Officially, Pebble Beach Is No Contest for Players

Once they reached dry land, the marketing people at Pebble Beach must have come up with some great new campaigns for next year’s golf tournament.

Everyone who arrives by boat gets in free. Players mark their golf balls with buoys. The pairings sheet will be revised to include tide tables. A new rule will be introduced: lift, clean and float.

Actually, when it’s time to start promoting the AT&T; Pebble Beach National Pro-Am next year, at least one marketing plan already is taking shape.

“I think we’ll be promoting the heck out of Peter Jacobsen,” Tournament Director Lou Russo said Tuesday. “After all, he is the defending champion, only it’ll be 1995 instead of 1996.”

Last week’s golf tournament was a historic event, all right. Jacobsen became the first PGA Tour player since 1949 to retain his title without winning. He was able to do this because for the first time since the 1949 Colonial in Fort Worth, a PGA Tour event was wiped out because of wet grounds.

That it happened at Pebble Beach, where bad weather and good seafood are a way of life, reveals much about golf’s quirky nature.

There had never been a rainout, snow-out or anything else at the Pebble Beach event in its previous 49 years of existence, although there were some close calls.

The worst might have been in 1962, when a sudden snowstorm hit on Saturday night. Gardner Dickinson practiced putting a snowball, Arnold Palmer got into a snowball fight and Jimmy Demaret said: “I know I got loaded last night, but how did I wind up in Squaw Valley?”

A week of rain coupled with on-and-off showers that hit the Monterey Peninsula on the weekend relegated the 1996 Pebble Beach tournament to footnote status: * Canceled.

Russo said there’s nothing anyone can do about that.

“When you think about it, one out of 50 is pretty darned good,” he said.

Each player in the professional field of 180 received $5,000 from the Monterey Peninsula Golf Foundation, the organizer of the tournament, which was offering a total purse of $1.5 million.

Since the tournament wound up paying $900,000 to the players, the organizers saved $600,000 of the prize money. However, the tournament also lost its ticket sales for Sunday, when play was canceled at 8:30 a.m., and Saturday ticket sales were cut into by the weather.

“I’m hoping it’ll all balance out, the prize money and the loss of ticket revenue,” Russo said.

Attendance for the week usually is about 25,000-30,000, and Russo estimated normal walk-up ticket sales for Sunday are about 3,500.

Russo said Monterey Peninsula charities received almost $1.7 million from the 1995 tournament, and he hopes this year’s contributions to charity will come close, thanks to an increase in corporate hospitality revenue as well as heavy advance ticket purchases.

There was no rain check for ticket holders.

Jeff Maggert, who led the tournament after 36 holes, said the $5,000 should be considered official money, counting toward each player’s drive to finish in the top 125 on the money list to retain playing privileges for next year.

Howard Twitty, who was six shots behind Maggert, said those are the breaks.

“Life isn’t meant to be fair,” he said. “Golf certainly isn’t meant to be fair. . . . We know that by playing the game.

“If that’s the worst break of my life, having to spend six days in Pebble Beach and not play golf for two days and still get paid $5,000, I think I’ll do just fine.”

Because 54 holes were needed to make it an official event, it’s not official money. That isn’t going to change, said David Eger, the PGA Tour’s vice president of competition who decided to wash out the tournament.

“It’s amazing it doesn’t happen more often,” he said.

Eger said it’s possible that Spyglass Hill will be removed from the rotation that includes Pebble Beach and Poppy Hills. The water wouldn’t drain from the 16th fairway on Spyglass, and that caused the cancellation.

“I think that will go into the mix,” he said. “There are certainly more than three courses on the Monterey Peninsula.”

Cypress Point, which used to be in the rotation, was dropped in 1991 because it did not adhere to the PGA Tour’s minority membership policy. Spanish Bay is a possibility, but only if there are accommodations made because of environmentally sensitive areas.

New local rules approved by both the United States Golf Assn. and the Royal and Ancient would allow players to play at Spanish Bay, but the issue of galleries following the players is not addressed.

The rules of golf cover just about everything else, however. There are enough pages about water, water hazards, lateral water hazards and casual water to paper a stateroom.

As for rain, well, that’s sort of out of golf’s control.

“I guess you’re always at risk when you’re playing sports outdoors,” Eger said.

This week’s tournament is in La Jolla, where the forecast is for sunny weather and mild temperatures. This time, there is a chance for players to tan, not rust.