Bing’s Concept Not Half-Baked

LA QUINTA, Calif. â€”  In 1937, Bing Crosby was unarguably the most popular entertainer in the United States, maybe the world. His records grossed in the millions, his films filled theaters. Every kid in America singing in the shower pretended he was Crosby. Crosby pioneered a new way of singing that went into the language as “crooning. “

Everybody wanted to be Bing Crosby. But Bing Crosby? He wanted to be Sam Snead. Ben Hogan. He wanted to be a golfer.

He was a scratch player. He tried out for the U.S. Amateur in the days when it was almost the major. He played in the British Open.

His zest for the game, his desire to match shots with the best, led him to hit on a unique format that revolutionized the way tournaments were conducted from then on. Bing wanted to play with the pros. So, he invited a select company of them and then picked pals, all from show biz, to play with them.

He called it a “clambake,� and it was meant to be a midwinter lark for the pros at Rancho Santa Fe. No one knew he was inventing a new way to merchandise the game of golf and lock up lifelong ties to charity.

That first year, rain fell. And fell and fell. The three-round tournament was reduced to one round (Sam Snead won it with a 68).

It didn’t matter. The field simply gathered around the piano or the bar. This was a more innocent time in golf when Walter Hagen could show up on the first tee in a tuxedo and dancing pumps or Tommy Armour would put down his glass of Scotch to pick up a club.

Bing thought he was staging a party, not a revolution. But the pro-am became as integral a part of the game of golf as the three-putt. It’s hard to imagine a regular tour event today without the pro-am. Corporate America embraced the idea like a lovesick octopus.

Raymond Floyd always hankered to re-create the mood and style of that original Crosby. He took his idea to his corporate sponsor. The result is the Lexus Challenge, which is being contested at the Citrus Course here this week. It has everything the original Crosby had but the singing around the piano or the midnight poker games.

Raymond has assembled a flotilla of senior players--characters who seem to have stepped down from portraits in the Hall of Fame. Represented in the 12-man field are winners of 12 U.S. Opens, 15 Masters, nine British Opens, and 13 PGAs.

Crosby also found out that the fascination of Celebrity America with golf rivals that of Corporate America.

When Clint Eastwood is before a camera, he’s Dirty Harry who can do no wrong--or, maybe it’s no right. Either way, he always holds the upper hand. But he willingly trades his screen omnipotence to appear before the public as a guy who might dump a seven-iron into a water hazard, take two to get out of a sand trap, or otherwise fail when they cut to the chase. He risks mortality.

Take Bryant Gumbel. On NBC’s “Today Show� every morning, he has all the answers. Every show has to be a birdie. Or at worst, a par. Every observation has to be on the flag. Or anyway, the fairway.

You would think the last thing a guy in his position would want to do would be to appear on camera duffing a five-iron, putting clear off a green or, horrors! hitting a double-play ball off a tee.

Golf is misnamed as a “game.� It’s more like a sentence. Punishment for our sins, a malaise of the soul. It is a destroyer of self-esteem. It is the most maddening of recreational endeavors, almost as if it were a test of your manhood. It is therefore surprising that the most secure of our achievers would risk venturing into this veil of doubt. Yet, even presidents of the United States have braved failure, courted fallibility on the golf course. I mean, how far can you trust a man who chooses the wrong club?

The celebrity field down here has, so to speak, its own Open winners, Masters in their own field. Part of the charm is that here, they, so to speak, don’t get the girl at the fadeout.

But, if you wanted to see Bryant Gumbel go from sand trap to sand trap, leave a four-foot putt short, top a ball over a green, you came to the wrong tournament.

He plays well now, but Gumbel knows what a fickle mistress golf can be. The son of a Chicago circuit judge, Gumbel spurned the game as a youngster in favor of football. He went to Bates College in Maine and graduated with a major in Russian history.

Gumbel parlayed the editorship in the publication “Black Sports� into a weekend sportscasting job at the NBC affiliate in Los Angeles, where his bright, inventive style caught the eye of network executives, who hired him to work in their sports department before they moved him into the “Today Show.�

Like everyone at first exposure, Gumbel thought golf was an easy game. I mean, interviewing the Russian chief of staff is pressure, right? Golf is a walk in the sun. R&R.;

Not when you’re playing Pebble Beach on national TV. That’s where Bryant Gumbel found himself one year. In a nightmare. In Dracula’s castle with a sand wedge. “I totally embarrassed myself, “ he recalls with a groan. “I couldn’t get the ball in the air. I panicked. I was hoping nobody was looking. I quit the game for five years, I was so humiliated I said I’d never pick up a golf club ever again.�

Welcome to the wonderful world of golf.

When Bryant was paired with Johnny Miller on a golf telecast years later, Miller talked him back on the course. “You have to face your fears. We’ve all gone through it. Golf just teaches you a lesson.�

Gumbel would still rather interview a Russian general, but he now treats the game with the respect it insists on. He now gets the ball in the air all right. He still feels more comfortable in the White House with a microphone than standing over a 150-yard par three with a seven-iron, but his team shot an 11-under-par in the first nine holes of the pro-am Wednesday.

That can make the game fun again, but the tournament can never wholly re-create the old Crosby. There is one big addition the Crosby never faced--television. When you missed a shot in 1937, only your partner knew it. Today, it’s on NBC. Coast to coast.

Bryant Gumbel is accustomed to being a Big Star on television. The trouble with golf is, it doesn’t understand that.