Bill Murray: AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am GOAT
+ Tyrell Hatton to LIV Golf? Please stop the insanity; Ben Hogan tales never get old
Here’s the truth nobody wants to admit: Bill Murray was the greatest, Most Valuable Player-Celebrity in the history of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
I once followed Murray for 54 holes one year at the tournament for a Sports Illustrated assignment. Murray, even though I’d defended him against critics for several years while I was writing for Golf World magazine, declined to be interviewed and, in fact, declined to verbally respond to my post-round request. My story turned into a Scorecard item for SI in which I nonetheless called him the Greatest Show on Turf or something like that.
Go ahead, Murray scoffers, but I watched him do six hours of improv comedy for fans three days in a row. Maybe everything wasn’t hilarious but a lot of it was. He interacted with fans, he played with them — borrowing their hats and then throwing them into the fairway (where they couldn’t reach them), for example, or grabbing their sandwich, taking a big bite and handing it back — and served up his sardonic one-liners with his smug expression as if he was doing a day-long “Saturday Night Live” sketch.
Go ahead and name another celebrity who gave the Pebble Beach fans half as much entertainment value. Jack Lemmon? Clint Eastwood? Even tournament founder Bing Crosby? It’s no contest.
Murray belongs in the Pro-Am Hall of Fame for his 1994 response to PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman’s criticism of his antics the year before when he danced with an elderly woman in a greenside bunker at the 18th hole and then theatrically shoved her down into the sand.
Murray did a bit — and it was a bit — by starting a televised interview with a CBS affiliate by asking for Beman’s resignation. “It’s a Nazi state out here,” Murray joked. “He’s trying to ban us from the tournament because it’s too much fun. He’s out of touch. He’s just another screwhead too big for his britches.”
Murray calling Beman a “screwhead” is Hall of Fame material. If that bunker incident was an Internet clip, it would have gone super-viral.
Also, Murray could play a little bit. He was a decent golfer who just didn’t get a lot of rounds in, but he could move it out there off the tee and make a putt in a big moment. I remember him on the 18th green at Pebble at the end of one particular round. He was in a pairing with baseball great Mark Grace. Somehow, Murray produced a bat and Grace lobbed a golf ball to him and hurried out of the way. Murray swung and sent the golf ball out into the sea and then did a home-run trot around some imaginary bases on the green.
Murray did not get a lot of love from CBS, not like he should have, mainly because CBS’ goal during the tournament was to promote the stars from their network shows — notably Ray Romano (who seemed too uptight about his golf game to be funny on the air) and Kevin James (who may or may not be funny without a script).
Love him or hate him, Murray was the greatest performer this tournament ever had.
The Tour has reduced the AT&T field to 80 players competing on two courses (not three) and cut the pro-am event to 36 holes. Also, entertainers were bagged from the lineup and replaced by professional athletes and the usual assortment of rich corporate types. Let me know when Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers and Buster Posey do something notable this week.
Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe I’m just another screwhead.
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MY WILL TO LIV
Oh, no. Not Tyrell Hatton, too. Anyone but Tyrrell Hatton.
Yes, the PGA Tour has been destroyed by LIV Golf landing Jon Rahm, now Hatton and oh, did I mention Lucas Herbert, apparently, also?
Golf moves on no matter what star isn’t there. When Tiger Woods was missing in action or out with an injury, the pre-tournament stories were all about how it wouldn’t be the same without him. Then the tournament started, somebody made birdies and eagles, somebody made bogeys, there was an exciting finish and maybe a playoff and, oh yeah, who wasn’t there didn’t matter.
Rahm used to own the course at Kapalua so he would’ve been the odds-on favorite for the Sentry Tournament of Champions. But he was absent, having taken the money and run to LIV. Was it $400 million? I can’t blame him.
Maybe your argument is that the defections are taking a toll on the PGA Tour based on the non-marquee winners this year — Chris Kirk, Grayson Murray, Nick Dunlap and Matthieu Pavon.
Disagree. This is how you build stars, something LIV can’t really do. And each winner has a story. Kirk and Murray overcame drinking problems and are wonderful reclamation stories and players to root for. Dunlap, the U.S. Amateur champ, became the first amateur since Phil Mickelson to win a Tour event. He turned pro and is playing at Pebble Beach. He may be the real deal, with No. 1-in-the-world potential. That’s exciting. Pavon is a Frenchman and the first from his country to win a PGA Tour event. France’s Arnaud Massey won the British Open in 1907 at Royal Liverpool, but there was no PGA Tour yet. That doesn’t make it any less exciting for Pavon, who will likely represent France in this summer’s Olympic Games.
LIV Golf’s players are already stars at some level, for the most part. Maybe Talor Gooch became a star last year by winning three LIV events and racking up $36 million in earnings. Then again, LIV gets such little media attention that Gooch probably still qualifies as a trivia question answer.
My prediction now is that Rahm and Hatton are going to look like the smartest guys in the room. If LIV happens to close its doors after this year in the wake of the pending-but-not-yet-finalized framework agreement with the PGA Tour, they will have scored stupid amounts of money from the Saudis and still have some kind of path back to the PGA Tour when all the “I’s” are dotted in the contract.
That’s just speculation, but Rory McIlroy admitted that Rahm made a smart business decision and went from LIV-hater to LIV-admirer, a dramatic turnaround. Maybe he sees the writing on the wall.
That’s just my guess. I’m probably still just a screwhead, though.
BEN THERE, BUILT THAT
I was walking into the PGA Show early one morning at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando last week and a gray-haired gent in a coat-and-tie asked me for directions to the media center. I told him to walk with me, that’s where I was going.
The man was Jerry Austry, who was there to meet with some other media about his 2023 book, “The Hogan Edge.” Its subtitle was “How the Hogan Company found and lost their Edge.”
Austry was a club designer who helped create the famous Hogan Edge irons. His book is a collection of memories from those days, mostly about the business — and how it later tanked after a Japanese company bought it — but with enough Ben Hogan anecdotes to keep your interest. The hardcover version sells for $23.26 on Amazon and the book gets a 4.7 rating out of five stars.
THE PLAQUE
One story from Austry’s book details a 1987 trip with Hogan to Riviera Country Club to film a television commercial for Ben Hogan Golf. One of the planned scenes was to film Hogan hitting balls from a fairway onto a green. The TV crew selected a spot in the middle of a fairway and balls were dropped onto the turf.
Austry: “Ben decided himself to move the balls off the fairway and into a slight rough. We looked on with puzzled looks until he commented, ‘Let’s not tear up the golf course for the members.’ Everyone looked on in awe as this small 75-year-old man hit several dozen balls. The brilliance of this man was realized on each seemingly effortless iron shot. Ben’s mastery and control left me speechless.”
Also, Hogan hit shots at the par-3 fourth hole. It wasn’t until 2020 that Austry found out the club had installed a plaque there when a friend who was playing the course called and said, “You will not believe what I am taking a picture of at this moment.”
The plaque read: “Greatest Par 3 hole in America — Ben Hogan in 1987. The fourth hole at the Riviera Country Club was chosen by Mr. Hogan as the site for filing his club company’s commercials. It was the only time his golf swing was ever seen in the Hogan commercials.”
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absolutely right about those swings. Jones prob would adjust his swing to modern equipment from hickories. hogan just had an obssesion. made pretty good clubs but you had to be good enough to use them. You had to earn it. I aspired to be good enough to play Hogans. Finally did in the mid-90s for a while. I even had a 2-iron I used on occasion. those were the days. thx for reading.
Thx for reading. a pscyhologist would probably have a field day figuring out why Murray is ON
for 6 hours over 18 holes. feels the need to live up to his comedic reputation? has to be in character because he's so insecure about being his real self? the amazing part was, he didn't repeat himself or the same lines over three days. he gave 100 percent.