Rain Waters Down Pebble Beach Again

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: The last round of the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am was washed out Sunday.

Just as surely as rain is wet and mud is icky, showers follow this tournament around like some big, soggy magnet.

Payne Stewart didn’t have to hit a single golf ball in the final round of an official, rain-shortened 54-hole tournament and he still managed to win, which is what you would have to consider good fortune for a guy who had won once since the 1991 U.S. Open.

Stewart really felt bad about having the last 18 holes called off. Oh, yeah, sure he did.

“I’m not going to lie to you,” Stewart said. “It feels pretty good. I would have liked to prove myself and win over 72 holes, but I’m going to take this and run.”

Stewart’s third-round 73 at Spyglass, where he birdied the last hole Saturday, was just enough to finish one shot ahead of Frank Lickliter at 10-under 206. Stewart collected $504,000 for the victory, the 10th of his 18-year career.

On his last hole Saturday, Stewart hit a five-iron 185 yards to one foot from the hole, then rolled in the birdie putt that made him a winner some 24 hours later.

“I knew then that it would be good to be the leader after 54 holes,” Stewart said. “I have seen the weather forecast, I knew what could happen around here. And I was right.”

Lickliter said the only hole he would like to have back from Saturday’s 71 at Spyglass was his three-put eighth when he missed the second one from 10 feet. Lickliter still picked up $302,400--the largest paycheck of his career.

Then there is the weather issue. It was the third time in the last four years that the AT&T; has been either rain-shortened or totally washed out. Arvin Ginn, the tour’s tournament director, shrugged when he was asked what the tour could do about that.

“When you start trying to outguess the elements, what do you do?”

What, indeed. Lickliter said he doesn’t think the event’s recent history of bad weather will keep players from coming back.

“This is such a gorgeous place,” he said. “If you told me it was going to rain for the next 20 years, I’d still come back.”

Play was suspended at 9:30 a.m. Sunday and finally called off at 2 p.m. When the siren blew, Pebble Beach was already considered unplayable because of water pooling on the greens.

Ginn said they would have attempted to finish play on Monday, but that was considered impossible because the forecast is for more rain.

David Duval, who eagled the first hole Sunday when he holed an eight-iron to go to five-under, had just killed a drive on No. 2 when play was halted.

“Shoot, I was going to win this thing too,” Duval said, half-joking.

After that, Duval rode back to the locker room and used the time to plan this week’s skiing trip to Sun Valley, Idaho.

There should be snow there, which is a pleasant change of pace from the AT&T;’s penchant for rain.

This tournament has managed to carve its niche in golf lore--and not just because of the celebrities and the Bing Crosby Clambake stuff--but because of the weather.

It even has snowed during the tournament, in 1962, when snow, rain, hail and sleet made the course unplayable on what should have been its last day.

In that Crosby 37 years ago, the first four groups had begun Sunday when play was called off until Monday. Dean Martin had to pull out because he had a movie commitment, which left pro partner Ken Venturi to go by himself. Doug Ford wound up winning with a closing 76 on Monday in high winds, when Don Massengale was the only player to break par.

So-called “Crosby Weather” is legendary around here, wrecking umbrellas, shoes and playing schedules, but the whole thing has reached borderline ridiculous status in recent years.

In 1996, PGA Tour officials called off the tournament on Sunday with only 36 holes in the books. But the Tour was roundly criticized for making the decision to scrub the tournament early in the morning when the sun came out before noon. Worse, Pebble Beach was dry enough to stage a media tournament Monday.

Because of that fiasco, the tour reaffirmed its position of making every attempt at completing every tournament, despite the weather. That accounts for what happened in the 1998 Pebble Beach event.

It rained so much that only 36 holes had been played by Sunday. When Sunday’s round was rained out, the tour decided to make it a 54-hole event and try to play the final 18 holes Monday, since 54 holes is the minimum for an official event and to award prize money.

Of course, it rained even harder Monday and not a single ball was hit.

This caused the most unusual scheduling decisions in tour history: the final 18 holes of the tournament were reset for March 2, the day after the Nissan Open. Then that date was changed to Aug. 17, the day after the PGA Championship at Sahalee in Redmond, Wash., and a mere 6 1/2 months after the AT&T; had begun.

There has been some speculation that tournament dates would be switched to get out of the rainy season, but that’s unlikely since the courses in the rotation--Pebble Beach, Spyglass and Poppy Hills--are desired tourist attractions during the summer.

Stewart said he felt sorry for AT&T.;

“They’re paying a lot of money on advertising and they’re not getting their bucks’ worth,” he said. “They may want to take a hard look at the dates.”

Stewart said Jim Armstrong, the chief executive officer of AT&T;, told him the tournament might wind up as the last date on the West Coast swing, a spot traditionally held by the Nissan Open in L.A. The idea is that better weather would be possible here by then. But if there’s anything we have learned at this tournament, the weather isn’t going to guarantee anything.