The PGA Tour visits the Monterey Peninsula this weekend for the playing of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. The Pebble Beach Pro-Am was the brainchild of movie star and popular entertainer Bing Crosby in 1937. It was a gathering of golf”s elite alongside Bing and his Hollywood friends as the top pros of the day completed the West Coast swing and headed off to a month of tournaments in the Florida sunshine. In 1947 Crosby moved the tournament to the Monterey area and it has been contested there ever since.
This year”s tourney is being played at three neighboring courses at sites alongside one another on 17 Mile Drive, namely the Pebble Beach Golf Links, Spyglass Hill Golf Course and the Monterey Peninsula Country Club. The pros and amateurs will play together for the first three rounds at each of the aforementioned courses. The team field will be cut to the low 20 teams for Sunday”s final-round play at Pebble Beach alongside the low 70 professionals.
This year”s field is headlined by Tiger Woods, who is making his first appearance alongside the shores of Carmel Bay since 2002. Tiger won the AT&T in dramatic fashion in 2000, but the often mercurial Woods expressed disdain with the Pebble Beach folks after 2002, complaining about rowdy crowds, bumpy greens and the pro-am format that often led to five-hour-plus rounds of golf. Woods” return after a 10-year hiatus probably has more to do with the fact that he skipped the San Diego event on the PGA Tour some two weeks ago to play in a European Tour event in Abu Dhabi in the Middle East. Woods is required to compete in a minimum of 15 tournaments annually on the PGA Tour. Simply put, Abu Dhabi”s million-dollar-plus appearance fee meant Tiger would replace Torrey Pines with Pebble Beach on his American tour schedule.
The field at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am has its share of top-notch professionals as well as also-rans, journeymen and Q-School grads. Former major champions among those entered in the field include Vijay Singh, Phil Mickelson, Davis Love III, Lee Janzen, David Duval, Steve Elkington, Trevor Immelman, Jim Furyk, Steve Jones, Zach Johnson and Padraig Harrington. Some of the PGA Tour”s big guns are also entered at Pebble this week, including Rickie Fowler, Hunter Mahan, Aaron Baddeley, Sean O”Hair, Rory Sabbatini and Dustin Johnson. There is also a relatively large contingent of Northern California Professionals in this week”s field. The best of the bunch is Dixon”s Nick Watney, who is a top-10 money winner on tour. Stockton”s Ricky Barnes is at Pebble Beach alongside Sacramento-area golfers Scott McCarron, Kevin Sutherland and Matt Bettencourt as well as San Jose”s Aaron Oberholser.
The most interesting entry in this week”s tourney from our neck of the woods is Spencer Levin, who grew up in the Sacramento suburb of Elk Grove. Levin”s dad, Don, is an excellent professional golfer in his own right who played on the PGA Tour for three years in the early 1980s. He is also Spencer”s coach and has sometimes caddied for him. While father and son are outstanding golfers, they also have that flaw of letting their emotions get in the way of their golf games. As a junior golfer, Spencer Levin was known for his temperamental outbursts. He also had an inglorious moment during the finals of the State Amateur at the very same Pebble Beach in front of a large gallery.
Last Sunday, Levin was on golf”s center stage at the Phoenix Open. He shot opening rounds of 65-63-68 for a 17-under-par total and a six-stroke lead over the field through 54 holes. His fourth and final round was a completely different story as he ballooned to a 75, lost his lead midway through the round, and finished third behind eventual champion Kyle Stanley and runner-up Ben Crane. Stanley is the power-hitting golfer who blew his big lead the week before in San Diego.
Of course, the big question for Spencer Levin is whether he can pull a Kyle Stanley and make amends for his Phoenix collapse by winning this weekend at Pebble Beach, a place where he finished fourth last year and had a stellar amateur record. Obviously, the answer to that question won”t be readily apparent until Sunday afternoon.
While I have seen Spencer Levin up front and personal during his amateur days, and while I do think that his emotions have gotten in the way of him playing to his full potential, I do have a sense that he has the talent, ability and game to win on the PGA Tour. Unlike many of his peers, he has the added background of team sport success that he should be able to fall back upon during those difficult moments in golf.
Most fans of the game were made aware of Spencer Levin when he made a hole-in-one on national television during the first round of the 2004 U.S. Open at Shinnecock. A collegiate golfer at New Mexico, Levin finished in 13th place in that Open won by South African Retief Goosen.
Yet long before that Open moment or even before his wins at the 2004 California State Am and the Porter Cup, Spencer was an outstanding multi-sport athlete. He was a starting pitcher at Elk Grove High School and led his team to a Sac-Joaquin Section title during his senior year. He also pitched in the California State Championship All-Star game. Top-notch pitchers have the ability to forget their most recent bad outing, to put it completely behind them the next time they take the mound. Levin will have to do the same this week at Pebble. It makes for an interesting story within the story.
Finally, the amateur field always brings out the curiosity in golf fans as they watch entertainers, athletes and captains of industry play on some of golf”s most picturesque links courses. Comedians Bill Murray, Ray Romano and George Lopez, alongside musicians such as Kenny G and Huey Lewis, join quarterbacks Tony Romo and Aaron Rodgers. With a chamber of commerce weather weekend ahead of us, it should be a beautiful and scenic weekend for the pros and the amateurs on the Monterey Peninsula. Now, the only question is which journeyman will lose a big lead and which journeyman will take home the Pebble Beach title? We”ll know by Sunday afternoon.
