Of moon pros and Fortinet Championship golf

NAPA, Calif. — Yes, wine country. And yes, also golf country, and here we go again, the PGA Tour intent on defying the calendar and starting a new year in September, showing how crazy things can get when Tiger Woods no longer plays full time.

The great thing about pro golf is it virtually never ends — only four weeks have passed since Rory McIlroy took the FedEx Cup and Tour Championship, the concluding events of, well, 2021-22.

The worst thing about pro golf also is that it virtually never ends, the 2022-23 schedule set to open Thursday at the Fortinet Championship, right here among the cabernet grapes and birdies at Silverado Country Club.

It’s been a few years now since the Tour instituted the so-called wrap-around schedule, trying to persuade us that the very beginning of an event is more appealing than the very end, especially when the big guys — Rory, Patrick Cantlay, Scottie Scheffler — are taking a break.

Not that the people entered, including the Cal grad Max Homa, can’t play the sport. Homa tied Thomas for fifth in the standings. But golf and, as Serena Williams recently verified, tennis, are depended on reputation as on talent.

It’s always been that way for individual sports.

“Why are you guys always writing about Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, who aren’t in the tournament?” sponsors would ask a journalist 20 years ago. Because, as is the case with Tiger and Rory now, they were the ones who had us mesmerized.

The Tour does strange things with history. This tournament began in 1968, won that year by Kermit Zarley, who the comedian Bob Hope nicknamed “the Pro from the Moon.” The event was called the Kaiser International, and from there became the Frys, then the Fortinet.

Except in the PGA Tour, it’s never been anything except the Fortinet.

Silverado, the name of which came from a Robert Louis Stevenson story of gold-rush California, has never been anything except a welcoming course. They’ve had U.S. Open qualifying there, but they’d never had the Open there.

A man who in 1973 did win the U.S. Open at Oakmont in Pittsburgh, Johnny Miller, has left his mark on Silverado, in more than one way.

Miller and his family moved to Silverado after he won the Kaiser in 1969. In those days, he was arguably the best golfer on the planet, winning the Open, the British Open and, like clockwork, one Tucson Open after one Phoenix Open. He also won more than once at Pebble Beach.

John had a place overlooking the 11th hole at Silverado, and during one tournament, seemingly unconcerned with his own health, was noticed climbing a palm tree to shake down loose fronds.

Miller, now 75, helped remodel the course a few years ago, and he frequently stops by during the tournament from his current home in Utah.

John and the late Ken Venturi both attended Lincoln High in San Francisco, the only high school known to man — or the Pro from the Moon — with two graduates who won the Open.