Bye, bye Bill Murray, hello best field ever: AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am to showcase several changes next month

Get ready for an AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am unlike any other.

Bye bye Bill Murray, Ray Romano and Steve Young, hello world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, former major champion Rory McIlroy and reigning FedEx Cup champion Viktor Hovland.

The old Crosby Clambake, in its 87^th year, will have a reduced field from 156 two-man teams down to 80, with amateurs playing just two rounds instead of three or possibly four, on only two courses with Monterey Peninsula CC cut out of the equation, and the weekend reserved simply for the best pros in the game.

It’s all happening as a result of the PGA Tour selecting the tournament as one of eight signature events, which will play for a purse of $20 million at a limited-field, no-cut event.

“If you turned it around and we were never a pro-am and the Tour said, hey, guys, guess what? We’re going to give you two days of a pro-am, Thursday and Friday. We would be elated,” said Steve John, CEO and tournament director of the Monterey Peninsula Foundation, the non-profit that runs the tournament at Pebble Beach Golf Links and Spyglass Hill. “Yes, we’re two days instead of three, possibly four, but it’s going to be a darn good two days. The experience for the amateurs will be the best ever.”

In recent years, the tournament has struggled to attract an elite field, and something needed to be done to restore the luster of a once-beloved event: just 21 of the top 100 in the Official World Golf Ranking were in last year’s field and more than half of it was ranked outside the top 300.

“For years I’d hear I’d love to come to Pebble, but it just isn’t working for me,” said John, who is in his 12^th year overseeing the tournament.

Of the Tour’s efforts to breathe new life into the event by making the star-studded field the attraction rather than the celebrities of music, the big screen and the sports world, John said, “It worked. They are coming.”

He’s no longer recruiting; he’s enrolling. He boasted that 48 of the top 50 in the world already have committed, and he expressed confidence the other two would soon join, too. Ticket sales reflect the appetite to see the tournament’s best field: John said sales are $200,000 ahead of last year’s pace.

“To see nearly every person that is eligible come, that is a statement,” John said. “This is as close as you’re going to get to a major.”

But John recognizes that change is never easy. The size of the field dropped from 180 to 156 in 2010. To trim it to 80, the tournament needed a financial commitment from its title sponsor and secondary partners.

“Not everybody can play,” John said. “It was really difficult to determine who gets the golden tickets. To give at the level we have given before, people have to step up, and they did in a big way. Of that we are deeply appreciative.

The notable amateurs in the field will be strictly athletes: Tom Brady, Alex Smith, Aaron Rodgers, Pau Gasol, Larry Fitzgerald and Buster Posey. The Celebrity Shootout on Wednesday is no more. With fewer amateur competitors, the sky suites at the 18^th have been reduced  As a result, the 18^th green will be surrounded by grandstands and open to the public, doubling the number of seats available for general admission customers. Moving from three courses to two means a reduction of some 300 volunteers. There will still be 1,600 volunteers, including close to 100 who have volunteered for more than 40 years.

John is adamant being a signature event is the future of the pro-am, telling KSBW Action News 8 the plan is for the AT&T to be a signature event “in perpetuity.”

“The feeling, belief and mindset of the PGA Tour is to keep this event as a signature event, not knowing what our future holds for us,” John told Golfweek.

Despite the reduced field, which many feared would have the potential to sliced charitable donations, John confirmed that the Monterey Peninsula Foundation still expected to give out more than $18 million, as it did last year.

“I think there’s no reason we won’t give out that number if not more,” he said.

To do so, AT&T has agreed to bear the cost of the purse rising from $9 million to $20 million, with a winner’s share of $3.6 million. Sources say the golden ticket skyrocketed from $38,000 to $70,000 this year to offset the loss of nearly half the field. John wouldn’t confirm those numbers, saying only they were within the ballpark.

“It’s hard to really put a number on it because they’re tied to different assets. Some have tickets and upgrade venue, some come by contract, some by relationships. It makes it impossible to put an exact number on the entry fee,” he explained. “I’ll tell you this: it’s worth every penny and whatever the entry fee is no one balked.”

Time will tell if an iconic course and the deepest field ever to play the AT&T will produce a TV-ratings bonanza.

“My crystal ball broke years ago,” he joked.

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Bye, bye Bill Murray, hello best field ever: AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am to showcase several changes next month