JOURNAL SPORTS
PEBBLE BEACH, Cal. – Shreveport native Sam Burns charged up the leaderboard Sunday in the final round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, and spent time tied for the lead at 20-under on the back nine before a three-putt par and a bogey on the 17th sank him to sixth in the first star-studded field of the 2026 PGA Tour season.
Burns was high on the leaderboard all four rounds, starting with a 63 on Thursday, and finished at 19-under par 269 on the iconic Pebble Beach Golf Links. He shot 67 on Friday, holed out on the first and last hole Saturday in a rocky even-par 72, and shot a closing 67 Sunday.
It was his seventh top 10 and 14th top 25 in his last 27 PGA Tour starts. Over his Tour career since 2019, the 29-year-old Calvary Baptist graduate has 43 top 10s and 81 top 25s in 185 career starts, and has made the cut in 24 of his last 27 since the beginning of 2025.
Burns has held the lead in the final round three times since last June – at the Canadian Open, the U.S. Open and at Pebble Beach. He lost in a playoff at the Canadian. He was seeking his sixth PGA Tour win, and the first since 2023’s World Match Play Championship.
Collin Morikawa, a Bay Area native, followed a sensational 62 on Saturday with a closing 67 that featured a back nine run and a clinching birdie on 18 to reach the winning 22-under total.
In his third start of the season, in a “signature event” field with 42 of the world’s top 50 players, Burns made an early run Sunday with five front-nine birdies in erratic, often challenging weather conditions. He birdied holes 2-4 and 6-7 to move into the lead at 19-under, staying in the top four until a birdie at 13 pushed him back on top at 20-under.
But down the stretch, with winds off the Pacific Ocean impacting the field, Burns three-putted the par-5 14th to miss a birdie chance, then bogied the penultimate hole, the par-3 17th, which was into the teeth of the wind.
He was fifth in the field in putting for the four rounds, although he missed a six-footer for birdie on the 11th Sunday along with an 8-footer for birdie on 14.
In the first round, Burns poured in seven birdies on the back nine, posting a closing 29 that made him only the second pro since 1983 to go that low on Pebble Beach’s closing holes. He sank nearly 160 feet of putts.
Burns, now a resident of Choudrant in Lincoln Parish, is a former LSU All-American who plays out of Squire Creek Country Club. He collected $690,000 of the $20 million purse at Pebble Beach. He will join the rest of the Tour’s top players in Los Angeles for another signature event, next weekend’s Genesis Open at Riviera Country Club.
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