The PGA Tour is in the heart of its annual West Coast Swing. After two weeks in Hawaii, the big boys of professional golf are headed to Palm Desert, then San Diego and are currently taking part in the histrionics of the Phoenix Open. There is nothing in golf like the stadium golf throng that circles the par-3 16th hole at TPC Scottsdale. This coming Thursday the tour ventures north to the Monterey Peninsula for the playing of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. This will be the 80th version of the tournament, which was initially held in the San Diego area way back in 1937.
Nowadays, athletes and media stars seem to be very comfortable in the company of one another. Often athletes cross over into the world of film and music. In the late 1930s when the principal mode of tour travel was via automobile, the PGA Tour took a couple of weeks off to travel from the West Coast Swing to Florida. Perhaps the biggest media star of the day, Bing Crosby, put together a pro-am at the end of the West Coast Swing and paired up his Hollywood friends with the greats of the game. That inaugural Bing Crosby Pro-Am was a one-day affair won by Sam Snead. From there the idea grew into a full-scale tour event with big purses and top-notch celebrity amateur partners. The pros competed in stroke play against one another while the pros partnered up with an amateur partner in a better ball tourney.
Bing Crosby was an avid golfer who was a competitive amateur. He qualified into both the U.S. Amateur and the British Amateur and was the five-time club champion at the Lakeside Golf Club in Hollywood. Crosby, who was introduced to the game when he started caddying as a 12-year-old in his hometown of Spokane, is one of just a handful of linksters to record a hole-in-one at the iconic par-3 16th hole at the Cypress Point Golf Club, a former site of the Crosby Pro-Am. A star of radio, the silver screen and music, he is best remembered nowadays for his famed version of the Christmas classic, “White Christmas.” He also recorded such hit tunes of the 1930s and 1940s as “Swinging on a Star,” “Pennies from Heaven” and “Don’t Fence Me In.” Crosby won an Oscar in 1944 for the movie “Going My Way,” has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for motion pictures, radio and audio recording, and was active in the business world. He was on the ground level of the development of videotape, owned television stations and race horses, and owned a third of baseball’s Pittsburgh Pirates.
Crosby was a longevity guy who performed with Louis Armstrong in the 1930s and David Bowie in the 1970s. He won the Bob Jones Award from the USGA for distinguished sportsmanship in 1978 and is a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame. A regular at San Francisco’s Olympic Club, Bing’s son, Nathaniel Crosby, was a top-notch golfer who won the 1981 U.S. Amateur at the Olympic Club and is the current Walker Cup captain. A very active hunter and fisherman, Bing and his Hollywood pals such as Phil Harris used to trek to northeastern California annually to enjoy the outdoors. They talked locals into building a golf course in that remote area of the state. That course, the highly acclaimed Fall River Mills, is still in operation and is a must-play for golfers. Crosby suffered a heart attack after completing a round of golf in Spain and passed away in October of 1977. He was 74 years old.
The Crosby family maintained the tournament until 1985 and then AT&T took over sponsorship in 1986. They remain the sponsor to this day. The major beneficiary of the Pebble Beach Pro-Am is the Monterey Peninsula Foundation. Last year the foundation donated $15.6 million to various charities and hospitals throughout the area.
The Crosby took a hiatus from 1943 through 1946 because of World War II. When it resumed in 1947, Crosby moved it from San Diego to the Monterey Peninsula. Nowadays the pros and the amateurs play their initial 54 holes at the Pebble Beach Golf Links, Spyglass Hill Golf Course, and the Shore Course at the Monterey Peninsula Country Club. After those three rounds, the low 60 professionals and the low 20 pro-am teams advance to round four at Pebble Beach on Sunday. It’s a tournament within a tournament.
This time around the overall purse is a most impressive $7.8 million. Phil Mickelson is the defending champion, having won last year’s tournament by three strokes over Paul Casey on Monday morning. He was 19-under-par. A fog delay moved tee times back last year resulting in the final group having to finish up the tourney the following day. It was Mickelson’s fifth win at Pebble and he pocketed $1.368 million for his efforts.
This year’s amateur field features a good number of entertainers. Comedians Bill Murray, Ray Romano and Larry the Cable Guy are once again contestants at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Country music stars Toby Keith, Jake Owen and Clay Walker are teeing it up as well. Old-time rocker Huey Lewis is at Pebble as is rapper Macklemore. With the start of spring training just around the corner and basketball and hockey in mid-season, the athletes in the field are primarily from the world of professional football. In what just might be the year of the quarterback at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, entrants include brothers Eli and Peyton Manning, Chico kid Aaron Rodgers, Tony Romo, Matt Ryan and Steve Young. In case they need to throw the football to anyone, they need to look no further than future Hall of Famer Larry Fitzgerald. A gifted wideout for the Phoenix Cardinals, Fitzgerald is a past pro-am winner and is very active in the world of celebrity golf.
Long before I took up golf as an adolescent, my family always watched the Bing Crosby on those cold Chicago weekend afternoons in February. My mom and dad tuned in to watch Bing, Bob Hope, Phil Harris, Dean Martin, Clint Eastwood and Sammy Davis Jr. Since the Beatles, the Dave Clark 5, and the Rolling Stones were not in the field, I could care less about the stars of my parents’ era. However, I recall how enamored I was with those last three holes at Pebble Beach. That was all they televised in those days, and yet from my urban perspective I was awe struck by the beauty of Carmel Bay and the oceanside holes at Pebble.
Pebble Beach is truly golf’s greatest setting as well as the country’s most historic and iconic golf links. Nowadays, the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am is just another PGA Tour event among 44 tournaments annually. Yet once again I will be tuning in, not only to watch Phil as well as Bill Murray, but to also look at the beauty of what has been called golf’s greatest mixing of land and sea.
