Golf, Bill Murray & My Heart Thingy
You might wonder — in fact, I hope you’re wondering — what attending a golf tournament, comedian Bill Murray, and my heart thingy — more properly known as a pacemaker — have in common. Well, sit back, rest a spell, and I’ll tell you the story. I promise it won’t take long.
The whole tale started last week in the waiting room at my dentist’s office in Fresno. I was there to have prep work done for a crown I need. That’s when I received a text message from a friend of mine — a retired Fresno sheriff’s detective who now works in security at the annual AT&T National Pro-Am Golf Tournament at Pebble Beach (which used to be widely, and lovingly, known as the Crosby Clambake, in honor of the great Bing Crosby, who started the whole thing).
My buddy — who goes by the name of Chris because, well, because that’s his name — has been offering us tickets for years to this event. We’ve gone more than a few times, but we had not heard from him this year. That changed on Tuesday, and on Thursday morning, Sharon and I got up bright and early and headed to the Monterey Peninsula for the day.
The tournament is played on three courses — the most famous of which is Pebble Beach, which everyone watching golf on TV sees on Saturday and Sunday when CBS televises the final two rounds. But one of the “secrets” that many spectators don’t know is that the most famous pros and amateurs — the “A Group” — never play at Pebble on Thursdays and Fridays.
They’re in action at either the Monterey Peninsula Country Club or at the Spyglass Golf Course — while other pros and amateurs play at Pebble. This year, the “A Group” was at Spyglass on Thursday, and that’s where a tournament bus took us after we had driven to the designated parking lot at Cal State Monterey Bay. We were eager to get to the ninth green at Spyglass, where the golfers would be heading after teeing off earlier in the day.
It was exciting, and so when we approached the giant metal detector we had to pass through in order to get onto the course, I forgot I was wearing a heart pacemaker. This little device had been implanted into me months ago by the man considered the best “heart doctor” in the Valley. He said I needed it not because I had any heart disease — I didn’t — but because my heartbeat was too slow. Who would have thought that, given that I’d spent decades in broadcasting, with its harsh and unforgiving daily deadlines?
Well, I got the implant — and there I was — striding right into the metal detector — something I’d been warned not to do at airports. No one mentioned golf courses. So imagine my surprise when the detector went off — a loud, screeching sound, indeed.
I immediately backed out — told the nearby officer I had a pacemaker — and then simply bypassed the detector. We walked a bit to get to the ninth green, and then waited as all the golfers made their way there.
For decades, the Crosby — and its heir, the AT&T — has been known as much for its celebrities as for the pros who play there. And this year was no different. Sure, we saw top pro Jordan Spieth make his par on the ninth — as did last year’s U.S. Open golf champ Matt Fitzpatrick.
But we also saw — actually, had made the trek from Madera to see — Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers play his way through. Another well-known pro quarterback — the Buffalo Bills’ Josh Allen — also came through.
There were other celebs as well — some from the world of music and TV and at least one from the world of politics — former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice (yes, she plays well).
But the crowd favorite, for three decades, has been actor-comedian Bill Murray. Bill has taken over the role that film great Jack Lemmon played at the tournament years and years ago — that of the golf-loving and crowd-pleasing scamp.
Bill takes his golf seriously. In fact, he and longtime pro partner D.A. Points won the whole thing at Pebble in 2011 — Points won the pro tournament, and the Points-Murray team won the pro-am — a wildly popular victory that will always be part of tournament lore. Sharon and I were there to see it. But Bill also loves to clown around with spectators, and they adore him for doing it.
Well, this past week, we got a close-up view of Bill and his clowning. His approach shot on the 9th — remember, that’s where we were, standing right in back of the green — landed smack-dab on top of a canvass carry-bag belonging to the woman who was sitting next to us. Bill walked up and immediately picked up her husband’s backpack — which was next to her bag — and dumped its contents onto the ground. The crowd — all of us — roared, and the woman and her husband loved it. 
Then a PGA official came up, and Bill asked how he ought to play the ball. The official said — and we heard him — “I have no idea.” So Bill just took a club and hit that ball from the top of the carry-bag — and in the process, also hit that bag halfway down the small hill next to the green. He hit a fine shot, considering his lie, and got a great round of applause. And minutes later, Bill’s caddy gave the ball he had hit to the woman. She was thrilled. The golf shot of her lifetime, indeed.
We were taking pictures of all of it, and you’ll see some of them here. You’ll also see a photo someone else took of us and Bill as the whole scene was playing out. Sharon’s wearing pink. I’m wearing a hat.
We eventually saw all the golfers, got a bit of lunch, and walked back to our bus, where we were taken to the tournament parking lot, several miles up Highway 1. Somehow, we found our car in that mass of vehicles — and drove back home. A delightful day, indeed.
But not so delightful a night. Hours after we got back — while I was trying to get to sleep — I took my pulse (finger on wrist) — something I’d done almost every night since my pacemaker implant. I simply wanted to know if it was doing the approximately 60 beats a minute the pacemaker had been set to keep while I was resting. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that my heart was beating at a robust 84 beats a minute.
That was not only strange — it was disturbing. I started thinking all those things you conjure up in the dark of night. Was my pacemaker out of control? Had it been damaged by the metal detector at the course? Was my heart beating so fast that it might cause me — heaven forbid — to have a stroke?
Somehow, I got to sleep. But early the next morning — when my heart was still beating at 84 a minute — I called my heart doctor’s office. And they immediately scheduled me to come in — one hour later.
Sharon drove me down to the office in Fresno — only a 20-minute trip — because I was worried my heart rate might cause me to pass out while I was behind the wheel. And so there I was, in a patient exam room, when the Medtronic expert walked in. Medtronic is the brand of pacemaker I have. She asked me why I was there, and I told her about my heart rate and the incident with the metal detector the day before.
She hooked me up to her handy-dandy pacemaker machine — and said nothing was wrong with the device. She said it was working perfectly — and that, in any case, the metal detector would not have caused any damage to it. In fact, she said, the pacemaker should not have set off that detector. Only then did I remember that — while I had taken everything out of my pockets before I tried to walk through the detector — I had left my belt on. That’s what must have set it off.
And she told me something I did not know — that a heart’s normal resting heartbeat is between 60 and 100. So my 84 beats per minute were well within normal standards — even if they were higher than I was used to at rest.
And then came the “voila!” moment. I told her I had imbibed two 32-ounce soft drinks at the golf course the day before. Not one — but two. Sure, they were sugar-free — but they were also full of caffeine. Loaded. The implant expert looked at me and said, “Well, there you go.”
Yes, yes. My extraordinary intake of caffeine that day had done its job, all right — kept me alert all day, even after our early wake-up and drive to the coast. It also had gotten — and kept — my heartbeat “up” all night.
Mystery solved. Worries gone. I left the office a much better man — and, yes, by then, my heartrate had started slowing to my new “normal.” And the implant expert had also left me a much smarter man. She said an airport metal detector would not harm my implant — though she did not recommend going through one. She also said the only thing she would advise me against doing — considering I had an implant — was to crawl inside a microwave and turn it on.
I told her I had not done that in at least a couple of weeks. Funny thing is, she did not crack a smile when I said that.
Well, as Billy Shakespeare once wrote, “All’s Well That Ends Well.” I’m feeling good — Sharon and I had a fine time at the tournament — and I’ve sworn off caffeinated drinks. Sure, I’ve sworn them off before, but this time, I mean it.
And next year — if we get a chance to go to the tournament again — I’ll make sure to avoid that darn metal detector. And I’ll also try to show Bill Murray the pictures we have of us — and him — as he played that shot off that woman’s bag. That was — at least for Sharon and me — one of those memories of our lifetimes.