“The game is in its best place,” John Smoltz said, and then he laid it out plainly: he will be back at the American Century Championship at Edgewood Golf Course in Lake Tahoe on July 10–12, trying to turn last year’s second-place finish into something more. Smoltz, 59, finished behind Joe Pavelski a year ago; this time he arrives saying he trusts his swing more after recent procedures and two new hips.
Smoltz did not offer vague optimism. “The game is at a point now at 59 where I trust some of the things that I can do because I'm physically more able with two new hips and some procedures done,” he said. “I'm at a point where I know that if I can continue to get a little bit better around the green, I'm going to play the kind of golf I want to play.” The Hall of Famer framed his return as an athlete’s timing problem — he wants to have his best golf when the trophy is at stake.
What changes the calculus at Edgewood is the scoring. The American Century Championship uses a Modified Stableford system that rewards aggression: an albatross is worth 10 points, a hole-in-one eight points, an eagle six, a birdie three and a par one. Bogeys score zero, and anything two over par or worse costs minus two points. That math explains why Smoltz’s late charge last year mattered so much — and why steady pars are less valuable than they look.
Smoltz knows those numbers intimately. “You get three times the value for a birdie,” he said. “So, like last year, I think I made seven or eight birdies the last round to finish second. Couldn't chase down Pavelski, but I'm like, where has that been? Where's those birdies?” Birdies and better produce outsized swings on the leaderboard; they are the short route from second to first at Edgewood.
Context sharpens the stakes. Smoltz is not a golfing celebrity by accident: he qualified for the U.S. Senior Open in 2018 and hopes to qualify again this year. But the American Century is a different animal — a celebrity field, a compact course in Lake Tahoe and a scoring system that punishes conservative golf. For a player who can birdie in bunches, Modified Stableford is an invitation; for a player who piles up pars, it can be a trap.
That trap is precisely the friction point Smoltz described. “I get off to a slow start. Every tournament I rally second and third round with too big of a hole. I make a ton of pars. It's so frustrating to say that I make a ton of pars. That would be normally good, but it's not in this tournament,” he said. He even recounted an extreme stretch: “I think at one point I made 29 pars in a row in one tournament and it was nauseating. It was like I'd rather bite the head of my putter off because you only get one point for a par.”
That combination — a game he says is the best it’s been, and a recurring pattern of slow starts that force late rallies — defines the story heading into July. Smoltz’s late-round birdies produced a surge last year, but even seven or eight birdies could not erase Pavelski’s lead. Pavelski’s win a year ago remains the immediate benchmark Smoltz must clear.
Smoltz framed his preparation in athletic, rather than nostalgic, terms. He has rebuilt his body and the consequence, he believes, is trust. “The goal is you always wish you could play tomorrow when the game is in its best place, but that's the beauty of golf. You know, you got to have it when it counts,” he said. Whether that trust translates into faster starts at Edgewood will determine if those late-round fireworks are rescue missions or the finishing touch on a campaign for the title.
He will find out July 10–12. Smoltz’s next confirmed competitive stop is the American Century Championship; the unresolved question hanging over his Lake Tahoe return is simple and decisive: can a 59-year-old with renewed mobility convert earlier, steadier scoring into a win under a scoring system that rewards the exact bursts he has shown — and has often begun too late?
