Alfonso Ribeiro is again within the subject on the AT&T Pebble Seashore Professional-Am this week.
getty photographs
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — In 1937, when Bing Crosby first hosted what turned the Clambake, an annual gathering of golf-mad, cocktail-happy gadabouts, the celeb pro-am was a novel idea.
Even a technology later, when Crosby’s pal, Bob Hope, stamped his identify on a Tour cease within the California desert, the crossover of elite golf and leisure barely registered as a pop-cultural blip.
Instances change, although. The world modifications, too.
The seed that Crosby planted has grown into an trade — a cottage trade, anyway, massive sufficient to maintain a star golf circuit, drawing massive crowds and sponsors and, perhaps most impressively, novice A-listers who’ve turned the rota right into a part-time gig.
Pebble Seashore Professional-Am celeb handicaps: The celebrities enjoying in 2023
We should always make this clear: Alfonso Ribeiro hasn’t give up his day job and doesn’t plan to. That will be plain loopy; it’s been good to him.
To non-golf followers, the amiable 51-year-old is well known as an actor, comic and TV persona, a former star on The Contemporary Prince of Bel-Air, amongst different sitcoms; the present host of America’s Funniest House Movies; and co-host of Dancing with the Stars.
Golf followers with tunnel imaginative and prescient, then again, are apt to see Ribeiro as one thing else. Along with being the voice of PGA Tour Champions commercials, he’s a golf junkie who appears to be in all places directly, pegging it in any and all occasions that pair professional golfers with luminaries from different fields.
“This recreation has been a blessing to me, little question about it,” Ribeiro advised me week. “Apart from household and work, it has introduced extra rewards than something in my life.”
It’s a sun-kissed, mid-week morning in Monterey, and Ribeiro is absorbing the environment prematurely of Crosby’s outdated occasion, a match now often known as the AT&T Pebble Seashore Professional-Am. The temper is directly festive and acquainted to Ribeiro, who began participating right here in, what…2015? 2016?
“You’ll be able to in all probability Google it,” he says (You’ll be able to; 2016 it’s!).
It’s no surprise Ribeiro loses monitor. Prior to now 12 months alone, he has made it to 4 of what he payments as “the 5 majors” of the pro-am circuit: the American Century Championship, in Tahoe; the Hilton Grand Holidays Match of Champions, in Lake Nona; the Invited Celeb Traditional, in Dallas; and now the AT&T. It pains him to have missed the Pure Insurance coverage Championship, additionally at Pebble. But it surely couldn’t be helped. He was locked in for capturing Dancing with the Stars.
Throw in different golf-a-paloozas, just like the annual charity occasion he hosts in Los Angeles, and one-day outings too quite a few to call, and also you begin to grasp the fullness of Ribeiro’s ledger. In contrast to some professionals, he by no means complains about enjoying an excessive amount of.
“I type of pencil issues into the schedule and let folks round me know that that is what I’d love to do,” Ribeiro says. “I do my finest to suit issues in. However work at all times comes first.”
In a roundabout method, it was work that introduced Ribeiro right into a golf, a recreation he’d by no means performed — and had barely heard of — as a child rising up within the Bronx, the kid of Afro-Trinidadian dad and mom. Baseball was his sport. Not till his late teenagers, after appearing and dancing had taken him to Hollywood, did Ribeiro first rear again and blast one off the tee. On a whim, he had joined associates on a go to to a Los Angeles driving vary.
“The primary three swings had been with driver, due to course I used to be going to hit driver,” Ribeiro stated. He caught all of them flush, knocking all three over a distant fence.
“I fell in love proper there,” Ribeiro stated. “And, boy, did I fall laborious.”
Life and work went on. Ribeiro’s recreation additionally progressed. As he remembers, his first pro-am look was in 2010 (or was it 2011? You might in all probability Google that, too) at Monday After the Masters, a Hootie and the Blowfish-hosted charitable occasion in Myrtle Seashore. Ready in his cart for beginning directions that week, Ribeiro launched himself to an easygoing man in an adjoining buggy: the Tour professional Willie McGirt.
“He stands proud his hand and goes, ‘Hello, I’m Al,’” McGirt stated. “And I’m like, yeah, I do know who you’re. I grew up watching you on TV.’ I used to be the one who was feeling intimidated. And Al being the type of down-to-earth man he’s breaks the ice by saying, ‘Effectively, now I’m the one who watches you on tv.’”
In these days, Ribeiro’s recreation was sound sufficient to encourage expectations. He put stress on himself to play effectively in entrance of crowds. However that was then. These days, he says, he doesn’t really feel the faintest first-tee jitters. Seasoning helps. So does his index. As of late, Ribeiro performs off a 0.7.
“Once I first began, the whole lot for me was a long-drive contest, swinging out of my sneakers on each swing,” Ribeiro stated. “Studying to hit the contact pictures. That’s been key.”
It’s virtually an axiom in golf that scratch gamers don’t win handicapped occasions. Positive sufficient, Ribeiro has by no means received at Pebble. However nor has he received any of the opposite “majors.” It’s robust to beat large fields, particularly ones teeming with expertise.
Assured as he’s, Ribeiro concedes that he’s not fairly on the degree of the pro-am regulars whom he kiddingly calls “the unemployed.” Ex-athletes like Mark Mulder, Tony Romo, John Smoltz and Mardy Fish.
“They’re mainly retired,” Ribeiro says. “I’m nonetheless working. I can’t sustain with that.”
Among the many Hollywood set, he ranks himself proper up there, simply behind Jack Wagner and a shade forward of his pal Michael Pena, a frequent enjoying accomplice at Lakeside, the non-public course in Burbank the place they each belong.
“There are another actors on the market who suppose they’re primary however aren’t,” Ribeiro says. Josh Lucas involves thoughts, as does Dennis Quaid.
How Pebble Seashore altered — and safeguarded! — one in all golf’s most dramatic holes
“Dennis was occurring one time to a bunch of us about being the most effective golfer in our trade,” Ribeiro says. “All of us simply laughed.”
Ribeiro has different favourite pro-am moments, just like the time (what 12 months was it?) at Tim Tebow’s charity occasion at TPC Sawgrass when his shot on the famed island-green seventeenth rattled the flag and practically dropped for a gap in a single. There was additionally the time (2015, perhaps?) when, enjoying with McGirt at PGA West, Ribeiro drained an eagle and celebrated with a crowd-pleasing Carlton dance: the jig that he made well-known on the Contemporary Prince.
He and McGirt are paired this week at Pebble, the place they’ve partnered a number of occasions earlier than, their finest end coming in 2018 (it’s Google-able), once they scrapped so laborious the make the lower on Saturday that each one of Sunday turned a blur.
“We had been so drained on the primary tee the subsequent morning,” McGirt stated. “It felt like we’d been out partying all night time.”
How this week will unfold is tough to forecast. Ribeiro isn’t sweating it both method. Enjoyment is what issues, he stated, not the end result.
“Issues are good with my household, they’re good with work, I like this recreation,” he stated. “My feeling is, simply by being out right here, I’ve already received.”
Newest In Way of life
from celebrity lifestyle – My Blog https://ift.tt/dBAMKlq
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment