Starting on No. 10 no easy task at Pebble

Angel Cabrera hits into the 10th hole Thursday at the U.S. Open.

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PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. – File this one under the heading of “no kidding,” but starting your first round at the 10th tee is no easy assignment.

Yet that’s a mandatory task, given the two-tee start the U.S. Golf Association adopted in 2002. It doesn’t always offer such a contrast in challenges, but at Pebble Beach it surely does. The par-4 10th is simply a beast, but when put up against the par-4 first, it’s no contest.

With the morning wave in the first round of the 110th U.S. Open off and swinging, the difference of where you start was what one would have expected.

The 33 players who went off the first tee went a cumulative 10 over, while the 33 who started at No. 10 went a whopping 18 over.

The lowlights at No. 10 included double bogeys by Stuart Appleby, Kanamee Yokoo, Kevin Na and Craig Barlow. In all, 18 players started with bogey or worse at the 10th, while only 11 did so at the first.