Geoff Ogilvy, Rebooting His Game, Enjoys a Good Start at Pebble Beach

Shooting 2 under on Thursday as the winds kicked up at Pebble, the Aussie put himself in position to make his first PGA Tour cut in five years.

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — As in every profession, golf has its likable go-to players, the friendly, willing-to-talk-no matter-what happened-in-their-round guy, that you could sit with and have a beer.

Basically, a regular Joe.

Geoff Ogilvy is one of those guys.

Shooting a 2-under 70 on Thursday as Pebble Beach turned in to British Open conditions with 30-plus mph wind gusts off Stillwater Cove, the 45-year-old Australian looked like he was turning back the clock as he got up and down in the teeth of the wind on the 18th hole.

With only two PGA Tour events under his belt in years—missed cuts last summer at the Barracuda Championship and Rocket Mortgage Classic—Ogilvy produced his best round in a long time.

“Just miles and the legs really, if you like, for a running analogy, just got to play more with it,” Ogilvy said of what is missing in his new repertoire. “Rounds of significance with a scorecard in your pocket. Like, this is something about, I mean, when you're out in your warmup for an hour, play, you got to practice a little bit afterwards, you do that six days a week, 40 weeks, It all makes a difference.”

Winner of the 2006 U.S. Open, Ogilvy came on the golf map after his exciting win at Winged Foot, eventually winning eight times on Tour, including three World Golf Championships.

After his last win at the 2014 Barracuda Championship, Ogilvy started to slip down the money list as his game deteriorated and by 2018, he missed 14 of 18 cuts with his last appearance that year being a missed cut at the Barracuda.

Ogilvy had decided before his last missed cut that he was done with professional golf, and had decided to move back to Australia.

“I was playing really poorly, I wanted my kids to have the Aussie experience to like, I just genuinely wanted them to have a different experience,” Ogilvy said. “Maybe just because I loved growing up there. I thought maybe they'd have a good time. I think they've had a good time.”

Then COVID-19 hit and Ogilvy’s plans unraveled.

“I kind of was planning on having sort of 2019 off and then doing what I'm doing now,” Ogilvy said of his second career in golf architecture. “And then that didn't work out because there was two years … we got locked in Australia and it's like Alcatraz.”

Playing no golf by design in 2019, Ogilvy then barely played in 2020.

“Maybe 10 rounds of golf,” Ogilvy said. “Which is less than I played since I was about seven.”

Sitting on the couch doing nothing, and then as he had Zoom meeting after Zoom meeting, Ogilvy believed that absence made the heart grows fonder, pushing him back to the U.S.

Ogilvy’s OCM Golf has three current projects in the U.S., including a $23.5 million 18-hole renovation project at Medinah Country Club that will begin in 2023 so the course can reopen in 2024, allowing the club to prepare for hosting the 2026 Presidents Cup.

It’s the designs projects that eventually brought Ogilvy back to Scottsdale, Ariz., where he lived before moving back to Australia.

Now Ogilvy has two jobs, one as a player and the other an architect.

“I needed some Aussie time,” Ogilvy said. “It had been genuinely 20 years since I've spent longer than about two or three weeks there. I was just wanted my kids to have that experience. I think it's good for your education to be in a different place.”

With limited status, Ogilvy is unsure of his next start, but with the golf world up in the air and designated events all the rage, Ogilvy is anxious and wants to play a bunch.

“The golf world has changed a lot in the last two or three years,” Ogilvy said. “I don't know what I'm going to get in. I don't think anybody knows what the fields are going to look like this year.”

But Ogilvy still feels he can play and after the hiatus, he believes he may have undervalued his prior 20 years on Tour.

“It's a pretty nice thing to play out here.”