Living like a pro

Teeing it up at Pebble for a pro-am is a dream come true

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. -- The enormity of it all hit me as I was walking to Pebble Beach's 17th green, that seductive putting surface that's shaped like a Hollywood starlet. It was Sunday afternoon, and the tournament was hanging in the balance. The pin was back left, my ball was nestled in the rough nearby, and, in a certain light, my caddie, Larry Boughton, had the rakish look of Bruce Edwards. "Knock it in," he said. But this wasn't the U.S. Open, and I most certainly am not Tom Watson. I shanked my chip into the back bunker, skulled the next shot over the green, nearly into the Pacific, and unceremoniously picked up, leaving the hole to my pro-am partners while I tried to block out the snickers of the assembled gallery, who were crowded around the green on this glorious, sun-toasted day at the Beach. Welcome to the big leagues, kid.

For this ink-stained wretch, last week was a strange and magical trip inside the looking glass, to the other side of the ropes. After a lifetime of watching golf and passing judgment on the players, I was suddenly cast as a competitor, in the 31st Pebble Beach Invitational. Buried in the agate of your newspaper, you may have noticed that Mark Brooks won the event Sunday, birdieing the final three holes to hold off Jeff Gove and Duffy Waldorf. What you don't know is that the PBI is not just another cheesy Silly Season event, but rather a charming offseason institution that serves as a companion piece to the Crosby Clambake. Though there isn't quite the same star power, the PBI is a far more intimate experience than the sprawling anarchy that is Bing's event. At the PBI, major-championship winners line up your putts during the day then choose the wine at night, over dinner. Johnny Miller dispenses swing tips at the range, not to fellow pros but rather to earnest 18-handicappers. It's the kind of week in which you play with a Jeff Gove during the day and then bump into him at sunset, strolling on the beach with his lovely significant other. Asked if the PBI is like a working vacation, Kris Tschetter said,"It's more like a great vacation -- with a little golf thrown in."

The format calls for 81 four-man amateur teams, paired each day with a different pro drawn from the PGA, Senior or LPGA tours. One of the unique aspects of the PBI is that the pros play against each other on the same scoreboard, boys against girls. In 1991 Juli Inkster became the first (and only) woman to win the event. That summer I was working as a cart boy at Pebble Beach, and I remember Inkster coming out on two separate occasions to play the course. Asked one time if she was on vacation, she offered a two-word rebuttal: "Practice round." There is a lot of pride at stake for the women.

This year's eclectic field included Miller, Ty Tryon, Natalie Gulbis, Emilee Klein, Jim Thorpe, Bruce Fleisher, Loren Roberts and a bunch of other players you've heard of. Among the amateurs were no Hollywood glamour boys, just captains of industry, esteemed members of the golf establishment ... and me. Don't ask.

For Thursday's first round my team drew Olin Browne, the defending champ and a two-time winner on the PGA Tour. We teed it up at Old Del Monte, a super-sporty little gem tucked into a corner of Monterey. Old D happens to be the oldest course west of the Mississippi, and it is by far the most scoreable course in a tournament that also includes Pebble and Spyglass Hill. To have a chance to make the cut at the PBI, the ultimate dream of every amateur, you have to go deep at Old D, but idling on the first tee, waiting to be introduced by the overenthusiastic P.A. announcer, my only swing thought was, "Don't humiliate yourself."

The day before we had played a practice round at Pebble with Michelle McGann, and I had played some of the best golf of my life, birdieing the fourth and eighth holes to shoot a front-nine 38. (To birdie No. 8, the world's greatest par-4, is always a thrill; to do so in front of God and Michelle McGann? Otherwordly.) Now, standing over my tee shot, the club felt foreign in my hands and my swing, already held together by Band-Aids and paper clips, had completely unraveled, at least in my mind's eye. I swung purely on instinct, somehow fading a credible drive down the right side of the fairway. Watching me take a couple of deep breaths as we ambled off the tee, Olin shot me a wicked grin and said, "It's a little different when the eyeballs are on you, huh?"

I had interviewed Olin a couple of times through the years and knew him to be a straight-shooter, but I didn't expect him to be such an engaging playing partner. We talked about Augusta National and Eminem, gossiped about Tiger, discussed the responsibilities of the media, and kicked around his favorite courses, favorite Harry Potter books and other random topics. I also learned a handy new word. At one point Olin was lining up a putt for one of my playing partners, and after revising the line three times and offering a half-dozen technical putting tips, poor Dave had no hope of making the putt. After the inevitable miss, Olin said, "I over-proed him."

Despite Olin's meddling, I was on a very strong team, and we played well. Our stud was Cody Plott, the president of the Pebble Beach Company, a schoolboy basketball all-star in North Carolina who counts among his close friends Roy Williams and Dean Smith. His able wingman was Dave Stivers, one of the Pebble Beach Company's vice presidents, who has Curtis Strange's hair and Ernie Els' demeanor. Cody and Dave were a couple of sticks, mid-single-digit handicappers. (I was given 11 pops, which I needed, having played only once in the month leading up to the tournament, thanks to a cold, wet fall in New York.) Our fourth was Greg Franks, a manic 17-handicapper who was always introduced as "a local entertainer," which, to me, had a fishy connotation, though Greg would later dazzle us all with his rock-and-roll musical at the cut party.

Anyway, Olin struck the ball with authority throughout our round together, but he burned the edge with at least half a dozen putts; his 70 was the worst he could have shot. As a team we went 17 under to surge into fourth place.

On Friday we journeyed to fearsome Spyglass Hill, paired with PGA of America pro Laird Small, the former head pro at Spy and now director of the on-site Pebble Beach Golf Academy. You may recall Laird from the instructional bits he did on NBC during the 2000 U.S. Open. I happened to have taken my first lessons from him as a preteen, at Carmel Valley Golf and Country Club. Small world.

While we all picked up innumerable tips from Laird during the round, Spy is a far tougher test than Old D, and as a team we didn't ham-and-egg it quite as adroitly. Our 12 under for the day left us at -29 overall, good for 15th place. Only the top 10 of the 81 amateur teams make the 54-hole cut. We were within striking distance.

It had been easy to forget about the pressures of the tournament at Spyglass Hill, which is such a peaceful, secluded place. (On two occasions we had to play through a herd of deer.) Also, our gallery over the first two days consisted of exactly one person -- my bride, Frances, dolled up in an attempt to blend with the assembled tour wives. Playing at Pebble on the weekend brought more hubbub and a larger gallery (that, it must be said, included both my parents and my in-laws). The easygoing vibe of the first two days gave way to a suffocating, self-imposed pressure. On the first six holes I couldn't have swung any faster if I had tried, and my only contribution was a ugly bogey at No. 2 that, with a stroke, turned out to be a handy par.

However, we had drawn a stellar pro for the round, promising LPGA youngster Jill McGill. It was eye-opening watching her attack the course, only a few days after McGann had bombed Pebble into submission. It sometimes seems as if the LPGA is a bunch of 5-foot-2 Koreans bunting the ball around the course, but Jill and Michelle are both tall, athletic and tear the cover off the ball. They look like women but play like men, a dazzling combination.

Jill was a veritable birdie machine, on her way to a 67 that was one of the most impressive rounds I've watched first-hand, and Dave and Cody played like the stalwarts that they are, carrying the team in the early going. I finally found a little tempo beginning on, of all places, the tee at No. 7, that dangerous, delicate little par-3. I parred six of next nine holes, and by the time we arrived at the 16th it was clear we were on the verge of making the cut. After driving into a fairway bunker on the right, I was left with a 15-footer for par. Waiting to putt, the sonorous strains of Tiger Woods' voice popped into my head. At a long-ago U.S. Amateur, Tiger had explained how he holed a crucial putt. "I told myself, You gotta be like Nicklaus, gotta will the ball into the hole," Tiger had said. I've always remembered that line, and now, standing on the 16th green, channeling the good vibes of history's two greatest golfers, I banged my putt into the back of the cup for a huge net birdie. We picked off a couple more strokes on the final two holes, including a miraculous bird by Jill at 18. She badly hooked her second shot onto the rocks, but the ball took an impossible bounce to the edge of the green, from where she got up-and-down. That last stroke of luck pushed us to -20 on the day. We made the cut by three strokes.

That night at the swank cut party at the Inn at Spanish Bay, I strutted around like a peacock in full feather, as did my teammates. It was a great night for people-watching. Soon-to-be LPGA rookie Paula Marti, a saucy Spaniard who played well in this year's Solheim Cup, created a bit of a stir, channeling Shakira in low-slung, skintight jeans and a little baby-doll T-shirt. In the buffet line Gulbis was towering over me in four-inch heels, part of a little sleeveless ensemble that showed off her tanned biceps, among other things. I wound up eating at a table with Matt Gogel, the reigning Clambake champ. He was good company, though, sadly, Matt dispensed little gossip.

After collapsing into bed at 9:30 the previous night, I came out for Sunday's round with a renewed vigor, parring the first four holes. We were seven strokes back as a team at the start of the day, playing with a Spyglass assistant named Jin Park. (The amateur teams were paired with pros who had missed the cut, each having volunteered to play, their interest piqued by a one-day purse of $5,000.) When we arrived at the eighth green we spied our first leaderboard. We were only two out of the lead. A great chip had left me with a 3-footer for par, which would be a net birdie and inch us closer to the lead. Suddenly my collar got a little tighter. I started thinking about where I would put the winner's crystal trophy, and what bon mots I would drop on the assembled reporters. As I stood there I became convinced that there was no way I could make the putt. I tried every mental trick I could summon, but I could never shake that feeling of dread. Sure enough, I pulled the ball, which spun out of the hole. It was a deflating miss, and suddenly I could feel the aching muscles in my back and the bleeding blisters on my heels. Five days of nerve-wracking golf seemed to suddenly visit the team, and we struggled to generate any more momentum on Pebble's brutal back nine. By the time I made my X at 17 the dream was dead. Victory had eluded our grasp.

"We may not be able to win but we can still finish like champions," was Franks' cornball pep talk on the 18th tee, but it actually revived me. Three perfect shots left me with a 20-foot birdie putt above the hole. The little grandstand behind the green was mostly empty, but as I stepped to my ball I was still shaking like a leaf. I blasted the putt eight feet by but, following a little inner-monologue, drained the comebacker for par, the sound of ball rattling into cup the sweetest music imaginable. Brooks made a similar putt to cap his 69, winning $60,000 of a $300,000 purse, but I doubt he felt any happier.

In the end, my team finished in sixth place, and I learned a lot about my playing partners and even more about my psyche and my fragile golf swing. It was a grinding, stressful week, and blissfully fun.

Idling behind the 18th green, not wanting the whole experience to end, I watched Tschetter, in the group behind us, nearly hole out a wedge for an eagle. We chitchatted for a while after she signed her scorecard. I mentioned that I was surprised she had volunteered to play what was essentially a meaningless round, at least for her. "Most tournaments, if you miss the cut you just want to go home," Tschetter said. "Here, they ask if you want to play another round at Pebble Beach, it's like, I'd love to. There aren't any courses like this on the LPGA Tour."

In fact, Tschetter wasn't even aware of how much money was at stake for her in Sunday's round, not surprising given that she had hit balls after only one round during her working vacation. "I would have liked to have practiced more, but all those spa treatments got in the way," she said with a laugh.

As she was leaving Tschetter asked how my week had been. I was momentarily at a loss for words. "Nothing to write home about," I said.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Alan Shipnuck edits The Week in the magazine's Golf Plus section.

 

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