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Amateurs, Just Like Us Celebrities Take Their Best Shot at the Pro-Am B Y L A R R Y H A R L A N D • P H OTO G R A P H Y B Y M A R C H O W A R D W hile hard-core golf addicts take great pleasure in analyzing Phil Mickelson's smooth left-handed swing from a pristine fairway, the rest of us are drawn to the annual AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am for a different reason—to wit- ness failure. Taking a break from our humdrum lives, it's somewhat refreshing to watch comedian Ray Romano toil each year to make the tourna- ment's final day (he's 0 for 14), to compare ESPN anchor Chris Berman's swing to a rusty gate, to see the perfectly coiffed actor Andy Garcia blast three times from a sand trap, curs- ing through a clenched cigar. With their faults exposed, humbled before us, every swing counting against them, celebrities put themselves in vulnerable positions during the PGA Tour's last remaining pro-am event. Out on the course there are no do-overs, no publicists spinning their failures, no places to hide—just an amusing series of pratfalls, assort- ed miscues, and many chagrined faces. "I hear some snickering, sure. You just keep playing," said Berman, an 18 handicap, before the 2014 tournament. "But I hear so much encour- agement from folks, and it's always appreciated. Listen, I'm the high handicap here, but I don't care. I shoot 94, that's what I do." For fellow hackers in the gallery, it's nice to see someone else struggle on the golf course. "People may think I have time to practice golf, but [the AT&T] is in the middle of football sea- son," he says. (Berman hosts "NFL Countdown," among other programs on ESPN.) "And it's snowing at home," he adds. "Where would I practice in Connecticut? I putted in the basement two weeks ago." For decades, no celebrity came to symbolize futility on the fairways at Pebble Beach more than the late actor Jack Lemmon. He fought hard each year to make the cut, but despite playing in the tournament 35 times, he never teed it up on Sunday for the final round. Lemmon's failure became legendary. One year, the appropriately named actor was so deep in a rain-soaked sand trap that he lost a shoe. In 1969, ABC's Jim McKay told a nationwide televi- sion audience: 'And now here's Jack Lemmon, about to hit that all-important eighth shot.' The modern-day version of Lemmon has to be funnyman Romano, whose lengthy efforts to play Pebble on Sunday led to an HBO docu- mentary called "Making the Cut." Despite play- ing golf nearly every day, and hiring some of the top swing coaches in the world, Romano has not made the cut at Pebble in 14 years as a par- ticipant. Only 25 lucky amateurs get to play on Sunday each year. Romano calls himself a "ham-and-egger," a slightly derogatory phrase to describe an ordi- nary person, someone who's in the fight but never crowned champion. The phrase is derived Pro Surfer Kelly Slater, a regular amateur golfer at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am tournament, plays the course with an admirable handicap of 4. 120 C A R M E L M A G A Z I N E • W I N T E R 2 0 1 5 Photo: Marc Howard/Reproduced by Permission of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.