Come Rain Or Come Shine, Arnie Attracts His Army

Saturday’s play at the Pebble Beach pro-am had been called off hours earlier and twilight was pushing its way onto the Monterey Peninsula.

Bundled in a warm jacket against the evening chill and with the brim of his hat pulled tight over his gray hair, a sixty-something man sauntered over to the practice green, dropped three balls on the moist ground and started putting with a familiar knockkneed stance.

The hundreds of autograph seekers milling near the green, hoping for a Kevin Costner sighting, slowly recognized the man.

“It’s the King,” someone in the crowd said. And just like that Arnold Palmer was surrounded, giving autographs, posing for pictures and staying until everyone was happy.

Perhaps it was practice that drew the 67-year-old Palmer out to the green. Perhaps it was a love of the game. Perhaps it was a love of people. Somewhere in all of those possible reasons is the truth, and the reason Palmer is still one of the game’s most compelling figures.

He loves golf and he loves people. He can’t walk away from either.

“I still feel like I have a couple of good tournaments left in me,” Palmer said.

TV TALK

The AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am kicked off more than 110 hours of golf coverage this year on CBS, but the network got not one live shot of the actual tournament on the air.

What could have been a disaster turned into some highly entertaining programming on Saturday. As soon as play was canceled coordinating producer Frank Chirkinian jumped to action and put together a celebrity event that grabbed strong ratings.

“It was being put together as it was being put on the air,” CBS Sports president David Kenin said. “We were out rounding up guys on the putting green. It was a true team effort. It could have turned out any way.”

But it turned out just fine. Bill Murray wore bib overalls. Bill Murray hit an exploding ball. Bill Murray made a long putt. Bill Murray won the putt-off with a great lag putt.

And Kevin Costner and Andy Garcia got maximum airtime.

It all translated into a 4.1 overnight rating, a 3 percent increase over the Saturday ratings last year at Pebble Beach and the highest rated sports program in the time slot.

Sunday was a different story. The network was stuck with year-old highlights, some interviews and a call-in show.

“It was typical rainout programming,” Kenin said. “We tried to get some live programming together with the pros but we needed to get the money together and it didn’t happen.”

The CBS crew, which will do the Masters, the PGA Championship and the Presidents Cup, was disappointed by the cancellation.

“It was the kickoff to our season,” Kenin said. “Our guys were so pumped to do this.”

CELEBRITY WATCH

Celebrities, like many of us regular folks, love golf. They just get to play better courses than we do.

Nowhere was that more evident than at Pebble Beach this past weekend. Kevin Costner, Clint Eastwood, Andy Garcia, Bill Murray, Randy Quaid, James Woods and others were having a ball in some horrible weather.

And all of them played a respectable game, ranging from Quaid with a six handicap to Woods with a 21.

On Saturday morning when much of the Monterey Peninsula was reduced to a swamp and everyone was waiting to see if play would be canceled there was Costner on the practice green, rapping putt after putt.

Maybe that’s why, with the help of Gary McCord, he was able to pick up the game well enough for his summer-release film “Tin Cup” that he already plays to a 16 handicap.

Clearly, Dancing With Wolves doesn’t have to worry about Putting Like A Gorilla.

Celebrities like golf so much they now have their own tour: The Celebrity Golf Association, an organization founded in 1989 by Jim Karvellas and Ray Levy.

“The idea was to have single-digit golfers who have gained recognition in sports, entertainment and politics compete,” Karvellas said.

The first of this year’s seven events, the Dan Marino CGA Invitational, will be this weekend at Weston Hills Country Club in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Those scheduled to compete in the 54-hole event include former major league pitcher Rick Rhoden, who averaged 69.89 in six tournaments last year, and John Brodie, the former quarterback who has won money on the Senior PGA Tour.

It also includes on ex-vice president - Dan Quayle.

“Man, some of those guys are great,” TV personality Maury Povich, who will play in several CGA events this year, said while taking his four handicap to Pebble Beach. “I’m 70 yards behind some of those guys off the tee. Jim McMahon hits the ball as far as anyone.”

Many of the CGA players are athletes and Brodie thinks he knows why.

“Athletes don’t interact with each other as much as they used to,” Brodie said. “Golf is a game of interaction. These guys love to play and they play it really well. There are about 15 scratch players out there,” he said of the CGA Tour.

CHIP SHOTS

It was 25 years ago, on Feb. 6, when astronaut Alan Shepard attached the head of a Spalding 6-iron to a tool used to scoop up lunar soil, stepped on the moon’s surface and hit the first outof-this-world golf shot. Shepard marked the occasion by visiting USGA headquarters in Far Hill, N.J., where the club is on display … Jack Nicklaus, Greg Norman, Fred Couples and Raymond Floyd will play a skins match Feb. 27 before the Doral-Ryder Open. The nine-hole match will have $25,000 at stake … Taylor Made Golf has filed actions against at least 30 companies for selling knockoff copies of the Burner Bubble … The Golf Channel will televise the Australian Skins Game Feb. 9-10 live at 11 p.m. EST. Laura Davies, Tom Watson, John Daly and Peter Senior will compete.