A few links left to golf’s fun time

Tom Dreesen is a golfer and famous comedian, certainly not in that order. His yuks remain more important than his yips.

Still, this is his time of year, when celebrities get to play with pros, when golf gaffes bring guffaws and everybody is OK with that.

Three weeks ago, it was the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic. This week, it’s the AT&T; here.

Dreesen is a veteran of the hit-and-giggle circuit. He is sometimes overlooked in the midst of Bill Murray’s silly hat or George Lopez’s new golf-shoe dance step.

A lot of the pros wish the amateurs all would be overlooked, but that’s another story for another day.

Dreesen says that the concept of celebrities playing the earlier rounds with the pros goes back to the days of Bing Crosby, the original host of this event. He called it a clambake. Then, 20 years ago, Corporate America took it over, just as Corporate America takes over everything. Competition used to matter most. Now, it is the effectiveness of marketing and branding. Games were once games. Now, they are billboards and TV programming.

But that’s another story for another day.

Dreesen says Crosby wanted to make sure people who paid to watch were entertained. Let’s sprinkle in some celebrities and have some fun, he said.

Crosby also wanted to pay back those who volunteer to work these events and get little but memories in return.

That’s why Dreesen has, for several years, helped produce and worked as master of ceremonies at an annual Wednesday night show designed to thank these people. This year’s event featured the likes of Ray Romano, Kevin James, Huey Lewis, Michael Bolton and Lopez, plus that always-popular singing sensation, Kevin Costner.

“In Vegas,” Dreesen says, “they’d call that a million and a half dollars’ worth of entertainment.”

In the first round Thursday, while Murray mugged and Romano hit a pitch shot over the top of James’ head, Dreesen was miles away at a different course, chatting quietly with people along the ropes and getting off some one-liners. Mostly, he played golf and had fun.

At 63, the Sherman Oaks resident is not so caught up in his own success that he can take for granted the path to a place such as Pebble Beach.

“I grew up on the South Side of Chicago, and lived in a shack,” he says. “I had eight brothers and sisters, and five of us slept in the same bed. I used to shine shoes, set pins at the local bowling alley.”

And work as a caddie.

“I’d carry two bags if I could, anything to help feed my brothers and sisters,” he says.

Being around the golf course, learning the game, rubbing elbows with successful people who treated him well, left its mark.

He went on to a career in show business, including doing the opening act for Frank Sinatra for 14 years.

“He’d sing ‘Come Fly With Me,’ and so I did,” Dreesen says. “We’d hit 45 to 50 cities a year.”

He jokes that those days helped him to better relate to his onetime celebrity tournament partner, John Daly.

“John is the Sinatra of the golf tour,” Dreesen says. “Sinatra never went to bed before dawn, smoked unfiltered Camels and drank Jack Daniel’s straight.”

He says that when he was a caddie back in the Chicago area, he used to watch the Hope and the Crosby. Now, he gets to walk down the 18th fairway at Pebble as a player.

“I’m living a little boy’s dream,” he says.

He carries a 6 handicap, among the best of the celebrities. Sometimes, that’s a problem.

“A couple of years ago, at the Hope, I played with Steve Pate and he had a terrible day,” says Dreesen, who shot a 77 as Pate carded an 81.

“So the next day, I see his wife and ask her how she is, and she tells me not so good. She says she was awakened at 4 a.m. by a shadow of somebody walking in her hotel room. She was scared, but then realized it was Steve. She asked him what was wrong, and he said he couldn’t sleep, that he had been pacing.

“ ‘I got beat by a ... comedian,’ ” he said.

That next day, sufficiently inspired, Pate shot 62.

Thursday, Dreesen walked down the 18th fairway of Pebble as one of the better stories of the first round. On No. 16, he chipped in for a birdie. On No. 17, the impossible par-three right on the ocean, with winds gusting toward the tee box at 30 mph, he hit his tee shot 15 feet above the cup in the short rough, then chili-dipped his first chip about three feet. Undaunted, he stepped back up and chipped a delicate little shot down the hill and into the cup for a par.

On the 18th, after hitting his tee shot out of bounds, he wowed the crowd with a 40-foot putt that saved his bogey.

Then, he went to the scorer’s tent, signed for his 77 and realized his playing partner, pro Robert Gamez, had a 79. That triggered the Steve Pate story, and possibly some interesting dynamics for Team Gamez-Dreesen, before the tournament has a cut and the remaining pros play the last day alone.

All of that, of course, is another story for another day.

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Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.