Lonely golf at the AT&T

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — There wasn’t a rain cloud in sight. Or any spectators either. Nature is responsible for the first. The people who run the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro Am get credit or blame — you decide — for the other. 

Yes, time once more for Northern California’s favorite golfing event — maybe America’s, if you go by the TV ratings — when show business and big business hook up with players who really mean business.

It was created in the 1930s by Bing Crosby (go ahead, Google his name or his game), and as much because of the format and the spectacular landfall on which it long has been held — not to mention the conditions — it has persisted for eight decades.

Not that everyone who plays the PGA tour is enthralled. They don’t like rotating among three courses, Pebble Beach, Monterey Peninsula and Spyglass Hill. They don’t like being slowed by amateurs, rounds usually lasting six hours. They don’t like the climate, although everything was gorgeous on Tuesday.

The AT&T — for nostalgia’s sake, we’ll call it the Crosby — is remembered and heralded for storms and cold. The bad weather might not have produced wonderful golf, but it has given us at least one memorable comment.

“I can’t wait,” said the singer Phil Harris, “to get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini.”

I can’t wait to see fans swarming over the courses. For no good reason, tickets are no longer sold for practice rounds on Tuesday. It was lonely out there, other than a few locals.

It’s a different world. We understand that. But when you can walk six blocks from Flaherty’s restaurant in Carmel, only a few yards from Pebble Beach, and not encounter another human soul, it’s a strange world.

That doesn’t particularly bother or affect Viktor Hovland, who seems content any place on any course. He grew up in Norway — no sardine jokes, please — went to Oklahoma State and won the 2018 U.S. Amateur at Pebble.

Those amateurs are not to be confused with the ones in the AT&T, who are more recognized — Bills quarterback Josh Allen, retired Giants catcher Buster Posey, 49ers Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young, soccer star Gareth Bale and as always Bill Murray — but don’t carry handicaps.

That doesn’t mean they might not carry their pro.

“Obviously you want to have fun and play well,” said Hovland about teaming up. “I like to play fast. But I do enjoy the format. It’s very unique to be able to play a PGA Tour event with an amateur, and I don't mind it. But I'd prefer to play fast, and I'm here to obviously try to win the golf tournament, so it depends on the partner, as well. I think you get to kind of have a little bit of a different feel to it. It feels more relaxed.”

The lack of fans? AT&T officials decided after shifting the celebrity shoot-out from Tuesday to Wednesday that marshals and security types appreciate time off before tournament play begins Thursday.

What? Didn’t we have too much lonely golf when Covid closed things down three years ago?

“That is a different dynamic,” said Hovland. “It felt lonely.”

As it did Tuesday.

At Pebble, a Pro-Am without any “ams,” including Bill Murray

By Art Spander

It was created by a man who could swing a 5-iron as impressively as he could hold a musical note. In time, his tournament, the Bing Crosby Pro-Am, became the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. What didn’t change was the last part of the label, “Am.”

The pros, from Snead and Hogan to Palmer, Nicklaus and Woods, had their place and their victories, but what made the Pro-Am special were the amateurs: entertainers, athletes and politicians as eager to compete and as we were to watch them. 

Now the event, a mid-winter festival on the Monterey Peninsula, has fallen victim to Covid-19, as have so many other attractions. They’ll hold the AT&T in February, as always, but not like before.

According to a release from the PGA Tour, the AT&T will be played “without the traditional multi-day format,” which means it won’t be the traditional Crosby/AT&T.

Inevitable, perhaps, the way the virus has surged, chasing the 49ers and the Sharks to Arizona and forcing the suspension of so many NBA and college basketball games, but still disappointing.

The courses are the same, although only Pebble Beach and Spyglass Hill will be used, Monterey Peninsula Country Club unneeded for a greatly reduced field.

The charity beneficiary is the same, the Monterey Peninsula Foundation, which Crosby told me in the early 1970s, when some of the pros didn’t like the format, was the only reason he didn’t withdraw his support.

The threat of inclement weather will be the same, although the Pacific storms are as unreliable as were Jack Lemmon’s tee shots.

Lemmon, of course, was a regular, a good guy if not a good golfer, who tried for years without success to make the cut but even in his unfulfilled attempts made us appreciate his persistence and sense of humor.

Sure, we were thrilled by Greg Norman and Phil Mickelson, but we were no less enthralled by Huey Lewis — who might break out in song at every tee box — or Tom Brady.

Back in the ’50s, when the world was naïve, the guy who kept us attuned and laughing was Phil Harris, who had a ton of one-liners and also more than a minimum of one-putts.

In one rainy Crosby, he slopped off the inundated 17th green at Pebble and told the press, “I can’t wait to get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini.” If you’ve heard that before, well, jokes survive.

The routines by Harris, Dean Martin and even Crosby himself have been taken over by Bill Murray, who has done everything from pull a female spectator into a bunker to hurl a frozen fish at spectators.

If the tournament occasionally resembled a variety show, well, how many times could you remind the audience that every putt breaks toward Carmel Bay?

Murray was a player as well as a comedian. He grew up near Chicago, caddying with his brothers, and in the 2011 AT&T he teamed with D.A. Points, who won the pro section. Murray won the pro-am.

On the 16th in the final round at Pebble, Points, getting into the spirit of things, yelled at Murray loud enough to he heard, “It would help if you made a putt.” Which Murray then did. “His being funny helped relax me,” said Murray, who hardly needs help at relaxing.

No Murray this winter. No quarterbacks — Tony Romo has been a consistent entrant, and Peyton Manning an occasional one — no wisecracks, no entrants sitting near the 17th tee being interviewed by Jim Nantz.

No crowd at the 15th tee, “Club 15” the description, chanting before the golfers hit their tee balls.

There will be golf played at Pebble next month, but not the golf we’ve come to expect. How can it be a pro-am without the “ams”?

RealClearSports: Murray Points D.A. to 63 at Pebble

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. -- His name is D.A. (for Darren Andrew) Points. He plays golf for a living, and he has a sense of humor, two things some find mutually exclusive.

He's able to team up with the man from "Caddyshack,'' the inimitable Bill Murray, and still get noticed on his own.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011