Pebble makes its drive for charity
Published: February 10, 2005
Clint Eastwood did the “Tonight Show” on Tuesday night and didn’t arrive here in time Wednesday morning. So it was up to other Pebble Beach and PGA Tour officials to hype their Billion Dollar Baby.
The tour is calling it “Drive To $1 Billion.” (Drive. Get it?) Whatever the name, it’s their effort to reach the 10-figure mark in charitable giving through Tour events, which began in 1938 and now stands at $909 million.
“Golfers give more money to charity than all the other sports combined,” said Peter Ueberroth, co-owner of Pebble Beach Golf Links and vice chairman of the Monterey Peninsula Foundation, which runs the event. Ueberroth pinch-hit with a brief speech when Eastwood, his fellow owner and the foundation’s chairman, didn’t make it back.
According to tour and tournament officials, the Crosby/AT&T has donated $50 million since its inception in 1947, with an annual haul of about $4 million. Although the tour isn’t disclosing individual events’ rankings — other than to say Dallas’ Byron Nelson Classic leads the pack — Pebble Beach is high on the list.
Huey Lewis won a $4,000 charity skin and the admiration of celebrities, pros and fans everywhere when he holed out a 40-yard chip shot on No. 3 during the Celebrity Challenge.
• Bill Murray and Chris O’Donnell split $25,000 for their charities. O’Donnell played for Boston College. Murray donated his winnings to the Salinas library system, which is in danger of closing.
• In something of a rarity, Mother Nature did the golfers a favor at Pebble Beach. A recent storm knocked out a tree on No. 6 at Pebble Beach. The tree used to sit on the right side at the end of the first fairway, opposite a bunker, meaning players who drifted left on their tee shot ran the risk of having to shoot over the tree on what is already a difficult uphill shot.
“It makes the hole totally different,” said Arron Oberholser, who finished tied for fourth here last year. “Now the guys can shoot it down the entire fairway. . . . They can just bomb it down there and they can hit whatever they want.”
• Luke Donald and Roland Thatcher won $36,000 for their charity, Spector Dance, on Tuesday in the gogirlgo.com shootout. (The result was reported incorrectly in Wednesday’s Mercury News.) Matt Gogel and Omar Uresti won $4,000 for Ag Against Hunger. Two teams were shut out in the skins format, but still won $1,000 each for their charities: Jerry Kelly and Joe Ogilvie for Community Partnership for Youth and Billy Andrade and K.J. Choi for Robert Louis Stevenson School.
• Donald Trump tees off at 9:20 a.m. at Spyglass today. He better play well: He already has a news conference set for 3 p.m.
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