This year marks the 77th winter that the PGA Tour has made an annual trek to the Monterey Peninsula for the grandfather of all pro-am golf tournaments—known today as the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. However, the tournament actually began 87 winters ago at Rancho Santa Fe in Southern California.
It was the idea of entertainer Harry Lillis “Bing” Crosby who, in 1925 at age 22, came to Los Angeles from Spokane, Washing-ton, and launched what quickly became a remarkable career. As a singer, he had his first number one hit in 1929 with “Ol’ Man River” and he eventually recorded more than 1,600 songs. In 1931 he launched his first radio show and, the same year, signed a movie contract. Throughout his career, he made more than 70 feature films, winning a best actor Oscar for his portrayal of Father O’Malley in “Going My Way” (1944). As technology advanced, he also became a television star.
Crosby had two passions beyond his career—golf and horse racing. Crosby worked with Ampex to advance recording technology so his radio show, which previously required two live performances (one for the East Coast and one for the West Coast), could be prerecorded, allowing him more time for his passions. Crosby was a member of the Lakeside Country Club in Burbank, where he developed close friendships with other Hollywood golfers and many professional golfers.
In the mid-1930s, Crosby partnered with Lindsay Howard, breeding racehorses for their Binglin Stable near the Del Mar track at Rancho Santa Fe. Howard’s father, Charles, also had a stable, Howard Farms, and in 1936 began racing a 3-year-old thoroughbred by the name of Seabiscuit. Binglin’s horses were not quite as famous, but won several races, despite the “glue factory” jokes foisted by Crosby cohort Bob Hope.
The economic depression of the 1930s reduced sponsor money for his professional golfer friends, so in November 1936, Crosby decided to combine his passions and announced that he would sponsor a pro-am golf tournament while wintering at Rancho Santa Fe. He scheduled a 36-hole tournament there on February 6-7, 1937, shortly after the Los Angeles and Southern California opens. Crosby put up a $3,000 purse for the pros and other prizes for the amateurs.
It was billed as “The Bing Crosby Invitational Amateur-Pro Golf Tournament.” The 70 pros had to qualify under PGA conditions, and included most of the top pros, including Jimmy Thompson, George Von Elm, Harry Cooper and youngsters Lawson Little and Sam Snead. The 70 amateurs were Crosby’s invitees and included Fred Astaire, Richard Arlen, Alan Hale, Johnny Dawson and sportswriter Grantland Rice.
Golfers teed off Saturday morning but were interrupted by a deluge of rain and play was canceled. Crosby himself was even par through six holes before he was too drenched to continue. Threatening skies and washed-out roads prevented many players from showing up on Sunday. Pairings had to be changed for what was now an 18-hole tournament on a very wet course. Snead somehow managed to tie the course record with a 68. Von Elm came in second with a 72.
For the next two years they completed 36-holes around rain drops. In 1940, Ed “Porky” Oliver won the 36-hole event under clear skies. As the tournament grew Crosby added some interesting twists. Lawson Little won a special trophy that year for the low aggregate score of 852 for the 12-rounds on the West Coast swing. It was too early for television, but Crosby created a short movie of the tournament which made its way around the nation.
For the fifth annual tournament in 1941, Crosby enlarged the field to 320 golfers, 160 teams, for what became a three-day tournament. Half the field played on Friday and half on Saturday. The low 10 teams on each day qualified for the final round on Sunday, as did the low professionals and several top pros that were guaranteed both rounds. Another change was that three professional women played—Babe Zaharias, Patty Berg and Opal Hill. Playing from the men’s tees, they posted three of the four highest scores in their first round and missed the professional cut.
Significantly, Crosby made his 1941 tournament a charity event. All ticket sales, both advance and at the gate, were donated to charity—split that year between the Los Angeles League for Crippled Children and San Diego’s Junior League. The charity take exceeded the $3,000 purse split by the pros.
Whether there would be a sixth Crosby, titled for 1942 as the “National Pro-Amateur Championship sponsored by Bing Crosby,” was in doubt following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. But on December 16, defense authorities green-lighted the PGA’s winter tournaments at Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland and Rancho Santa Fe. Crosby raised the professional purse to $5,000 for 1942, and again, charity dollars were higher at $8,000.
The marquee foursome that year had Crosby paired with Snead (the Crosby winner in 1936, 1937 and 1941) and Bob Hope paired with Ben Hogan, who had just won at both Los Angeles and San Francisco and was runner-up at Oakland. But it was amateur Johnny Dawson that stole the show. Paired with professional Harry Cooper, Dawson’s 66-67—133 secured their team victory, and bested the two lowest pros Lloyd Mangrum (70-66—136) and Leland Gibson (67-69—136).
As the men and resources needed for World War II increased, future tournaments were canceled, including the 1942 U.S. Amateur scheduled to be played at Pebble Beach in September. The USGA resumed their championships in 1946, but Crosby did not.
While golf was on the rise in 1946, Monterey’s fishing industry—the economic engine that saw the Monterey-area economy through the war years—saw a sharp decline. The sardine population had fallen to the point that many canneries were forced to close as fishermen took their boats to richer fisheries. Tourism was the new fallback for the economy. Community leaders met to strategize. Winter was the slowest season. How could they bring people to the peninsula. Monterey Herald sportswriter Ted Durein remembered the old Crosby tournament and suggested having him bring it to the peninsula. He pointed out that in April, syndicated columnist Gene Handsaker had asked Crosby how he liked movie acting. Crosby responded: “I don’t really like any kind of work. There are so many other things I’d rather be doing.” Such as? “Oh, playin’ golf up at Pebble Beach—practically anything.”
Durein took the lead in writing to Crosby. Crosby thought it was a great idea and in early September 1946 it was announced that he would bring his $5,000, 36-hole National Pro-Am to the peninsula. Which course would host it was yet to be determined. As was the case at Rancho Santa Fe, Bing’s brother Larry would be general chairman and Maurie Luxford, tournament chairman. Locals formed a committee headed by Dan Searle, a 1-handicap golfer and past champion at Monterey Peninsula Country Club (MPCC), to attend to local details. His club agreed to supply the army of volunteers needed to manage the details on the peninsula.
In late October, Searle and Durein met with the Crosby team to hammer out the details. It was Crosby that suggested using three courses rather than just one. The PGA initially objected, “It’s never been done.” Crosby countered that nowhere else were three world-class courses—Cypress Point, Monterey Peninsula Dunes and Pebble Beach—in such close proximity. When the PGA announced that for 1947, the minimum purse would be $10,000, any concern was calmed when Crosby agreed to put up the larger purse.
They agreed that 76 pro-am teams would play one course each day. The PGA would qualify the pros and Crosby would invite the top amateurs and celebrities, like Bob Hope and Johnny Weissmuller, and even four women. Crosby hoped to again include Babe Zaharias, who not only got her amateur status back, but won the 1946 U.S. Women’s Amateur. Runner-up Clara Callendar Sherman was also on the initial list. She had grown up at MPCC, where her father was the first pro, and she, at age 12, won both the 1932 MPCC Women’s championships.
Proceeds from the tournament would again go to charity. For 1946 the funds would be split between the Sister Kenny Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and the Monterey Peninsula Community Chest.
Durein proudly announced the results of the meeting in the October 29, 1946 Monterey Peninsula Herald as “the most sensational, colossal, stupendous, breathtaking spectacle in the history of golf.” Following immediately after the Los Angeles Open, the tournament would be played January 10-12 and “officially known as the Sixth Annual $10,000 National Pro-Am Championship, Sponsored by Bing Crosby.” It wasn’t until 1966, “the 25th” tournament, that the tournament program acknowledged the numbering error, which was blamed on forgetting about the nearly washed-out event in 1937. Despite the acknowledgment, there was no correction. The errant numbering continued through 1985.
The tournament came off nearly as planned, although neither the ladies nor Bob Hope made it that first year. Celebrities besides Crosby included Dennis O’Keefe, Randolph Scott, Richard Arlen, Edgar Kennedy and Johnny Weissmuller. The latter, famous as Tarzan, paired with Ed “Porky” Oliver as part of the top-drawing foursome that also included pretournament favorite Ben Hogan, winner of the prior week’s Los Angeles Open, who was paired with top-ranked amateur Frank Stranahan.
On a picture-perfect Friday, Dick Metz led the professional scoring with a 5-under 67; seven birdies and two bogies at Cypress Point. George Fazio was second with a 68. Lloyd Mangrum aced the 7th hole for the events first hole-in-one, which helped him finish at par, 72. Pretournament favorite Ben Hogan shot a disappointing 78. With a team score of 64, Metz and partner Fred Dold tied with the team of Sam Snead and Roger Kelley, a Southern California attorney and two-time state champion. Crosby and MPCC pro Cam Puget were tied with Carmel-based teaching pro Newt Bassler and MPCC club champion Francis “Buck” Henneken, just one stroke back.
Cooler temperatures on Saturday seemed to cool-off Metz, whose 77 at MPCC dropped him back to a tie for second place with Mangrum (72-68) and Oliver (70-70) at 140. In the lead by two strokes was Fazio 68-70—138. Snead and Kelly (64-66) led the teams, with Bassler-Henneken (65-66) tied for second with the Metz-Dold team (64-67). Puget-Crosby fell back to a tie for fifth.
On Sunday at Pebble Beach, the good weather that had been enjoyed for two weeks turned. Snead (76-70-70) and Bassler (71-74-71) finished early with the only sub-par rounds of the day, and were leaders in the clubhouse at 216 for most of the day, while the golfers on the course battled a drenching rain. Metz came in with a 79 and Mangum managed a 76 to tie the leaders until Fazio came in with a 75—213.
There were no electric scoreboards back then, but with only a few golfers left on the course, Fazio was thought to be the winner. As the sun was setting, only a small gallery watched in the rain as Ed Furgol, with 72-69 for his first two rounds, hit a 5-iron from the 16th fairway that rolled in for an eagle-2 and brought him back to par for the round and 3-under for the tournament. He was tied with Fazio with two holes to play. He parred 17 and 18, and the first Crosby at Pebble Beach ended in a tie.
Despite the rain, the tournament was deemed a success. It raised more than $8,000 for charity, with the local portion going to launch a youth center in Carmel (Monterey already had one). Crosby loved the event and the locale. In 1948 he built a home near the 13th tee at Pebble Beach, splitting his time for several years between Hollywood, Pebble Beach and Hillsborough.
The tournament officially became the “Bing Crosby National Pro-Am.” Unofficially, everybody either called it “The Crosby” or “The Clambake.” For the record, they didn’t bake clams. The term, first used at Crosby’s 1938 tournament, was based on Merriam-Webster’s second definition: “A gathering characterized by noisy sociability.” That isn’t a bad description for the week-long string of parties that surround the annual tournament.
Jack Morris, former golf-pro turned sportswriter, who played in some of Bing’s early pro-ams, saw it differently, writing in Game & Gossip Magazine: “Why it is called a clambake I do not know. Not this type of tournament. The old Bing Crosby tournament was a clambake…At that tourney everyone got drunk and went around looking at pretty girls and singing and not giving much of a damn about anything except having fun…Everyone had a helluva time. This is a good tournament that we have here. Make no mistake about that. But it seems to me the boys bear down a little bit more than they used to.”
Morris wrote that in 1953, so you decide.
While the tournament has seen several changes over the years, and will again this year, the event Crosby brought to the peninsula in 1947, remains a lasting legacy of good times and great golf. Whether you call it “The Crosby” or the “AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am” (AT&T being the title sponsor since 1986), rain or shine, it is always an entertaining blend of top professional and amateur golfers on challenging and scenic courses, run by an army of volunteers and with a charity component that now raises millions of dollars each year, managed many years now by the Monterey Peninsula Foundation.
Morris was right on one score: “This is a good tournament that we have here. Make no mistake about that.”