Times have changed
If Bing Crosby were alive today he wouldn’t even recognize the
tournament he created
– the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am a.k.a. today’s AT
&
amp;T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.
I’m sure many of you made the 50-mile trek to the Monterey
Peninsula this past weekend to bask in the unseasonably warm
temperatures, see some of your favorite celebrities and check out
the golf action.
Times have changed
If Bing Crosby were alive today he wouldn’t even recognize the tournament he created – the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am a.k.a. today’s AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.
I’m sure many of you made the 50-mile trek to the Monterey Peninsula this past weekend to bask in the unseasonably warm temperatures, see some of your favorite celebrities and check out the golf action.
For those of you who have been attending the tournament for years you probably can’t help but notice how much today’s pro-am is hardly anything like the original Crosby clambakes, which were basically a small gathering of Hollywood elites and invited pros that got together for a fun weekend on the greatest piece of golf real estate the world has ever known.
Today all events on the Tour – if you attend them in person – seem more like a hub for corporate conferences, parties and circus tents than anything else. And, sadly, Pebble Beach is no different. The television cameras don’t pick this aspect of the tournaments up but the changes are astronomical.
I can remember going to my first Crosby in the early 1980s and literally parking within 10 feet of the Cypress Point Club’s pro shop – one of the original courses in the tournament’s rotation. Good luck pulling that off today. You’d probably need a secret service badge to get that close.
Today, patrons are shuttled in from Cal-State Monterey Bay – some 12 miles away – and dropped off at a grand entrance that looks more like a gaudy theme park than the entrance to a country club.
And for those that have enough connections to get all the way to the main gate without needing to pack into a crammed-in bus, they must display one of a bazillion special parking passes in their car window. These are considered special passes that hang on the window’s rear-view mirror but it seems like everyone has one.
These include media passes, beach club passes, various corporate passes, player passes, caddie passes, volunteer hospitality, first aid and communications and scoring passes, etc, etc…
To find these special parking lots the chosen few must follow a winding route of arrows that wind their way through the Del Monte Forest and past a sea of homes that make the Hollywood Hills look like the Ghetto. Just these “special” people alone account for the amount of parking spaces that used to be used just a few decades ago for the entire tournament.
I used to think that old classic courses would become obsolete because the pros simply are hitting the golf ball too far today. Now I think the old venues may become obsolete for their inability to accommodate the masses. Pete Dye pegged it with his stadium golf concept in the early 1980s.
Anyway, whatever way anyone goes, it’s all a mad rush for the main entrance. There attendees can hitch rides on busses to Spyglass Hill or Poppy Hills, the two other courses that the tournament takes place on, or get shuttled to corporate and tourist destinations in the area.
And if you opt to continue on the grand-entrance path that leads to the tournament, you pass corporate tents, private party tents, and various other “hey golfers have money, let’s sell something to them” tents.
There were tents for cell phones, after all this is the AT&T tournament, wineries, vacation spots, even tents to attract children and San Jose State alumni.
Everywhere I looked it seemed as though there were shuttles for the media, the contestants, hospitality, security, tournament officials, etc, etc, etc. The amount of manpower that it took to pull off this once small clambake was unbelievable.
And I haven’t even mentioned the golf yet.
All I can say is that the volunteers clearly need more credit than they get because there must have been 5,000 of them, and without them this tournament doesn’t get off the ground.
Bing wouldn’t believe it.
