Lebioda Leads PGA TOUR at Pebble Beach
Playing professional golf requires, more than anything, concentration and avoiding distractions.
Distractions come in many forms. Some are on the course while others seep in from off the course and no matter how hard a pro might try, they make the task difficult.
Hank Lebioda’s distractions began 18 months ago when he withdrew from the 2021 3M Open after the second round.
Lebioda had not only made the cut, but was on a pretty significant run of three consecutive top 10s: a T5 at the Travelers Championship, T4 at the Rocket Mortgage and a T8 at the John Deere Classic.
So, the WD was a surprise.
“I had a family incident,” Lebioda said after his second-round 72 at Pebble Beach. “Not super ready to talk about it. I withdrew from the 3M Open in 2021. Dad was really sick. That’s about all I really want to get into at the moment. But it’s been a long year-and-a-half since then.”
When Lebioda did make it back to the Tour he missed the cut in the last two events of his season and the next four cuts of the new 2021-22 season before a T15 at the Houston Open. Then he missed his next two cuts after Houston.
Lebioda has not recorded a top 10 in his last 37 events and he came to the Monterey Peninsula on a run of seven missed cuts, making his current position, tied for second at the halfway point, seem somewhat miraculous.
“I know the work that I put in. I trust my team around me,” Leboida said. “The way that we saw it is that it was just going to be a matter of time. If I kept working our plan that we had made that good things would come. Yes, the beginning of the season hasn’t been good. It’s been a kind of a rough last 18 months almost. So, I’m very fortunate to be in this position today and this week. I know it’s just part of a long climb back.”
