Let There Be Pebble

by Jack, Zachary Michael

• ISBN13: 9780803233577
• ISBN10: 0803233574
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-06-01
• Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr

Summary

It was "scary," Jack Nicklaus said of Pebble Beach, which gave him nightmares so acute he famously woke his wife on the eve of his 1972 U.S. Open victory totally spooked. "It's not a golf course," sportswriter Jim Murray wrote, "it's a hellship." Golf writer Dan Jenkins once joked that the famed venue of the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am should be dubbed "Double Bogey-by-the-Sea." A one-time failed Division One golf walk-on, Zachary Michael Jack opts to stare down an early midlife crisis by chronicling a U.S. Open year spent at Pebble, object of his ailing father's fantasies and site of the nation's number one public course and its fairy-tale host town, Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. There along the blue Pacific, he traces the colorful, capricious, and comical world of golf on the Monterey Peninsula as never before via interviews with legends of the game Johnny Miller, Gary Player, and Tom Watson; with today's brightest stars--Padraig Harrington, Phil Mickelson, and Bubba Watson; and with some of its most famous celebrity linksters--actor Bill Murray, Olympic soccer star Brandi Chastain, and billionaire entrepreneur Charles Schwab. Conducting more than one hundred interviews, Jack ranges far and wide to get the scoop, talking golfing haunts with the bestselling golf novelist, Michael Murphy; teeing up with members of a Carmel-based worldwide golfing society devoted to mystical play; learning to play Pebble at the knee of one of the Top 50 Teachers in America and with a Carmel-based journeyman pro described as "a golf savant"; and raising a cup with a lifelong Pebble Beach resident and caddy who, unbeknownst to the hackers he shepherds, is a hall of fame golfer. By turns hilarious, haunting, and historic, Let There Be Pebble reveals the utter uniqueness--the people, the rich history, the unforgettable setting and sporting culture--of this one-of-a-kind golfing cathedral.

Table of Contents

Then God Created the Heavens and Earth, and Carmel-by-the-Sea, and God Said, ôLet There Be Pebbleö	p. 1
Dark Knights, Great Whites, Dear Young Watsons, Fuzzy Memories, and Felonious Meetings of Land and Sea	p. 5
Bill Murray's Cinderella Story Meets Slu-Dog Millionaire's	p. 23
Shivas Irons, the Great White Whale, and Golf in the Kingdom of Pebble	p. 34
Hitting the Books at Pebble's School of Hard Rocks	p. 58
How to Lose Your Pebble Virginity in Eighteen So-Not-Easy Holes	p. 74
The Ballad of Bobby Clampett and Casey Boyns	p. 101
Where the Bodies Are Buried: Touching Up the Mona Lisa, The Myth of the Fifth, and Other Chilling Tales from Stillwater Cove	p. 121
Links, Love, and Lust in the Garden of Eastwood	p. 142
Bubba Watson Tweets Cheats; Rickie Fowler Ducks Haircut; Mark Brooks Smokes Field, Fags; and All the Other News That's Fit to Print from Pebble's Other Pro-Am	p. 164
Mayors, Millionaires, (Life) Mulligans, and (Re)Morse East of Eastwood	p. 180
Swinging in the New Year: High Balls, Catcalls, and Last Calls at Ye Olde Crosby Clambake	p. 205
All Shook Up at the AT&T National Pro-Am: Son of Iowa Meets Tiger's ôBig Brotherö Meets Asian King of Rock-and-Roll Meets Hungry Godzillas	p. 229
We Are the Major Champions, My Friends: Pebble and Spyglass Hill on AT&T Moving Day	p. 243
D. J. Does Valentine's Day: Clint, Climax, and Eye Candy Sunday at the Clambake	p. 258
The Boy Wonder, the Bü;ndchen-Brady, the Bathetic Mex, the Bra-Bearer, and the Boomer: Celebrity Rounds at Carmel-by-the-Sea-and-Be-Seen	p. 276
Hard, Brown, and Out of Control: U.S. Open Performance Anxiety and Premature Tony Jacklination	p. 290
May U.S. Open Winds Be Always at Your Back, May 17-Mile Drive Lay at Your Feet, May Pebble Rise to Meet You	p. 313
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