If you are going to gripe about the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, get your facts straight.

On the Monday after the final round of the 2021 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, a GolfWRX.com contributor named Ronald Montesano pulled up his soapbox and summed up the event, taking the opportunity to laud the absence of amateurs (thank you, COVID-19), take shots at the native Californians in the event who didn’t win, and generally pitch in his uninformed two-cents worth from a part of the country where golf courses lie sleeping under blankets of snow from October to May.

PEBBLE BEACH, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 13: Tom Hoge of the United States plays his second shot on the ninth hole during the third round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am at Pebble Beach Golf Links on February 13, 2021 in Pebble Beach, California. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

I read his piece (Berger wins at Pebble, golf world wakes up) with much head-shaking, and considered scrolling down to the Comments section to set him straight on a few points—but then I decided that I would get a bigger audience here.

This is what I have to say to Ronald: 

“You really should do some research before you sit down at your computer in the frozen tundra of Buffalo, New York and start pounding, monkey-like, at the keyboard, Ron.

“Referring to the Crosby Clambake in your latest Tour Rundown article, you wrote, ‘That event went through an evolution, from a few friends in the California desert to a move to the coast, to a short stay in North Carolina (without the PGA Tour, of course) when AT&T took over the title on tour.’ This sentence runs the gamut from grossly misconstrued to factually incorrect, so let me enlighten you.”

The Crosby Pro-Am was never held in the desert. The event that we now know as the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am can trace its earliest roots to 1934, to an informal gathering of Bing’s celebrity friends at the Old Brockway Golf Course on Lake Tahoe’s North Shore. In 1937 Bing moved the get-together to Rancho Santa Fe, just north of San Diego, where he had a house on the back nine. This is when the pro-am really began, with Crosby pairing touring pros with amateur players drawn from the ranks of his show-business friends, and the member of the Lakeside Golf Club in Hollywood, where he was a member (and five-time club champion).

“The Clambake” as the event came to be called, named for the closing-night beach party, ran for five years in Rancho Santa Fe before the Second World War called a halt, but in 1947 civic leaders in Monterey convinced Crosby to revive the event and move it to the Monterey Peninsula, where it became the National Pro-Am Golf Championship. From the beginning of its run at Pebble Beach, the tournament was a charity event that supported local causes, and it has remained so for 75 years.

As for “…a short stay in North Carolina”, well, when AT&T took over as the presenting sponsor in 1986, dropping the Crosby name (and Crosby family involvement) from the tournament, Bing’s second wife, Kathryn Crosby, started a somewhat look-alike charity tournament in the Winston-Salem, North Carolina area called the Bing Crosby National Celebrity Golf Tournament. Running from 1986 until 2001, this event did feature both amateur and professional players, but they did not play together in pro-am pairings. (Kathryn Crosby was responsible for the sell-off of the naming rights to AT&T, for a cool half-million dollars.)

Of course, in this COVID-19 year all golf tournaments have looked different, with, as of this writing, only one—the Waste Management Phoenix Open—allowing spectators (and then only a fraction of the usual number), and the Pebble Beach Pro-Am was no different.

For the first time, there were no crowds of spectators lining the fairways and clustered around the greens, and not only that, there were no amateur playing partners—so the event was a “pro-am” in name, but not in fact. Cutting down the field to just the 156 pros brought in another change from previous years—the move to two golf courses, Pebble Beach and Spyglass Hill, leaving the third course of recent years, the Monterey Peninsula Country Club’s Shore Course, off the roster.

Montesano had something to say about all this, too (another mixed bag of mostly bad takes):

“Should the amateurs return? In one word: No. We don’t love golf for the antics of the celebrities, and we don’t need to see corporate types […] play well on a big stage.”

While the 2021 event had a different look from its seventy-four predecessors, without the amateur participants it just looked like a better version of a regular PGA Tour stop (because, hey, Pebble Beach and Spyglass Hill). The pros might have liked the (relatively) quicker pace of play and shorter rounds, but those who play this event regularly missed the networking opportunities that the tournament has always provided—many a lucrative sponsorship or other business relationship has had its beginning in a pairing at Pebble Beach.

And sure, this is no longer the Golden Age of radio, movies, and TV, and the celebrity roster has, in recent years, lost a bit of the glamour of the past. No longer do stars of the magnitude of Phil Harris, James Garner, Jack Lemmon, and Clint Eastwood stride down the fairways during the event, but there is a new generation coming up who have name recognition and a love for the game that matches the big names of yore.

The lone celebrity event that remained on the schedule this year, a Wednesday five-hole charity shootout, included stars of the worlds of movies and TV (Bill Murray, Alfonso Ribeiro, and Kathryn Newton), music (hip-hop recording artist Macklemore), sports (Arizona Cardinals WR Larry Fitzgerald), and even a former Miss America (Kira K. Dixon). This mini field of celebrity golfers all have stick, and put on a good show while raising a wad of cash for the event’s causes.

PEBBLE BEACH, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 10:  Kira K. Dixon tees off on the 18th hole during the Charity Challenge at AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am on February 10, 2021 at Pebble Beach Golf Links in Pebble Beach, California. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

And even the corporate CEOs and other deep-pockets participants have their place. Sure these folks are almost all members at swanky private clubs, and while they may play more golf than many of us, on better golf courses, they don’t play for a living like the pros they are paired with. Watching them play alongside a pro in this event allows us to vicariously put our games up against the highest standard in the world—and that chance at comparison has entertainment value.

The celebrity watching which makes Saturday of tournament week (when the biggest names are scheduled at Pebble Beach) the best-attended day of the tournament broadens the scope of attraction for this event beyond golfers. I have seen a bigger gallery following a pairing which included a San Francisco Giants pitcher than I think I have ever seen following any of the pros.

“Why might the amateurs stay? Some would point to the origin of the event, as the Bing Crosby Clambake. It’s the last event that folks from past generations (little dig there, I think – GKM) associate with a celebrity host; [no other event has] had that staying power.”

I can sum it up in one word: tradition. Bing Crosby invented this format, and while imitators sprang up over the years, the Pebble Beach Pro-Am—the original and the greatest—is the only one that still survives. The Bob Hope Desert Classic came closest to the format of the Crosby, but that event, and all of the rest of the celebrity-name events on the PGA Tour over the years have either morphed into something else or faded away entirely.

I grew up in Salinas, an inland farming community not far from Pebble Beach, and though neither I nor any of my friends or family played golf when I was growing up, everybody knew the Crosby, and watched it on TV on those January or February weekends in the ’60s and ’70s.

“The AT&T has the opportunity to reimagine its event, (to) make the bold decision to eliminate the Am portion of the event. Return the Monterey Peninsula (Country Club) Shore Course to the rotation next year (and) add even more professionals…”

Here Mr Montesano is off-base in more ways than one. As I laid out above, the amateur participants are a huge part of this tournament’s appeal, and an enduring tradition that has no counterpart in the world of golf. Eliminating that aspect of the tournament would change it into just another PGA Tour event, albeit an exceptionally beautiful one, as no other venue that the Tour travels to can provide such scenic vistas.

Yes, we look forward to the return of the MPCC Shore Course to the event; it is a beautiful and strategic seaside layout that takes good advantage of its location, and being private, its inclusion provides golf fans with an opportunity to see the course that they otherwise would not have. As for adding even more professionals—while going back to three courses and a 54-hole cut with no amateurs might make it feasible, schedule-wise, to bump up the standard 156-player field, such a move would require approval from the PGA Tour, and, I warrant, the Players Advisory Committee.

To sum up: While I admit to a certain bias, having grown up in the area watching this event on TV, and now, as a golf writer, having attended the event in a professional capacity for eight years in a row, I look forward to a return to normality (hopefully) for the 2022 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am; a return to throngs of spectators, and amateur playing partners—both celebrities and CEOs; a return to three courses and a 54-hole cut; a return to the traditions that make this tournament stand out, head-and-shoulders above the rest of the cookie-cutter events on the PGA Tour.

A return to all the things that make this tournament the one that we who love it still call “The Crosby”.

(References for facts presented in this article: Cover Stories, a publication of the Monterey Peninsula Foundation Book Project Staff, 2009; 18 Holes with Bing, by Nathaniel Crosby with John Strege, Harper Collins Publishers, 2016)

When It Comes to the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, John Hawkins Doesn’t Get It

Earlier this week Morning Read pundit John Hawkins posted an opinion piece about the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am entitled “Pebble Beach deserves better fate with PGA Tour”, in which he opined “A golf tournament at Pebble Beach in February is like Christmas in June”. The gist of the article is that this magnificent seaside venue deserves better than to be saddled with a February slot in the schedule and a hit-and-giggle pro-am. Among his suggestions? Make Pebble Beach the venue for the Tour Championship, in August.

After the statement above, Hawkins went on to write, “…instead of hosting a premium event in glorious conditions on prime-time television, Pebble peddles a Saturday full of Bill Murray in a multi-venue pro-am featuring some of the most inclement weather known to golfkind.”

Let me say this right now – Hawkins hasn’t got a clue. He tries to spin the piece as if he is suggesting improvements to better showcase this iconic venue, but what he doesn’t get, among other things, are the traditions of the event.

The Pebble Beach Pro-Am, in its original incarnation as the “Crosby Clambake”, originated the pro-am format, and still defines it. The event started in 1937 at the San Diego-area’s Rancho Santa Fe Golf course when Bing Crosby got a few golf pros and entertainment-business friends together to play golf and raise money for local charities. The original “Clambake” went into hibernation in 1942 due to the onset of World War II, and was revived in the familiar Monterey Peninsula location in 1947. 

Another prominent California-based pro-am golf tournament, the Palm Springs-area event now known as the Desert Classic, is a copy-cat that got its start when Crosby’s “road movie” co-star Bob Hope decided that he wanted to host a pro-am tourney of his own. It’s a tried-and-true formula that draws legions of spectators. You wouldn’t want to see it every week, but a time or two per year, it’s fun.

Another of Hawkins’ gripes is the weather during the event. Originally played in mid- January, the weather was known to sometimes be… tempestuous – not for nothing is the term “Crosby weather” a Monterey-area shorthand for wind and rain – and yes, there was a snow delay in 1962.

The tournament bounced around within the month of January over the years in search of better weather before settling into its current early-to-mid February time slot in 1979. The weather can still be problematic – witness last year’s delay due to a brief but intense hailstorm, which forced that bane of golf writers everywhere, a Monday finish – but compared to the weather patterns that dominate most of the continental United States in February, the Central California coast generally serves up the kind of enviable conditions that put smiles on the faces of the local Chamber of Commerce, and realtors.

One of Hawkins’ suggestions is to move the Tour Championship, with its late-August time slot, to Pebble Beach, fleeing the heat and humidity of Atlanta, or as he put it: “Playing for $15 million in gleaming August twilight on golf’s largest postcard turns common sense into the ultimate no-brainer.” While it’s true that the Monterey area serves up weather that’s much preferable to Atlanta’s late-summer conditions, the summer months tend toward overcast on the California coast, so – and as a native of the area I say this with love – his “gleaming August twilight” is more likely to be a gloomy, gradual dimming instead.

That summertime gloom is the reason that the PGA Tour Champions event that is held at Pebble and nearby Poppy Hills (home course of the Northern California Golf Association), the PURE Insurance Championship Benefitting the First Tee, moved from June back to its original September time slot a few years ago.

Hawkins’ ultimate proposal is to reposition the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am back-to-back with the First Tee event. This idea has as its first drawback an untenable logistics problem; as its second, a diminishing of the event by moving it into the former Fall Tour portion of the schedule; as its third, a potential conflict with the Safeway Open, an established early-season event held at the Silverado Resort in the Napa wine country, three hours north of Pebble Beach; and last but not least, a major loss of revenue for the resort resulting from shutting down for two weeks during its best-weather high season period.

The bottom line is that Hawkins’ opinion piece displays a comprehensive level of ignorance of the essence of this event. It may no longer be the glamorous “Clambake” of old (Bing’s widow sold the tournament to AT&T in 1986, deleting the Crosby name over son-and-tournament-director Nathaniel’s objections) – but the weather, which even in rainy (or worse) conditions cannot completely disguise the beauty of the locale, and the pro-am format, with its slow rounds, ugly swings, and sometimes silly behavior (I’m talking about you, Bill Murray…) are hallmarks of the event.

Any significant change to the tournament, whether a time slot move or a change in format, would compromise the history and traditions of an event which holds a unique opposition in the PGA Tour’s parade of week-to-week, cookie cutter tournaments.

The Book That’s Not Really A Golf Book, About Everyone’s Favorite Golf Movie ★★★★☆

The 1980 movie Caddyshack regularly appears at or near the top of lists of the best—or at least best-loved—golf movies. From the goofy and often downright crude humor, to the “snobs vs slobs” subtext, and even the language-and-nudity-inspired “R” rating, Caddyshack has something to appeal to just about every golfer.

The film has inspired a variety of Caddyshack products over the years—hats, t-shirts, gopher puppets, even a Florida restaurant located near the World Golf Hall of Fame which is owned by the Murray brothers (including Bill, of course, and older brother Brian Doyle-Murray, who co-wrote the movie), and regularly-updated video releases on VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray. Until recently however, if you wanted to read about the movie, there were only a few random magazine articles over the years, and 2007’s The Book of Caddyshack, by Scott Martin. Now, however, there is Scott Nashawaty’s Caddyshack – The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story.

While the 2007 book is something of a novelty item, breaking down scenes in detail and noting cameos, goofs, and trivia, the new book by Nashawaty, the film critic for Entertainment Weekly, is a more mainstream effort that delves into the back story of the making of the movie before getting into the movie itself.

Nashawaty opens by recounting the July 12, 1980 press conference with the film’s writers and stars at Rodney Dangerfield’s comedy club in Manhattan, less than 24 hours after the press preview of the movie. Neither event went well, and no one would, at the time, have predicted the late-blooming but monstrous success story that Caddyshack would become. To investigate the roots of the story of the movie, Nashawaty turns the calendar back even further, to 1966 and the blossoming of a few twisted, but talented, young men at The Harvard Lampoon.

The notorious college comedy/social commentary magazine begat a new publication, The National Lampoon, with Henry Beard and Doug Kenney (later one of the writers of Caddyshack) at its beating heart. The story develops from there with the introduction of a cast of characters who defined ’70s comedy, both written and in live performance—Michael O’Donoghue, Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Bill Murray, and Harold Ramis, among others. The cross-pollenization that resulted in the Lampoon’s first film, the 1978 mega-hit Animal House, and later in Caddyshack, was an admixture of talent from the magazine; Chicago’s famed Second City improv comedy troupe; the Toronto, Canada, comedy club scene; and New York’s Saturday Night Live television show.

Nashawaty’s Caddyshack is a social history, a “Sherman-set-the-Wayback-Machine-for-1978” look at the roots of a larger comedy phenomenon that just happens to have spawned an improbable, crazy, disjointed, somewhat dysfunctional, and really, really funny movie that occupies a unique position with respect to the game with which it is associated. Golfers the world over quote lines from the movie in appropriate circumstances on the course and in the clubhouse, and I would venture to guess that everyone who plays the game—with the possible exception of some of the stuffier R and A group captains and squadron leaders—has seen the movie at least once.

In the book, anecdotes from the sets and locations of the film are intertwined with behind-the-scenes details of the movie business politics and pressure that seethed under the surface. Well-known stories of rampant and blatant drug use among cast and crew during filming alternate with Hollywood-tell-all-like revelations about the movie’s untested first-time writer-director, Harold Ramis; the nearly unknown Borscht Belt comedian Rodney Dangerfield, who found the transition from standup to film comedy an uneasy fit; less-than-congenial co-stars Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, and Ted Knight; and the Hollywood executives, casting directors, and technical professionals who played their respective parts in the film’s making. It’s something of a roller-coaster ride, and it holds surprises for even the movie’s most dedicated fans.

There’s surprisingly little about golf in this book about one of the golf world’s most beloved movies, but there is a lot to learn about how the movie came to be. It may seem to be a lot of attention to pay to the story of the making of one 98-minute movie that is replete with sophomoric humor, drug jokes, nudity, and bad behavior from the bottom of the social spectrum at an upper-crust country club to the top—but the movie’s long-lived success, despite its slow start, justifies the attention.

Nashawaty’s Caddyshack will be enjoyed by golfers and non-golfers alike, whether they lived through the years in which the story takes place or not. It’s a fascinating history of movie-making in that era, a microcosm of bad behaviors with good outcomes, with a cast of stars and unknowns—both then and now. It distills the essence of a time when comedy in America was undergoing profound changes from a film that has ridden cult status to mainstream notoriety in the almost 40 years since its inauspicious debut.

Sunshine, blue skies, and no wind – whatever happened to “Crosby weather”?

Sunshine, mild temps, and light breezes put the lie to the familiar “Crosby weather” trope for the second day in a row at the 2018 AT&T Pro-Am. The mild conditions paved the way for a flurry of low scores, with 83 players posting under-par rounds across the three courses in play, led by two-time AT&T Pro-Am winner (2009 & 2010) Dustin Johnson’s 7-under 64 at Monterey Peninsula Country Club (MPCC).

Four-time AT&T Pro-Am champion Phil Mickelson made a run today, chasing his first win on Tour since the 2013 Open Championship. Mickelson carded a 6-under 65 at MPCC to go to 9-under for the tournament and move to the top of the leaderboard – for a while. By the end of the day his 9-under standing was good for T-5.

Dustin Johnson’s 7-under put him atop the leaderboard at 12-under, where he was joined by Beau Hossler, who went 5-under at Spyglass Hill. Hossler opened with a 7-under 65 Thursday at Pebble Beach to share the first-round lead with Kevin Streelman.

Hossler is well known to Bay Area golf fans for briefly leading the 2012 U.S. Open at the Olympic Club as a 17-year-old, where he eventually missed low amateur honors by one stroke.

Hossler is the only player in the field with no bogeys on his card, and credits his good play to accuracy off the tee. “I was getting the ball in a good spot off the tee and was able to get some shorter clubs from the fairway. I can be relatively aggressive with those, but still be kind of cautiously aggressive, and give myself a lot of good birdie looks.”

Dustin Johnson’s 7-under round at MPCC was a milestone,“(My) lowest by about 7 shots at Monterey, ever. Probably the only time we’ve played over there with good weather.” A testament to the difference in the weather this year, compared to last, was Johnson’s play on the par-3 eleventh hole at MPCC. Commenting on today’s birdie on the 176-yard par-3, Johnson said, “Eleven was (a) 9-iron. Last year I think I hit a four.”

Jordan Spieth, winner of the 2017 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, posted a 5-under 66 at MPCC today, after opening with an even-par 72 Thursday at Spyglass Hill.

Pro-Am standings after two days

Though Kevin Streelman slipped out of share of the lead today, he and his amateur partner, Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald, lead the pro-amateur field by six strokes over England’s Paul Casey and amateur partner Donald Colleran, an executive with FedEx Corporation. Dustin Johnson and his father-in-law, hockey great Wayne Gretzky, are one of five pairs tied for fifth in the pro-am competition at 17-under. The 2011 pro/pro-am joint winners D. A. Points and actor Bill Murray are T-33 at 12-under.

Cinderella Story

“Cinderella Story... ” There was not a golfer in the United States, and probably not many in the world, who didn’t have that phrase running through their mind coming into the final round of the AT&T Pro-Am at Pebble Beach last weekend. Why? Because comedian Bill Murray, an iconic figure in the world of golf for 30 years on the back of his portrayal of gopher-obsessed greenskeeper Carl Spackler in the 1980 film Caddyshack, and a fixture at the AT&T tournament on the Monterey Peninsula since 1992, lived every duffer’s fantasy when he became the amateur champion at the 2011 AT&T Pro-Am.

In case you’ve been living in a cave in a remote Central Asian mountain range since 1980, the phrase “Cinderella story” comes from the scene in Caddyshack in which Murray, as Spackler, fantasizes about winning the Masters while beheading a row of mumms in a planter bed outside the clubhouse with rhythmic swings of a weed cutter: “What an incredible Cinderella story! This unknown, comes out of nowhere, to lead the pack at Augusta. […]  Cinderella story, out of nowhere, former greenskeeper, now about to become the Masters champion. It looks like a mirac– it’s in the hole! It’s in the hole!” Murray used the line in the title of his biography, Cinderella Story: My Life In Golf, published in 2000.

Murray has been regularly paired over the years at the AT&T with pro Scott Simpson, but with Simpson not playing the tournament this year as he transitions to the Champions Tour full time, the pro slot alongside the Clown Prince of Pebble Beach was open. Partnered this year with D. A. Points, a fellow Illinois native and Caddyshack fan who is reported to have actively sought out the pairing with Murray, the comedy star played the clown, as well as some outstanding golf (for a player with a reported 12 handicap), contributing 20 net strokes under par to the team’s tournament total of 251. Murray has made the Saturday cut at the AT&T Pro-Am 5 times previously, posting Top Ten finishes in 1995 (T7 – 259) and 2005 (T4 – 258) with Simpson. Murray and Simpson were in the running for the championship in ’05, but a closing round 67 dropped them to 4th place.

Some of the more rigid-minded pros equate a pairing with Murray to a 2-stroke handicap, but Points, who admits to having watched Caddyshack “…like 5,000 times…” thought that having Murray as a partner would help keep him loose. That theory proved to be sound as Points shot an opening round 63 at the Monterey Peninsula Country Club’s Shore course; a par-70 layout that is  acknowledged to be the easiest of the three courses in the tournament rotation, but no pushover even under the benign weather conditions that prevailed over the four days of the tournament.

Points could only manage a 2-under 70 on the tighter, more difficult Spyglass Hill course in Friday’s round, but the Points/Murray team were near the top of the Pro-Am division leader board as they started play on Saturday morning at Pebble Beach, inspiring Murray to don an Elmer Fudd-style hat and declare, “It’s official – we are in the hunt!” Points posted a 71 at Pebble on Saturday, stumbling slightly with a double-bogey at the iconic par-4 ninth hole, the middle hole in the famous oceanside stretch of the course dubbed “Abalone Corner” by golf writer Dan Jenkins.

Hunter Mahan made a run at the championship on Sunday, shooting a 66 to follow up rounds of 70-67-70 at Spyglass, Pebble, and Monterey Peninsula CC for a tournament total of 273, but Points held him off,  recovering from Saturday’s stumble to post a 67 in Sunday’s final round at Pebble Beach. Crucial to his low score was a spectacular eagle at the par-5 fourteenth hole, where he holed out from the fairway on a fortuitous bounce off the back side of the slope above the treacherous front bunker. Backed up by a timely birdie at 15—where he had to make his approach shot while practically straddling an out-of-bounds stake, then sink a curling 28-foot putt—the two strokes he saved with the eagle at 14 turned out to be his margin of victory.

Murray and Points both admit to being nervous as they entered the final stretch of holes, especially following errant tee shots by Points at 15 and 16, but Points turned Murray’s comic relief technique around as Bill stood over a downhill 45-foot putt on the 16th green, calling out to him from across the green, “You know, Bill, I think everyone would really like it if you would make this putt.” Murray and the spectators surrounding the green laughed, and with the pressure eased, the pair played the final two holes in a more relaxed mood, Points smoothly parring 17 and 18 to cruise home for the win. Points’ pro and pro-am sweep is only the seventh solo double-victory since the the tournament moved to the Monterey Peninsula in 1947.

Murray, fittingly, finished off his round with an impromptu monologue styled after the famous “Cinderella Story” scene from Caddyshack as he lined up his bogey putt: “A meaningless putt, for the World Championship, formerly known as the Crosby Pro-Am, now known as the AT&T National Pro-Am…”, jogging after the putt as it rolled just right of the hole, and sweeping it in backhanded as he tossed his hat in the air.

Despite his often irreverent behavior, Murray is no joke on the golf course. He has played the game since he was a boy, and many of the antics in Caddyshack spring from the boyhood experiences of Bill and his brothers Brian (who co-wrote the film’s screenplay with Harold Ramis and Doug Kenney) and Ed as caddies at a local country club golf course. Golfers and sportswriters who decry Murray’s on-course antics should take note of his sober reaction after he and Points posted the victory: “I could not speak,” Murray said. “I realized that this is it. We have won this tournament.”

Of course, Bill being Bill, he had to end on a funny note: “When we got to 18, I wanted to do something dramatic. I hit one really good shot, but unfortunately there was a tree in front of it.”