"In the early thirties ... I joined a golf club called Lakeside. A very good course indeed, located out in North Hollywood. The membership was composed almost entirely of fellas in the entertainment business.... I was struck by the idea of putting together a pro-am competition where the Lakeside members ... could partner fifty or sixty invited professionals in a best ball event.... At that time I had a home and a small ranch down in San Diego County, near a nice golf course called Rancho Santa Fe, in the same region where I was involved in building and maintaining a race track known as Del Mar." (Bing Crosby, Foreword to The Crosby: Greatest Show in Golf by Dwayne Netland, p9)

The final Crosby "clambake" at Rancho Santa Fe was played in 1942. The tournament was cancelled for the duration of World War II. It resumed in 1947 on the scenic Monterey Peninsula ("Pebble Beach"), where it remained through the remainder of Bing's life.

Through the years Bing's tournaments raised millions of dollars for various charities. Beginning in 1958 the tournament was broadcast nationally and frequently ranked as the most viewed golfing event of the year. One exception was 1974, when the tournament fell to fourth in the golf rankings, no doubt because Bing was seriously ill in the hospital for the duration.

After Bing's death his widow came under considerable pressure to change the name of the tournament to the AT&T Bing Crosby golf tournament. She refused, withdrew the Crosby name from the tournament, and set up a celebrity tournament for charities in Bing's name in 1986 in North Carolina.

The New York Times reported 23 April 1985, page 7:

The annual Bing Crosby National Pro-Am golf tournament, one of the oldest events on the PGA Tour, will no longer carry the singer's name because of a family decision yesterday to withdraw the Crosby affiliation. However, the four-day, 72-hole tournament involving tour golfers and amateurs will continue to be held on three courses on California's Monterey Peninsula under another name, according to Deane R. Beman, tour commissioner, and William Borland, chairman of the Monterey Peninsula Golf Foundation that conducts the event. Kathryn Crosby, Bing's widow, said the Crosby name was being withdrawn from the event because of "attempts to turn it into another corporate sideshow." In a statement released through Ben Langella, a family friend, Mrs. Crosby said: "For 40 years, Bing resisted all attempts to commercialize his yearly gathering of friends. Now the wrong elements have taken control of what was Bing's tournament, and they are determined to transform the Old Clambake into just another corporate sideshow for the PGA Tour."

The New York Times reported 29 January 1986, page 7:

When Kathryn Crosby learned that A.T.&T. had agreed last January to pay a salary to the chairman of the group that conducted the Bing Crosby National Pro Am golf tournament before the company assumed sponsorship of the event, the entertainer's widow considered it improper and used it as a reason to remove her husband's name from the tournament, according to Ben Langella, a Crosby family spokesman. ''The primary reason Kathryn Crosby took away Bing's name was because Bing had stipulated that the name of the tournament never be joined with a commercial company name,'' Langella said recently. ''But that salary thing to a board member was a big reason for taking Bing's name off it.'' The tournament, which begins Thursday at the Pebble Beach, Cypress Point and Spyglass Hill courses, is now known henceforth as the A.T.&T. Pebble Beach Pro-Am. The communications company has denied that it offered to pay any member of the board of directors of the Monterey Peninsula Golf Foundation, which conducts the tournament under contract to the PGA Tour.

Instead, Mrs. Crosby found a corporate sponsor, Sara Lee, to set up a celebrity tournament for charities in Bing's name in 1986 in North Carolina. In 2000 Sara Lee announced it could no longer afford to support the tournament. The final Crosby clambake was played at Bermuda Run, North Carolina, in June 2001. In 2006 Mrs. Crosby returned for the first time in 20 years to the Pebble Beach tournament, where she watched her two sons participate.

Bing was an avid hunter, fisher and conservationist. He appeared frequently on ABC-TV's "American Sportsman" series hosted by Curt Gowdy. In 1939 Bing helped develop a horse racing track with Pat O'Brien at Del Mar near San Diego. Bing had to sell his interest in the track in 1947 when he purchased a baseball team, the Pittsburgh Pirates. On the day of Bing's death, Major League Baseball paused for a moment of silence at the start of the World Series game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees in remembrance of Bing.

Go to Pebble Beach Golf Tournament