ONCE UPON A time the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am was the most glamorous winter event on the PGA Tour. Every name pro entered, and every amateur was somebody who could act, sing, dance, and play golf well enough not to kill a spectator. This, of course, was before Bing passed away and some wry wit changed the name of the tournament to—I think I have this right—the AT&T National Pro-CEO & Corporate Boondoggle.
When Crosby Week came around every February, the Pebble Beach neighborhood, and every nook and cranny in smug yet picturesque downtown Carmel, would begin to be populated by a species known as Real Celebrities. These were people who happened to have accomplished something in sports or showbiz to justify such status.
It was a sane and joyful time in the world. There wasn’t a Miley Cyrus or a Justin Bieber in it. Those were the days.
I was assigned—and it was my privilege—to cover fourteen Crosby tournaments from the late sixties through the early eighties. It is pure gossip that I covered them from a chair at the bar in Club XIX in the Pebble Beach Lodge, where I’d be staying, having no threshold for inconvenience.
You could have seen me out on number 8 and number 9 on Pebble from time to time to watch the suffering on those great par-4 holes. You could have seen me strolling around Cypress Point, to see what it was like to feel rich. I even went out to investigate Spyglass Hill to see why nearly every pro wanted it bulldozed.
I was invited to play in the Crosby a few times. Dave Marr invited me to be his amateur partner. Ben Crenshaw invited me to play as his partner. Even Kathryn Crosby, Bing’s widow, invited me, and said she’d find me a pro. I always declined, having no fondness for five a.m. wake-up calls, freezing weather, blinding mist, and ice plant.
Besides, I wanted to be in my bar chair in Club XIX every evening. Well, every evening except one. That would be the night I’d let myself get talked into going to dinner with friends in smug yet picturesque downtown Carmel.
Someone would have made a reservation six months ahead in a small, hidden restaurant on a dark Carmel side street, chic but cramped, where the waitress would be dressed like a member of the Trapp family, and your fresh filet of Pacific red snapper would be served on a bed of tiny gold bracelets and emerald necklaces, or so the check would indicate.
There would occasionally be the opportunity to go to exclusive old Cypress Point for lunch. One year my wife and I and another couple were taken by the attractive young wife of a member. But because she was wearing a designer pantsuit, we were denied admittance to the dining room. No pants allowed.
It didn’t seem to matter to the maître d’ that there was hardly anyone else in the dining room or, more important, that the lovely young wife happened to own Palm Beach, Florida.
“Give me a moment,” she said to the maître d’.
She disappeared briefly, went to her car, then returned with her pants off and her raincoat tied around her waist.
“Will this do?” she said acidly to the maître d’.
“That will do nicely, madam,” he said.
Then we had lunch.
An evening later, a group of us were dining at a place in Monterey. In the dinner party was my pal Don Cherry, the singer-golfer, who was playing in the Crosby. He listened to us talk about how good the food was at Cypress Point for a few moments, and said, “What’s so good about a sandwich and an apple?”
I laughed out loud, realizing that the Crosby competitors in those days weren’t allowed in the Cypress Point clubhouse when they played there in the rotation—they were given box lunches.
Back in the lodge, the bar chair was actually a stool with a backrest. Tom Oliver, the lodge manager then, did threaten at one point to put my name on a bronze plate on the backrest of the chair. This was because I was usually in there from seven till closing. I should explain that my chair was in the near corner on your right as you came down the stairs and entered what most people called the casual restaurant and I called tournament headquarters.
The longtime bartender, Chris Ursino, now late of this world, could handle everybody’s refreshment needs while providing intellectual conversation with each serving.
It’s where I would relax with my Winstons and young scotches and chat with friends and acquaintances who would stay for one cocktail, or several. I speak of pals like Dave Marr, Jack Whitaker, and baseball’s greatest catcher, Johnny Bench, who knew more Kristofferson lyrics than I did. If I was in need of a movie star fix, I could always count on saying hello to George C. Scott—“Good to see you again, General”—and spending a fair amount of time in the presence of Jack Lemmon and James Garner.
It was a pleasure to discuss golf with Jack Lemmon.
“I did it today,” he said one evening at the bar, swinging an imaginary club. “On number 7 at Pebble? Man, I caught it flush on the clubface. Gave it a really good whack. Like this—bam! I’m telling you, it felt good.”
“Did you hit it close?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “But it almost got airborne.”
A heartwarming Crosby story goes back to the days when ABC televised the event. It involves two good buddies, the late Mac Hemion and the late Andy Sidaris, directors and producers under Roone Arledge’s guidance.
Sidaris called Mac one morning to wake him up, to tell him what time everybody was expected to be on the tower at 18 for rehearsal, and Andy did a good job of imitating Bing Crosby’s voice.
“Good mornin’, Malcolm,” Sidaris said. “The Old Groaner here. What time shall I discard the persimmon and croon a tune on the Good Ship Tower today?”
“Bite me, Andy,” Mac said, hanging up and pulling the blanket over his head.
Presently, the phone rang again. Mac simply picked it up and slammed it back down.
A moment later the phone rang a third time. Mac picked it up and listened long enough to realize it was, in fact, the Old Groaner himself. Der Bingle.
“Jesus, Bing, it was you,” Mac said. “Sorry.”
“No problem, Malcolm,” Crosby said. “Might I venture the guess you had a nice long visit with the juniper berry last evening?”