Crosby Pro-Am Moved to North Carolina : Top Golfers May Shun Event Since No PGA Sanction Is Likely

The Bing Crosby charity golf tournament, a California fixture for 44 years, will be moved to North Carolina next year and apparently will not be sanctioned by the Professional Golfers’ Assn.

Kathryn Crosby, Bing’s widow, announced in April that she was canceling the tournament, founded in 1937 by the late singer-actor. She said Tuesday, however, that the Bermuda Run Country Club in Winston-Salem, N.C., will be the site of the next Crosby tournament in the first week of June, 1986, and the permanent home for the event, once known as the Bing Crosby National Pro-Amateur but more informally known as the Crosby Clambake.

Crosby started his tournament in Southern California, but it has been played on the Monterey peninsula since 1947, bringing together 168 pro golfers and 168 entertainers, sports personalities and businessmen.

A spokesperson for Crosby said that the famous actor-singer’s widow has not sought PGA sanction for the tournament.

Without PGA sanction, the tournament will most likely be a celebrity-type tournament not including the top touring professionals.

A PGA tournament, the Westchester Open, is also scheduled the first week in June at Harrison, N.Y.

“There has been an overwhelming consensus that Bing’s golf tournament is a national tradition which must be preserved,” Mrs. Crosby said.

In announcing the cancellation of the tournament in April, she said that Crosby would never have agreed to “attempts to commercialize” his tournament and turn it into “just another corporate sideshow.”

She made that announcement a month after American Telephone & Telegraph had offered to co-sponsor the tournament, and share the name, for $750,000.

In the wake of Mrs. Crosby’s announcement, the Monterey Peninsula Golf Foundation, which has sponsored the event for years at Pebble Beach, said it would continue to hold the tournament under a different name.

“We’re going to go ahead with the tournament,” William Borland, chairman of the Monterey golf foundation, said Tuesday. “We’re going to go ahead and do it this year and there’s no reason to believe it won’t be highly successful.”

Meanwhile, Mrs. Crosby said: “I am most grateful to all the individuals, country clubs, charities and corporations who have unconditionally offered their facilities and financial support. The choice of a new site was indeed difficult. It was even suggested that I select a different course each year from my list of major candidates, but I am sure that everyone will understand my decision when I say that the permanent home of the Crosby tournament will be the lovely Bermuda Run Country Club.

“As always, all proceeds will go to deserving charities, including, of course, the Alzheimer Assn., which was the first to point out the many advantages of North Carolina’s beautiful Bermuda Run.”