Global Golf Post - August 6, 2010

1977
To The Moon, Alliss, To The Moon

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Pebble Beach hadn’t exactly become the course-de-jour for majors, but suddenly the golf organizations, with their East Coast thinking, realized there was this place on the bluffs above Carmel Bay that might be a decent place for a tournament.

The U.S. Open finally made it to Pebble in 1972, and then the PGA of America showed up in 1977, the first time its championship had been in California in almost 50 years.

Lanny Wadkins was the winner, his only major. Or, in sad truth, Gene Littler was the loser. It would have been a great story, sort of like Tom Watson in the 2009 British Open, if subtracting a few years. However, it never came to be. Littler, then 47, played wonderfully to lead for the first three rounds, but age and Wadkins, five shots behind, caught Gene on the back nine. After the two tied at 8-un- der-par 282, a shot ahead of Jack Nicklaus, Wadkins won the first sudden-death playoff ever employed in a major with a birdie on the third extra hole.

The PGA hasn’t been back since, and perhaps neither has Peter Alliss, the Englishman who then was commenting for the network that televised the tournament in the United States.

Alliss and Ben Wright had been invited to dinner at the home of a Pebble Beach couple after the third round, which because of the three-hour time differential from the East finished around 3 p.m.

By Art Spander

Peter Alliss

What Alliss did before arriving at the home several hours later – dinner was at 7:30 p.m. – is open to speculation, but shortly before the meal was served he grew angry with America. Sort of a prelude to his irritation after the 1999 Ryder Cup, when he described our winning side quite unpleasantly.

One debate led to another, and the next
thing anyone knew, Alliss was telling the other
guests, in effect, “How dare you talk about what
you don’t know. You people never got bombed
during World War II. You don’t have a clue what
war is.”
After Wright served as a peace-keeper, Alliss
was reminded about Pearl Harbor and also the fact
that thousands of U.S. servicemen died fighting
for freedom in Europe and the Pacific.

Whether it was apocryphal or actual, the story appeared the next day and an apologetic Alliss, unsure of the address of the hostess, sent flowers to every home on the block.

What is certain is Pebble’s par- 5 14th was every bit as difficult and frustrating in 1977 as it became during the recent U.S. Open, when Paul Casey took a triple-bogey eight.

In the 1977 PGA, Gary Campbell, a fine fellow who then was an assistant pro at San Francisco’s Olympic Club, took a whole bundle of putts on the 14th green and shot something in the low 90s.

A couple of journalists, one (ahem) who was friends with Campbell, started telling themselves they could break 90 at Pebble, which, with high rough and set up for a major, would have been impossible. They verified that by going out Monday after the tournament and failing to break 100.