Sport: Tribal Rite

Tribal Rite Playing a qualifying round on the rugged, wind-whipped links at Pebble Beach, Calif., a nervous young Nevada golf pro named Tony Lema tried too hard to recover from a bad lie, took a prodigious swing—and disappeared. He had fallen off an 18-ft. cliff. No one seemed surprised. This was the 16th annual performance of the West Coast tribal rite—complete with fairway high jinks and off-course bottle belting—known as the Bing Crosby National Pro-Amateur Golf Championship. Lema’s leap was just the kind of accidental clowning that the crowd had come to see.

Round of Parties. The best golfers in the U.S. had scrambled for invitations to “the Crosby.” Big-name pros drew partners from a list of blue-ribbon amateurs that boasted movie stars, corporation presidents, politicians, even retired General of the Army Omar Bradley. “One of the greatest Americans of all time.” said the announcer as he introduced Bradley to the crowd. “You don’t expect me to hit the ball after that, do you?” asked the general. The routine was the same for all players. Daytime: a round on the lovely, exclusive course at Cypress Point, a crack at the demanding layout of the Monterey Peninsula Country Club, and then, for the pairs with the 40 best 36-hole scores, a playoff at Pebble Beach. Evening: a round of the parties that brightened every clubhouse and properly stocked private home from Carmel to Cannery Row.

Sponsor Crosby was busy making a movie, and, pleading lack of practice, did not play in his own tournament. In his place, Comedian Bob Hope happily hammed up the job of host, and got the tournament off to a relaxed start from which, as usual, it never recovered. When Orchestra Leader Phil Harris outdrove him, Hope glowered at his red-capped, red-socked opponent and tried some freestyle gamesmanship. “You’ve turned sober on me,” he accused Harris darkly.

Road to Morocco. In spite of all the trimmings and the press of the unregimented crowd, most of the contestants turned in some flashy golf. Hope, teamed with burly Pro Mike Souchak, couldn’t hit his hat and got lost in Cypress Point’s tricky sand traps (on one hole a photographer ground his golf ball into the sand to make things a little tougher for picture purposes). He and Souchak failed to qualify for the final round. “I’m going snow-blind from sand,” said Hope. “This is like The Road to Morocco.”

By the time Open Champion Gary Middlecoff and San Francisco Hotelman Ed Crowley finished with 187. to set a tournament record and win the team title, golfers and gallery alike were too relaxed to care much that Florida’s Jay Hebert had won the individual pro prize of $2,500—though it was a pleasant excuse for raising a glass in one last toast.