been repeatedly sanctioned by the West for its crackdown on human rights and for allowing Moscow to use its territory for the invasion of Ukraine. Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya has said that the deployment of Oreshnik to Belarus deepens the country’s military and political dependence on Russia.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
In this image made from video provided by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Monday, Dec. 29, 2025, Russian troops line up at a base in Belarus where the Oreshnik missile system was deployed in Belarus. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
In this image made from video provided by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Monday, Dec. 29, 2025, Russian solders camouflage one of the trucks of the Russia's Oreshnik missile system with a net during training in an undisclosed location in Belarus. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
In this image made from video provided by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Monday, Dec. 29, 2025, A Russia's Oreshnik missile system is seen during a training in an undisclosed location in Belarus. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
In this image made from video provided by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Monday, Dec. 29, 2025, A Russia's Oreshnik missile system is seen during a training in an undisclosed location in Belarus. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
In this image made from video provided by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Monday, Dec. 29, 2025, A Russia's Oreshnik missile system is seen during a training in an undisclosed location in Belarus. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
