I couldn’t help but think of the folks at Monterey Peninsula Country Club this morning as I caught a bit of Golf Channel. The magnificent course is back in the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am for the first time since 1985, when Bing Crosby’s widow refused to let her husband’s Clambake be turned over to the corporate sponsor. We had the great fortune of playing the course last June, and folks were really looking forward to the tournament and having the star of stars on its grounds. Yep, Tiger Woods.
Woods had steered clear of the AT&T because of horrendously long rounds with amateur groups. But he had recently signed a sponsorship deal with the telecommunications giant, and part of the agreement was he’d play in the AT&T. It also didn’t hurt that Pebble Beach, site of this year’s U.S. Open, is in the rotation. Well, as we all know, that didn’t work out too well. Tiger’s on hiatus and AT&Tcut him loose for his transgressions.
Still, by the looks of things on TV, things are going OK for the gang at MPCC. The course is playing the hardest of the three, relative to par — it was changed to a par 70 from a 72 for this event — and the views are absolutely breathtaking.
Here are June’s blogs on the aforementioned excursions.
