GOLF : U. S. Open in Pebble Beach Is Major Hope for O’Meara

For some players on the PGA Tour, the AT&T; Pebble Beach National Pro-Am is an event to be avoided.

The courses--Pebble Beach, Cypress Point and Spyglass Hill--are demanding, especially when it rains, or the wind is howling off the ocean at 40 m.p.h as it did in the recent tournament.

For Mark O’Meara, however, there isn’t a better place to play.

He has defied the elements in winning the Pebble Beach tournament--formerly known as the Bing Crosby Clambake-- three times: 1985, 1988 and again last week.

Moreover, he won the State Amateur at Pebble Beach in 1979 and was two shots from a playoff at the Crosby in 1984.

O’Meara, 33, also has won several foreign events. But he has won only five times on the tour since getting his PGA Tour card in 1980.

Since three of his victories were at Pebble Beach, O’Meara was asked why he has fared so well there.

“I seem to play well on tough, demanding courses,” he said. “I make a lot of pars, and I don’t have a lot of tragedies.”

O’Meara is aware, though, that a pro gets ultimate recognition by winning a major tournament, identified as the U.S. Open, British Open, Masters and PGA Championship.

Tom Kite, the PGA player of the year in 1989 and the all-time leading money winner, is constantly reminded that he has yet to win a major in his 18 years on the tour.

“When you win some tournaments on the PGA Tour and make some money, the next thing you focus in on are the four majors,” O’Meara said. “That has to be in the back of my mind this year.”

It’s also in the back of his mind that the 1992 U.S. Open will be played at Pebble Beach.

Nonetheless, O’Meara has prospered since joining the tour, with $2,858,007 in earnings.

“When I started out on the tour, I didn’t have any money,” said O’Meara, who attended Mission Viejo High School and Cal State Long Beach. “I had some people who were going to help sponsor me, and my dad said, ‘Let’s not rush anything. Let’s see if we can do it on our own.’

“I said, ‘Dad, the Bob Hope Desert Classic starts next week and I have $1,700 in the bank.’ He told me not worry and that we’ll figure it out. Sure enough, I played decent that week and finished eighth or ninth the next week at Phoenix, and we were off and running without any financial support from anybody.”

His father, Robert, Mark’s proud amateur partner in the recent Pebble Beach tournament, didn’t envision his son as a future star on the tour at an early age.

“Frankly, until he won the U.S. Amateur in 1979, I didn’t know he was that good,” the senior O’Meara said. “And even then, because Mark is such a nice person, I didn’t know if he was the kind of person with the killer instinct you need to be a touring pro.

“I envisioned him living a nice, safe, comfortable life as a businessman, playing in the amateur tournaments.”

Even though Johnny Miller has won 23 tour events, including the U.S. and British Opens, it would seem that, at 42, his best shots are behind him.

Now he’s taking some shots at his fellow pros as a color commentator on golf for NBC.

In a sport in which the players are seldom criticized, Miller said he is not going to be “sugary” in his comments.

“I’m not going to say anything bad, but I’m going to say the truth,” Miller said. “You see guys every week who have a chance to win and somehow they don’t pull it off.

“And (commentators) don’t explain in depth why these things are happening.

“On TV, they only talk about the positive. They don’t really say the reason he didn’t do this, or that he’s choking, or he’s nervous, or he wanted it too bad. I have always talked from the heart, and I will continue to do so.”

As an example, in the Bob Hope tournament last month, when Mike Ditka, the Chicago Bears’ coach, seemed frustrated, Miller said: “He looks like Curtis Strange after a three-putt.”

The San Francisco Examiner reported that Strange, who is known for his temper, complained to PGA Tour Commissioner Deane Beman and wrote a letter to Miller saying he was trying to change his negative image.

“I can see Curtis’ viewpoint,” Miller said. “Maybe that’s going beyond the boundaries of being fair and I want to be fair. I have to be real careful.”

How windy was it during the third round of the Pebble Beach tournament? Well, pro Ed Dougherty took a 14 on the 17th hole with 11 putts.

Mike Wiebe, father of pro Mark Wiebe, watched Dougherty’s losing battle with the wind.

“He putted the ball toward the hole and it blew back to him three times,” Wiebe told the San Jose Mercury News. “On the fourth putt, the ball got five feet past the cup and stopped. He barely tapped it toward the cup and the wind got it and blew it off the green--again.”

Golf Notes

A record 1,228,131 rounds of golf were played on the City’s 13 courses in 1989, according to statistics compiled by the Los Angeles City Recreation and Parks Dept. The total surpassed the previous high of 1,198,145 set in 1987. The record was broken even though Rancho Park, usually the busiest 18-hole municipal golf course in the country, recorded 118,659 rounds, a decrease of 9,310 from the previous year. The course was closed for part of the year for construction.

The biggest increase in play was recorded in the San Fernando Valley where Balboa, Encino, Woodley Lakes and Hansen Dam totaled 446,344 rounds, an increase of 42,948 over 1988. . . . The 11th annual Friendly Hills charity tournament will be held Feb. 19. Pro golfers Scott Simpson, Mac O’Grady, Gary McCord and Mark Pfeil will participate in a clinic at the Whittier course.

C. Grant Spaeth, a Palo Alto lawyer, was elected president of the United States Golf Assn. Spaeth succeeds William C. Battle, who is retiring after serving the customary two years. . . . Prize money for the U.S. Open, which will be held June 14-17 at Medinah Country Club in suburban Chicago, has been raised to $1.2 million. First place is worth $220,000.

The Shearson Lehman Hutton Open is the next PGA Tour event, starting Thursday at Torrey Pines in La Jolla. It will be followed by the Nissan Los Angeles Open Feb. 22-25 at Riviera. . . . There haven’t been any multiple winners thus far on the tour. By February last year, Steve Jones and Mark Calcavecchia had each won two events. Calcavecchia is the defending L.A. Open champion. Arnold Palmer is the only repeat winner, 1966 and ‘67, when the event was held at Rancho Park.

The Spanish Bay Pro-Am, formerly the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, begins today at three courses on the Monterey Peninsula. . . . The Sea Horse Tournament, benefiting Children’s Hospital, will be held April 16 at Rolling Hills Country Club. The tournament format is amateur teams along with members of the USC and UCLA men’s golf teams.

Friends of Joe Norwood point out that the 98-year-old Norwood is the oldest member of the PGA, not Gene Sarazen. However, Sarazen, 87, has been a PGA member longer, having joined in 1921. . . . A new LPGA tour event will be held at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas March 7-11.