Pebble Beach Pro-Am: Memorable moments

Mark O’Meara won 16 times on Tour, including five times at Pebble Beach. His first Pebble Beach Pro-Am victory came in 1985, the final year Bing Crosby’s name was attached to the tournament, and he repeated the feat under the AT&T banner in 1989, 1990, 1992 and 1997. His 1997 win, by one shot over David Duval and Tiger Woods, was an ode to symmetry, with O’Meara shooting four rounds of 67. That was just enough to hold off his good friend and then-Florida neighbor Woods, who scorched the weekend with a 63-64 finish.

Some pros would rather play 18 holes with a starving wolverine stuffed down their pants than put up with the antics of Bill Murray as a pro-am partner. D.A. Points isn’t one of them. For him, partnering with Murray at Pebble was a dream come true. And in true dream-come-true fashion, they won the darn thing, with Points getting his first PGA Tour win. “Everybody all week kept saying, ‘You got the short end of the stick,’” Points said. “I never, ever felt that way. I tried to embrace it. He just seemed to have fun, and he taught me to go ahead and have a little more fun. And in turn, it distracted me from trying so hard.”

Phil Mickelson has won at Pebble Beach four times, but his fourth victory, in 2012, stands out. He started the final round six shots behind 54-hole leader Charlie Wi, but it took him only six holes to seize the lead, which he did with an eagle on the par-5 sixth. The focus for the rest of the round was the duel between Mickelson and his playing partner, some guy named Woods. The final tally: Mickelson 64, Woods 75. “Excluding the four major championships he’s won,” said Mickelson’s caddie, Jim Mackay, “this has to be the best final round of his career.”

Hale Irwin was certain his chances to win the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am were gone, along with his tee shot on the 18th hole, which was headed left, destined for the rocks below, if not the Pacific Ocean. But a rock spit the ball back up onto the golf course, giving Irwin new life. Needing a birdie on the par-5 hole to tie Jim Nelford for the lead, Irwin hit a fairway wood, then a wedge that one-hopped against the pin, leaving him just 3 feet for birdie. He made the putt, then beat Nelford on the second hole of a playoff. ''When I hit the tee shot at 18, I said things you can’t repeat,” Irwin said. “Then when it bounced out, I looked up and said, ‘I’m sorry I said that.’ ''

The first Crosby was played at Rancho Santa Fe GC, near Del Mar racetrack in Southern California. Celebrity amateurs included Fred Astaire, Zeppo Marx and Clark Gable. The weather was terrible (perhaps an omen for the tournament’s future at Pebble Beach) and the competition was shortened to 18 holes. The winner was a young Virginian, Sam Snead, playing his first full year on tour. The Los Angeles Times spelled it “Sneed” in its short write-up of the tournament. Legend has it that when Crosby presented Snead with the $500 winner’s check Snead replied, “If it’s all the same to you, Mr. Crosby, I’d rather have the cash.”

Ah, Bill Murray. You either love his schtick or you hate it. Former PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman was a member of the latter group, at least in regard to Murray’s behavior in the 1993 tournament, which included dragging an elderly woman into a bunker. Beman called that behavior “inappropriate and detrimental.” Murray responded in a 1994 interview, saying of Beman, “He’s just another screwhead too big for his britches.” Whichever Murray camp you fall into, though, there is no denying that since he first played in this tournament in 1992, he has become the face of Pebble Beach celeb golfers.

The late actor Jack Lemmon may have loved playing in the Pebble Beach Pro-Am more than anyone else. His lifelong goal was to make the cut, but he never did. In 1987 he attempted a shot from a cliff on the 16th hole at Cypress Point. Playing partners Clint Eastwood, Peter Jacobsen and Greg Norman, plus Norman’s caddie, Pete Bender, formed a human chain by holding on to each other’s belts, with Lemmon at the end. Lemmon knocked the ball back into the fairway … but then shanked the next one into the Pacific.

The match pitting pros Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson against amateurs Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward, immortalized in Mark Frost’s 2007 book, “The Match: The Day the Game of Golf Changed Forever,” took place on the Wednesday of Pebble Beach week. Car dealer Eddie Lowery – Francis Ouimet’s caddie in the 1913 U.S. Open – bet fellow millionaire George Coleman that two of his employees – Venturi and Ward – could beat any two players of Coleman’s choice. At Cypress Point, the pros beat the ams, 1 up. As he stood over the final birdie putt to win, Hogan reportedly said, “I’m not about to be tied by a couple of amateurs.”

Johnny Miller already had two Pebble Beach wins under his white belt when he teed it up in the 1994 event. The first had come in 1974, when the tournament still bore Bing Crosby’s name, and the second in 1987. But he hadn’t won anything since, and this was only his sixth Tour event since 1989. His day job was being a commentator for NBC. But something about Pebble Beach rejuvenated him, and despite a final-round 74 in the cold, wind and occasional rain, Miller, 46, won by one shot. Among the four-way tie for second was 44-year-old Tom Watson. “It was a round that gave hope to everybody who’s older,” Miller said.

Seven shots behind leader Matt Gogel with seven holes to play, Tiger Woods holed out from 97 yards for eagle on the 15th, then finished birdie-par-birdie to shoot 64 and win by two. Four months later in the U.S. Open on the same course, Woods would need no comeback, destroying the field by 15. As for Gogel, two years later at Pebble, he won his first and only Tour title when he birdied the final hole and Pat Perez took a triple bogey. Gogel hung it up as a Tour pro in 2007, making the Pebble Beach stop his final tournament. The setting was fitting, as the 1992 Pro-Am had been his first PGA Tour event.