Aaron Rodgers and his professional partner, Ben Silverman, won the truncated 2023 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am on Saturday, taking home a one-shot victory in the 54-hole pro-amateur tournament.
For the future Hall-of-Famer and current Green Bay Packers quarterback, it's his first win in this tournament, which features 156 pro-am teams with amateurs that are celebrities, athletes, musicians and businesspeople alike. However, some of the pros and amateurs in the field see the Rodgers-Silverman win as tainted because they don't believe Rodgers was playing with a proper tournament handicap.
In the pro-am competition, the event is conducted under the format of net best-ball of partners. That means the pro and amateur player complete each hole, and the better net individual score between the two counts for the team score.
Silverman got no strokes as the pro in the team. Rodgers got one on the 10 hardest holes on the course the duo played each day. In the three rounds they played, Silverman shot 1-over 216 and missed the 54-hole cut in the pro event, though he did make 13 total birdies in his roller-coaster week. The duo shot 26-under total in three rounds in the pro-am competition. That's pretty amazing -- in fact, too amazing for PGA Tour pro Keith Mitchell, who finished in fourth place with amateur partner and Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen.
"I think Josh and I won," Mitchell said Sunday. "Aaron Rodgers doesn't count. His handicap was crap. I haven't looked. I think we were, on 18 we might have been up there. But if we finish second to Aaron I consider us winning the trophy."
Ultimately, Mitchell and Allen finished four shots off the pace.
Looking at Aaron Rodgers' scores entered into GHIN, which is the USGA-run service that tracks golf handicap indices in the United States, he plays off a handicap index of 3.0. Even if he played from the same tees as the pros all week, he would get 7 strokes on Pebble Beach Golf Links, but he'd be more likely to get 5 playing up a box. Still, the variety of Rodgers' scores is pretty vast, ranging from a 71 last August to reported rounds of 82, 83 and 87 in this event.
