Pebble Beach, 2024: Everything changes, but is it for the better?

The AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, which is far and away my favorite PGA Tour event, has been through a lot of changes over the years. Still sometimes referred to by old-timers from the area (like me…) as “the Crosby”, the event can trace its roots to 1934, when crooner Bing Crosby got together with a bunch of his celebrity pals at the Old Brockway Golf Course on Lake Tahoe’s North Shore for golf, food, drinks, and laughs.

In 1937 Bing moved the get-together to the Rancho Santa Fe Golf Club, north of San Diego, where he had a home on the back nine. This is when the pro-am aspect 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.

AT&T took over as the presenting sponsor in 1986, dropping the Crosby name (and Crosby family involvement) from the tournament, when Bing’s second wife, Kathryn Crosby, sold off the naming rights to AT&T for a cool half-million dollars.

In its Monterey Peninsula glory days the event drew scores of fans to the beautiful scenery of the rugged coastline – and to the star-studded field of pro golfers matched up with celebrities from the world of entertainment such as Phil Harris, James Garner, Jack Lemmon*, and Clint Eastwood (now a partner in the ownership group of the property). The star power of the celebrity amateurs slipped over the years, with sports heroes, B-list (or lower) Hollywood types, and corporate bigwigs taking over the amateur field, but the scenery and the promise of a glimpse of a famous (or semi-famous) name struggling to make the pro-am cut (cough, cough Ray Romano cough, cough) still drew the crowds, especially on Saturday, when the A-list celebrity/pro pairings were all stacked up on Pebble itself.

For 2024, however, the upheaval in the world of men’s professional golf of the last two years, engendered by the influx of Saudi money and the creation of the LIV Golf league, has resulted in the largest change in the structure and format of this event since the Second World War shut it down.

In order to deal with the threat represented by the deep pockets of the Saudi PIF and their apparent determination to dominate the world of men’s professional golf, the PGA Tour created Signature events, tournaments with limited fields, no cut (except for three player-hosted tournaments), and most importantly, to the players at least, increased purses – $20 million (up from $9 million in the case of this tournament), with $3.6 million to the winner.

For this event, quickly, the changes for 2024 are: 

• 80-player field vice the old 156-player field.
• Course rota cut down to two courses (Pebble Beach itself, and Spyglass Hill) from three, with weekend play only on Pebble.
• Amateurs playing Thursday and Friday only.
• Amateur players restricted as to handicap (looking for better, and hopefully faster, players), and no more show business amateurs; just deep-pocket corporate and pro sports amateurs.

AT&T-featured player Jordan Spieth spoke to the assembled media at Pebble Beach on Wednesday afternoon, and as he struggled to be heard over the gusty winds that rattled the temporary tarps-over-frame media-center structure, he said that the tournament this year has “a lot less Bing Crosby” in the event this year; “on course it feels like a major, off course it feels a lot less like the old Crosby**.” 

Jordan also mentioned the potential thrill of seeing some of the best players in the world (18 of the Top 20 in the World Rankings are in the field this week) coming down the stretch in contention on Sunday afternoon. While this is undoubtedly a Good Thing, how will the new format of this classic, and formerly unique, event compare to the glory days of yore – and how will the fans, both onsite and at home, react to the new look?

No other event in the world of professional golf has ever looked like Pebble Beach – and I’m not just talking about the scenery. Now, however, with the exception of the scenery (which is unmatched in the game  – fight me…), an event that started as a gathering of friends for golf and laughs, and thrived as an entertainment showcase and the premier charity-beneficent event in professional golf, has morphed over 80 years’ time into a bigger-money clone of seven other events on the schedule.

Maybe a Sunday afternoon with four or five of the top 10 players in the world coming down the stretch in contention for the trophy makes for an exciting finish, but honestly, we can see that several times a year, at many other tournaments. What we have lost in this change, however, is an intangible charm that “the Clambake” brought to the world of professional golf for one rainy/sunny/windswept wintertime week every year – a charm that, I’m afraid, we will never see again in the even-bigger-money New Age of men’s professional golf.

* (Youngsters in the audience may want to do a quick online search of some of these names.)

** (It hasn’t been called “the Crosby” since eight years before Jordan was born.)

Bob Harig’s “Tiger and Phil” now in paperback

If you are a fan of well-researched writing by a knowledgeable veteran golf writer and want to read about the years-long rivalry between two of the biggest names in pro golf of the last 20+ years—but prefer to wait for the less-expensive paperback copy of a new book to come out, you are in luck. Bob Harig, a long-time golf writer at ESPN, penned a comprehensive, deeply-researched book on the rivalry between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson that came out in 2022—and it is now (as of 16 April, 2023) out in softcover.

A comprehensive look at an enduring
rivalry, now in paperback.

The hardback edition of the book came out in 2022, after Woods’s solo-vehicle crash in February 2021 but before Phil Mickelson’s departure from the PGA Tour in favor of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour, so it missed out on some of the most-current controversy in this rivalry. Frankly, I was a bit disappointed to not see an update chapter on the new developments in the softcover release.

Aside from that, Tiger & Phil is a very complete look at the sometimes fraught relationship between the two men who have most strongly defined PGA Tour golf in the 21st century—one a generally taciturn, frequently saturnine, presence on the golf course (and only when he couldn’t avoid it, in the media center interview room); the other a jovial, self-promoting—but sometimes sharp-tongued—raconteur who trailed in the shadow of the other. The book covers all aspects of the on-and off-course interactions between the two, from run-of-the-mill PGA Tour events to the majors, to special events like the Ryder Cup and the President’s Cup.

Curiously, I found the book to be rife with grammatical errors, clumsy sentence construction, and odd (sometimes incorrect) word choices. These are things that should have been caught in the editing process which may not bother, or even be noticed by, the casual reader, but as someone with editing experience I was tripping over them every couple of pages on average.

Minor writing blips aside, I am confident that anyone with an interest in the recent history of men’s professional golf will enjoy this book; it’s an important chronicle of the relationship and interactions of two of the most significant players in the closing years of the 20th century and the first quarter or so of the 21st.

What’s true—and what’s not—about what alignment stripes do for your putting

Under the dual headings of “Marketing People Just Want To Sell You Stuff” and “Golf Equipment Writers Who Recycle Manufacturers’ Marketing BUMF”, a recent article by an experienced and well-respected golf writer (whose BA in English Lit probably doesn’t qualify him to evaluate the dynamics and physical attributes of golf equipment) is promulgating more marketing nonsense from people who sell golf balls:

https://golfweek.usatoday.com/2023/04/12/callaway-chrome-soft-360-triple-track-golf-balls/

Callaway’s update to their Triple Track alignment aid system,

Triple Track 360, features blue stripes that now go all the way around the ball.

The article at the link above, about the new and improved Callaway 360 Triple-Track system—which now features blue lines that go all the way around the ball (that is, 360º – get it?)—states the following:

“(T)he two blue lines […] wrap completely around the ball, making it easier for golfers to aim the ball […] and to see if a putt is struck with a square face. If the lines stay smooth as the putt rolls, a player knows [they] hit the putt correctly with the face square to the target line. If the lines wobble as the ball rolls, the face of the putter was either open or closed to the line when it struck the ball*.”

This kind of stuff makes me weep.

The Triple-Track system, with a single rather heavy red stripe flanked by a pair of thinner blue stripes, was originally presented as a revolutionary upgrade over a single line as a static alignment aid, a quality that is supposed to be due to an effect called Visual Hyper Acuity (see: How Triple Track Technology Can Change Your Game). The effectiveness of “VHA” is said to have been certified by Dr. Carl Bassi, the Director of Research at the University of Missouri – St Louis College of Optometry, and also by Ray Barrett, an “entrepreneur and avid golfer” (whoever he is, and for what that’s worth).

I can’t speak to the effectiveness of Triple Track markings in helping golfers achieve micrometer-level alignment accuracy—vision science is not one of my specialties—but I can speak to its effectiveness in helping golfers assess the quality of their strike: it has none.

It’s very simple, and readily apparent to anyone who is familiar with the dynamics of impact and rolling objects: striking the ball with an open or closed face does not make the ball wobble, but the stripes may appear to wobble —which may appear to the uninitiated that the ball itself is wobbling—unless they are perfectly aligned with both the face and the path.

Face angle relative to path determines the direction that the ball heads immediately upon coming off of the face; “wobble”, as shown by the stripes on the ball, indicates only that the stripes were not aligned with the path that the ball started rolling on. If the ball starts to wobble later in the roll, that’s an indication that it hit some inconsistency in the putting surface and was thrown off line—but neither of these things means that the ball is rolling inconsistently—“wobbling”—due to having been struck with an open or closed face.

To help you visualize how this works, imagine slicing a section through the ball along the stripe to make a disc. That disc is like a coin standing on edge—if you roll it and it rolls true you will only see the edge of the disc-shape as it rolls away, like the illustration on the left, below. However, if the stripe is tilted to the path of the ball, the disc-shape described by the stripe will sweep a wider path as the ball rolls, like the illustration on the right, below, presenting a visual “wobble” even though the ball is rolling true to the path.

The only way to know whether the ball was struck with a face that was square to the intended path is to observe the ball’s roll relative to the intended line. Because the ball always leaves the club face on a path that is perpendicular to the face, observing the roll to note whether or not the ball starts on the intended path will tell you if face and path were square.

Watching a stripe on the ball as it rolls will only tell you if the stripe was aligned to the path when the ball started rolling, and that is pretty useless information.

------------------------------------------
* (italics mine)

Pistol-style putter grips from Super Stroke may be right for you

You are probably familiar with Super Stroke putter grips, the fat grips designed to help minimize wrist motion for a more consistent putting stroke. You may have discounted their straight, constant-diameter grips if you are, like me, a pistol-style putter grip aficionado, but if you are in the market for a change in your putter grip the lineup of Super Stroke pistol-style grips may be worth a look.

There are three models in the Super Stroke line of pistol-style grips: from slimmest to fattest they are the Pistol Tour, Pistol 1.0 and Pistol 2.0. The Pistol Tour weighs in at a nominal 69 grams, the 2.0 at 83 grams, and the 2.0, though the widest grip in the lineup at 1.32 inches, comes in at the lowest weight – a positively svelte 51 grams.

The Zenergy Pistol Tour is the slimmest of the
three pistol-style putter grips from Super Stroke.

Besides the larger grip diameter, the other notable feature of the Super Stroke putter grips is what they call the Tech-Port – an internally-threaded plastic insert located in the butt end of the grip that allows the installation of the Super Stroke putter weights. The weights come in 25-, 50-, and 75-gram sizes, and are very handy for fine-tuning the balance of your putter. If you are a regular reader of this blog you will be familiar with my thoughts on counterweighting in putters – this is a feature that I am very enthusiastic about.

I recently did a trial run with the Super Stroke Pistol Tour, the slenderest model in their lineup of pistol-style grips, to get a feel for what these grips, with their compromise position between standard grips and the really wide-girth constant-diameter grips, can offer to the golfer who is looking for a change. Compared to my usual putter grip, the standard Odyssey White Hot Pro pistol-style grip, the Pistol Tour is nearly identical in weight, with only a couple of grams difference between the two examples of each grip that I measured; the main difference between the two lies in the shape of the grip rather than the weight.

While the Pistol Tour has the contoured shape that you would expect in a pistol grip, it has a noticeably greater girth than the White Hot Pro. I measured the Pistol Tour at 1.07-inch wide at the butt end of the grip, with a width of .95-inch at the bottom end. Compare this to the White Hot Pro’s .87-inch and .70-inch dimensions for the same locations – a 20% taper compared to the Pistol Tour’s 11% taper. The Pistol Tour also tapers less front to back than the White Hot Pro, from 1.25-inch to .88-inch at the bottom, compared to the White Hot Pro’s 1.17-inch to .70-inch (it is circular at the bottom end.)

That small amount of taper is the reason for the most noticeable difference that I found in the “Before ” and “After” configurations of my Odyssey Works Tank Cruiser 1 putter when I swapped out the White Hot Pro grip for the Super Stroke Pistol Tour: despite a 2.5-gram difference in weight between the two grips (the Pistol Tour is heavier), and a minus 1-gram difference in weight after the swap (there was some tape buildup under the old grip), the swing weight of the putter with the Super Stroke grip went from D4 to D8 – a noticeable shift toward a head-heavy setup.

The reason for this significant change lies in where the weight is located; the more uniform thickness of the Pistol Tour grip places more of its mass down the shaft, farther from the butt end, with a commensurate increase in swing weight. This characteristic of the Pistol Tour is not necessarily a negative, it is just something that you need to be aware of if you are contemplating changing from a more conventional grip to a Super Stroke model.

Another grip characteristic that is very important, of course, is feel. The Super Stroke putter grips use a rubber material with a soft surface that is grippy but not tacky, and which holds up well with a bit of regular cleaning. In addition, there is a simulated stitched seam down the back side of the grip that acts as a position reference to help you place your hands on the grip consistently shot after shot.

If you are looking for a change in your putter setup, but aren’t ready to jump from your standard pistol grip all the way to a full-on constant-diameter grip, the Super Stroke line-up of pistol grips might be just what you are looking for – with the added bonus of being able to fine-tune your putter’s end-to-end balance with the Super Stroke putter weights.

So, what IS the worst golf movie ever made?

Last month, on a whim, I started on an online Twitter poll match-play tournament about golf movies, and to give it what I hoped would be a unique twist, I opted to make it a “Worst Golf Movie Ever Made” (WGMEM) poll.

With a little help from Twitter friends who supplied the names of some golf-related movies that I hadn’t heard of before, I put together a list of twenty films, from the earliest I found, the 1951 Ben Hogan bio-flick Follow The Sun, to 2022’s The Phantom of the Open, about a serial imposter (and non-golfer) named Maurice Flitcroft who tries to enter the British Open. For background and accountability, I watched the ones I hadn’t previously seen (when they were available for viewing) and set things in motion.

Composing a match-play breakdown, I opened with two matchups on the first day the much-loved Caddyshack versus its much-reviled sequel, Caddyshack II, and two biographical films about revered golfers of decades past, Bobby Jones: A Stroke of Genius and Follow The Sun. Turnout was okay in that first round, with 69 votes cast in the dueling-Caddyshacks poll, and 37 in the bio-flick matchup. Caddyshack II won in a rout, 64 to 5 (I want to talk to those five people who think that the original Caddyshack is worse than the execrable sequel), and Follow The Sun, which features a fine actor but obvious non-golfer, Glenn Ford, portraying Ben Hogan, the man with one of the most beautiful golf swings ever seen, prevailed over the Bobby Jones story 23 votes to 14.

After that first round it appeared that people lost interest. I get it, folks are busy, but totals of ten, twelve, and then seven votes in the remaining polls in the Round of 16 were frankly disappointing. I mean, I have a little over 2,100 Twitter followers, and out of all those people no more than a dozen could be bothered to take a second or two and click on a poll button? Sigh…

Voting in the Round of 8 was equally disappointing, with a total of six votes cast, and the Semifinal round pulled a two-vote tie in one poll and no votes in the other. Throwing up my hands in frustration I cancelled the final round and declared Caddyshack II, the film with the most votes as WGMEM the winner – despite the fact that it was knocked out in the Round of 8 (in a one-vote “sweep”.)

In the wake of my poll I started thinking about a couple of existential questions relating to golf movies: What is a golf movie? What makes a golf movie a good or bad golf movie (as opposed to a good or bad movie, period)? Digging deep into my memories of a college Film Studies class (fulfilling a Humanities requirement for this Engineering major), I pondered these questions.

As I pondered, I received a bit of feedback (via Twitter DMs) from one contributor, Golf.com correspondent and fellow Bay Area resident Josh Sens. In the 1990s, prior to his current golf-writing gig, Sens reviewed movies for the Oakland Tribune, and he had these thoughts to share about golf movies:

“I think most golf movies suck to the point of being unwatchable. Partly because golf is hard to dramatize and partly because the guys playing the role of pros rarely have believable swings—but maybe also because golfers are boring?”

Josh’s comment about actors with poor golf swings is valid, up to a point, but unless the disparity is obvious, and egregious, it has never been a major sticking point for me.

I have found that golfers can also be extremely picky regarding other details in golf-related movies. Five years ago I was involved in an online discussion about The Greatest Game Ever Played, a golf movie that I think works very well on many levels, but one commenter in the discussion, who was obviously a deep-dive aficionado of golf equipment of that era (the story takes place in 1913) complained that the golf clubs that the actors were using were from the wrong decade (I can’t remember if it was earlier or later), and that the anachronism ruined the film for him.

(I have spotted anachronisms in movies from time to time (the case of archival footage of a Korean-War-era jet crashing on the deck of an aircraft carrier in the 1976 film Midway comes to mind), but though noticeable (and/or laughable) I have never delved so deeply into “anorak” territory that a movie was “absolutely ruined” for me because of such a thing.)

Sports movies in general fall into one or the other of two categories – they are either very specifically about the sport/game itself or a particular athlete or team, or they are framing a story about a more abstract social concept within the context of sport.

Josh echoed some of my own thoughts about golf movies in further comments:

“I remember interviewing the director Ron Shelton about Tin Cup. When the topic of Caddyshack came up, he said, ‘It’s a funny movie but it’s not a golf movie. It’s a movie about social class.’ ”

I guess you could say the same about all sports movies, that the good ones aren’t so much about the sport but about something deeper/more complex.”

I decided to try and split my list of golf movies into those two general categories: movies strictly about golf and/or golfers, and movies that use golf as a vehicle for another story concept:

Movies about golf:

• Follow The Sun
• The Caddy
• Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius
• Dead Solid Perfect
• Tin Cup
• The Greatest Game Ever Played
• Tommy’s Honour
• The Phantom of The Open
• The Squeeze

Movies that use golf as a metaphor:

• Caddyshack – class distinction and snobbery
• A Gentleman’s Game – social climbing/status-seeking
• The Legend of Bagger Vance – golf as a vehicle for recovery from trauma
• Golf in The Kingdom – golf as a path to enlightenment
• Seven Days in Utopia – golf as a vehicle for personal growth

I then found that some of the movies on the list really belong in a third category: just plain crappy movies. The movies to which I assign that dubious honor are:

• Happy Gilmore
• Golfballs!
• Caddyshack II
• Who’s Your Caddy?

Not that some of the movies on the first two lists aren’t really, really bad—they are. Follow The Sun is painfully earnest, and stars an actor who appears to have never held a golf club in his life before being cast in the film; Golf in The Kingdom takes a book that I find to be a terrible load of New Age drivel and turns it into an even worse movie; Seven Days in Utopia (which I reviewed here) and The Squeeze* are equally bad, for different reasons and in different ways.

The final comments I received from Sens:

“Caddyshack is tolerable because it has some good improv sketches by some great comedians but it only ranks high on the list of golf movies because the competition is so weak. Tin Cup is probably the best I’ve seen but it’s only a good film by golf film standards.”

Caddyshack is so ingrained in popular golf culture that I would venture to say that it is not only the most often quoted golf movie ever made, but one of the most often quoted movies of all time—and probably the only golf-related movie to have a book† (two, actually…) written about the making of the movie.

It should come as no surprise that my ultimate choice for WGMEM comes from my off-the-cuff third list of golf-movie types. Caddyshack II condenses the light-hearted “snobs vs slobs” credo of its namesake original into a bitter brew of broadly offensive clichés. Looking at the other two categories, my selections are, from movies about golf – The Squeeze; and from the list of movies that use golf as a metaphor – Golf in The Kingdom.

It gives me no joy to make these selections—not because it is painful to have to pass judgement on movies that someone obviously thought it would be a good idea and a useful expenditure of time and talent to produce, but because they are so painful to watch. They are that bad.

On the other hand, I take pleasure in selecting my favorite films from the two main categories (and here you will see that I am more or less on the same page as Josh Sens – but not necessarily for the same reasons): Tin Cup, from the list of movies that are actually about golf; and Caddyshack, from the list of movies that use golf as a metaphor.

Tin Cup takes the honors in its category for its realistic but humorous examination of the angst and anxieties associated with the game of golf, plus its stellar cast (Kevin Costner, Rene Russo, Cheech Marin, and Don Johnson – not to mention dipping into the ranks of actual pro golfers of the time in supporting cameos; such names as Peter Jacobsen, Craig Stadler, Gary McCord, and even a baby-faced Phil Mickelson) and outstanding writing.

From the other list, movies that use golf as a metaphor, Caddyshack heads the list because of the great – dare I say iconic – comic turns by Saturday Night Live alums Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Brian Doyle-Murray (one of Bill’s older brothers, and a writer on the film), veteran standup comedian (but feature film newbie) Rodney Dangerfield, relative newcomer Michael O’Keefe in his third feature film, and veteran straight-man Ted Knight.

Golf movies, as a broadly but capriciously defined genre of film, are a very niche product, but within the short list of movies that comprise that body of work can be found a wide spectrum of styles and quality – and probably, something to please just about any golf fan.

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* Of which I wrote in another review that went down with the Examiner.com ship: “Golfers who care more about a decent golf swing than plot, dialogue, and character development will probably like this movie just fine, but I’m afraid that its eventual place in the golf movie spectrum will, in the long run, find it occupying a spot closer to The Foursome than to Caddyshack or Tin Cup.”

† Caddyshack – The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story, by Entertainment Weekly movie critic Scott Nashawaty, is a fascinating deep dive into not only the making of the movie, but the Harvard Lampoon and Saturday Night Live roots of the filmmakers and cast.

A look back at a classic by Michael Bamberger, “Men in Green” ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Just today I learned that one of my favorite golf writers, Michael Bamberger, has a new book coming out in March. The new book, The Ball in the Air, is being described as “an exhilarating love letter to the amateur game as it’s played—and lived—by the rest of us.” I am going to do my best to get hold of a copy of the new book to read and review here at Will o'the Glen on Golf, but in the meantime I would like to post a review that I wrote for his 2015 release Men in Green, posted to my former online outlet, Examiner.com, which went dark in 2016 (taking four years of my content with it, unfortunately.)

So here it is, my review of Michael Bamberger’s 2015 book, Men in Green:

************************************************

One night at dinner during the 2012 Ryder Cup matches at Medinah Golf Club outside Chicago, Michael Bamberger, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, wrote down a two-column list naming 18 Americans – 17 men and one woman – who are legends in the world of golf. All 18 are associated with the game in the period from the mid-1950s through the 1970s, the years when golf was maturing into the big-money sport it has become. Out of that list came a quest, of sorts; a plan to track down as many of those 18 as he could and ask them a few simple questions – “What was it like?”, “Who did you hang with?”, “How does then look to you now?”

Drawn to golf in the late 1970s as a teenager growing up in a small town on Long Island, Bamberger’s formative years in the game were populated by the names on that list he drew up in Chicago: Palmer, Nicklaus, Watson, Venturi, Crenshaw – just to name a few. So, inspired by the baseball classic The Boys of Summer, Bamberger took up the challenge posed by his list of names, crisscrossing the United States over the next couple of years to talk to as many of the “legends” as he could. 

Out of his travels came the book Men in Green, in my opinion one of the finest works of golf-related non-fiction to be published in many years. His quest led him down paths he never anticipated traveling when he began, raising questions he couldn’t have known would arise, and from those paths and out of those questions came revelations about the names on the list, and himself, that will resonate with readers who grew up in the game in those years, as Bamberger did. 

In keeping with his position in the game “The King”, Arnold Palmer, opens and closes Bamberger’s physical and temporal journey through the landscape of golf’s mid-20th-century heyday. Along the way, Bamberger checks in with the next-biggest name from the period, Jack Nicklaus, as well as Tom Watson, Ken Venturi (just weeks before his death), Hale Irwin, and Curtis Strange – all names off the “Living Legends” side of his original list. Accompanying him on many of these visits is his friend, and a name off the “Secret Legends” side of the roster, Mike Donald, a long-time PGA Tour and Champions Tour pro. Donald is a veteran of the Tours whose biggest claim to fame among the golfing public is his narrow loss to Hale Irwin in the 1990 U.S. Open.

The strength of Men in Green, aside from the depth that comes from Bamberger’s whole-hearted investment in the game of golf, is the intimate, personal-history glimpses it affords the reader, glimpses into the PGA Tour in the Palmer-Nicklaus-Watson era – pre-Tiger – and the interconnections between the players, caddies, golf writers, and even officials, of those times. 

This was an era when the PGA Tour chartered airline flights to carry players and their families from tournament to tournament, when there was more of a family atmosphere than there is now, yet still some hints of the old rough-and-tumble Tour. The world of the PGA Tour wasn’t as corporate as it is nowadays – there were no entourages of swing coaches, short-game gurus, mental-game seers, and publicists, and many players were still driving from one tournament to the next. There was still something of a Mad Men-like sensibility to the times – a pretty woman was a “good-looking broad” (according to none other than Arnie himself!) and the players’ after-hours entertainment might include drinks with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, or Sammy Davis, Jr.

The beating heart of Men in Green, and the part of the book which has left an enduring impression on me, is the interwoven tale of Arnold Palmer and Ken Venturi. Remembered now more for his 35-year career in the broadcast booth with CBS Sports than for his playing days, Venturi was a promising young amateur in the mid-1950s, a native San Franciscan of Irish ancestry who nevertheless identified more with the Italian-American heritage of his stepfather, Fred Venturi, longtime manager of the pro shop at San Francisco’s Harding Park golf course.

Bitter disappointment at the Masters tournament, the ultimate golf venue of the ultimate gentleman-amateur golfer, Bob Jones, led Venturi to abandon his oft-declared plans to maintain a career as an amateur, like Jones, and not turn professional. The best-known of Venturi’s disappointments at Augusta National came in the 1958 Masters, the result of a controversial ruling involving Arnold Palmer, who was playing with Venturi when it happened.

The repercussions of that rules controversy, along with the fallout from harsh statements Venturi made to the press after a final-round 80 at the 1956 Masters, rippled down through the years, and Venturi watched as Arnold Palmer ascended to a position in the golf world, albeit as a professional, that he had aspired to. It becomes apparent, through Bamberger’s accounts of interviews with Venturi, that the revered elder statesman of the game was a very bitter man for much of his life, and somewhat given to embellishing recollections of past events to his advantage.

Connections abound between not only the big names, the “Living Legends” on Bamberger’s list, but between the less well-known “Secret Legends” whose stories weave in and out of the narrative. Serendipitous discoveries turn up at every corner, in conversations with an old-time Tour caddy, Adolphus “Golf Ball” Hull; retired CBS Sports producer Chuck Will; and even a couple of ex-Tour wives: Conni Venturi (Ken’s first wife), and Polly Crenshaw Price, another first wife – Ben Crenshaw’s ex.

The title, the cover illustration, and the release date (April 7, 2015 – two days before play began at the 78th Masters Tournament), tend to give the impression that the book is a look back at past Masters champions. That’s a fine subject, and five of the names on Bamberger’s list are past champions of the event, but this book is so much more than that. Men in Green is a look back to the formative years of the current state of the game, by a man who was growing up in the game, and with the game, in those same years. There is nostalgia and revelation in equal parts, all tempered by the love of golf that shaped the author’s life in so many ways.

Golf fans will know Michael Bamberger from his 20-year career at Sports Illustrated, and perhaps from his earlier books To The Linksland and This Golfing Life, also non-fiction travelogues through the landscapes of golf and life. A few years ago Bamberger teamed up with his friend and fellow SI staff writer Alan Shipnuck for the fiction hit The Swinger, but it is the insight and emotion he brings to his non-fiction works that is his strength, and the reason why every fan of the game of golf should read Men in Green.

Justin Rose prevails in Monday finish at AT&T Pro-Am

The two most dreaded words in professional golf are “Monday finish”, and as luck would have it, the windy conditions on Saturday at the 2023 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am brought them into play. While for recreational golfers the prospect of playing Pebble Beach Golf Links on a clear, calm, if somewhat brisk, February morning would be a dream come true, for pros, to be pulled off the course at sunset, mid-round, and then have to come back the next morning, pick up where they left off and play for a paycheck, it’s a much less ideal situation.

As it has been so often in the history of the AT&T (née Crosby) Pro-Am, the weather was the story. On a multi-course tournament like this, where three courses have to be maintained in the same configuration over three days, making corrections to a hole placement or mowing conditions to mitigate a change in the weather is not an option, and when Saturday’s gusty winds caused balls to move on the exposed 9th and 15th greens at the MPCC Shore course, play was suspended, then ultimately called.

At Spyglass Hill, where all but three holes are sheltered amidst towering cypress and Monterey pine trees, the wind was not a factor, nor was it at Pebble—despite nine holes running along the ocean—because the wind direction left Pebble somewhat sheltered by Pescadero Point and the Del Monte Forest northwest of the course.

Unless it’s a situation where dangerous weather is the cause for a play stoppage, players are given the option of finishing the hole they are on when the horn blows. Some took the option, starting from the tee on their next hole this morning, while others marked their ball and headed in. Leader Justin Rose returned to his ball marked in good position on the 10th fairway; Keith Mitchell’s first shot on returning to the course on Monday morning was a delicate chip from the rough just off of the 12th green.

Crashing surf in Carmel Bay provided a dramatic backdrop of foam-crested waves and azure water for the television coverage of the final holes of the tournament, but the flags hung limp in still air, with nary a breeze stirring to affect the flight of a ball. Restarting the interrupted round in these pristine conditions posed no problem for leader Justin Rose, who made a hot restart with birdies at 11 and 13. The two strokes he picked up bumped Rose’s score to 17-under, maintaining his lead over Brendon Todd, who (no slouch himself) birdied 13 and 14 to get to 15-under.

The NorCal players in the field fared middling to well when play resumed this morning. Chico’s Kurt Kitayama righted the ship with a string of pars after closing out Sunday afternoon double-bogey, bogey; Brandon Wu and Joseph Bramlett each put up pairs of birdies in the first few holes after the restart.

In the meantime, Justin Rose was solidifying his lead with another birdie, at the long, sometimes punishing, par-five 14th hole, distancing himself still further from Brendon Todd. Two holes ahead, Todd, though playing well, was running out of time, and eventually just flat ran out of holes in his bid to overtake the surging Rose.

With no serious contenders ahead of him, Rose played conservatively down the stretch, leaving his driver in the bag for the last three holes. Hitting a four-iron off the tee at 18, followed by two more irons to the green, he finished up with a no-stress two-putt par to complete a three-shot victory. The win makes Rose the first European winner of this event, and only the second non-American champion. 

“Pebble is the type of golf course with the conditions and the elements that you think you could argue would suit European players a little bit more.”

  – Justin Rose

(Vijay Singh was the first, and previously only, non-American winner of the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, carding a 15-under 272 for the victory in 2004.)

The top NorCal player in the field was Stanford Men’s Golf alumnus Brandon Wu, who carded four birdies on the back nine in Monday play to record a 6-under 66, tying Brendon Todd for second at 15-under.

Wu has great memories of Pebble’s 18th green—after missing his Stanford University graduation ceremony to play in the 2019 U.S Open here at Pebble, and after a T-35/2nd-place amateur finish, Wu was presented with his diploma by then USGA president-elect Stu Francis, who got his MBA at Stanford.

Asked how he would characterize the week overall, Wu said:

 “I think it was awesome. I’m glad the weather kind of held off and we finished with a perfect morning this morning. I’m really happy to be out here and happy with how I played.”

The next NorCal finisher down the order was another Stanford alumnus, Joseph Bramlett of San José. Bramlett played well after the restart, closing out his round in 3-under 33 for the back nine, but on top of the even-par front nine he put up yesterday afternoon, it wasn’t enough to move him up on the leaderboard. Bramlett’s T-7 performance is his best finish to date on the PGA tour.

Chico’s Kurt Kitayama, playing in the final group, had a front-row seat to Justin Rose’s march to victory, but the specter of yesterday’s 5-over front-nine 41 that opened with three bogeys and finished double-bogey, bogey was too much for him to overcome. Kitayama made a single birdie this morning, at the par-four 15th hole, rolling in a 15' 9" putt from the front fringe.

With the Pebble Beach Pro-Am increasingly coming under fire from some commenters for slow play due to the amateur participants, for the logistical complexities, and for the impact that weather has historically had on the event, it was gratifying to hear Rose, in the post-round interview, characterize the tournament as an event “that really matter(s)”:

“Access to the major championships is a large part of my decision to be playing where I’m playing, for sure, (and) obviously playing in events like this that have a great history, that give access to iconic golf courses, all of those things—winning events that really matter.”