E-Notes: Pebble Beach to add to its long history

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• With his victory last week at the FBR Open, J.B. Holmes became the seventh player (since 1960) to win his first two TOUR titles in the same event. Holmes joins a list that includes Hale Irwin, Dave Eichelberger, Calvin Peete, Loren Roberts, Brian Henninger and Vaughn Taylor?all of whom won their first two titles in the same tournament.

J.B. Holmes

• More on Holmes: His victory last week boosted his FedExCup points total to 4,958. He earned only 2,860 in all of 2007 while finishing 112th in the regular season. He's currently second, just four points behind K.J. Choi.

• Greg Norman will make his first PGA TOUR start since the 2006 International when he tees it up this week at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. It will be just the sixth time in his career that Norman has played in the tournament and his first since 1992.

• With an expanded field this week of 180 players, the entire class of PGA TOUR rookies was eligible to play. Of the 25 rookies on TOUR, all but two?Nick Flanagan and Chez Reavie?will compete this week. Through the first five weeks of the season, Dustin Johnson leads the rookie pack standing in 30th place in the FedExCup standings. Reavie is next on the list in 32nd place. To date, 24 members of the rookie class have earned FedExCup points.

• Pebble Beach Golf Links has enjoyed quite a history in golf, not only hosting the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am since 1947, 10 years after Bing Crosby conceived the event, but also other significant tournaments. Pebble Beach has hosted four U.S. Opens (1972, 1982, 1992 and 2000), four U.S. Amateurs (1929, 1947, 1961 and 1999) one PGA Championship (1977) and one TOUR Championship (1988). The course has also been the host site of the Champions Tour's Wal-Mart First Tee Open at Pebble Beach since the tournament's inception in 2004.

Mark O'Meara

• It's been 16 years since the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am has had a playoff. In 1992, Mark O'Meara and Jeff Sluman were tied after 72 holes. O'Meara won the extra session on the first playoff hole when he made a 12-foot birdie putt on the 16th hole at Pebble Beach.

• On two occasions, the winner of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am has gone on to win again at Pebble Beach at the U.S. Open in that same season. In 1972, Jack Nicklaus defeated Johnny Miller in a playoff and then won the U.S. Open four months later. In 2000, Tiger Woods won at Pebble Beach and then added the U.S. Open.

• Defending champions this year have either done very well, or not well at all. Three of the five have earned Top-10 finishes in their efforts to repeat (with Tiger Woods actually repeating) and two have missed the cut. Vijay Singh and Charley Hoffman joined Tiger in finishing among the Top-10 while Paul Goydos and Aaron Baddeley both missed the cut.