Thirty years ago, the odd couple of comedian-actor Bill Murray and PGA Tour pro Scott Simpson joined forces to become an unforgettable duo at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
Simpson, who is in his second year as men’s golf coach at University of Hawaii, recalled to Golfweek at the Sony Open in Hawaii the story of how their partnership came to fruition.
As Simpson tells it, Murray had played the previous year in the pro-am with journeyman pro John Adams. Simpson remembers watching on TV Murray’s antics with the gallery and thinking they were hilarious, but when Adams was asked, ‘How is it playing with the fun-loving Murray, he complained that he found it distracting and wasn’t able to concentrate on his game.
“He said, ‘It’s really not much fun,’ or something like that,” Simpson recalled. “I went to the putting green after and Peter Jacobsen who played for years with actor Jack Lemmon, is there and I said to him, ‘Peter, can you imagine John Adams saying this isn’t fun? That’s the most fun you can have on the golf course, playing with Bill Murray.’ He goes, ‘Scott, you’ve got to play with him next year.’ My caddie was Jim Mackay, Bones – he caddied for me before Phil Mickelson. I taught him everything. He caddied for my buddy Larry Mize first – and Bones said, ‘You tell him you want to play with Murray next year.’ Actually, when Bones left me for Mickelson – which was great, you know. I was really happy for him to get this guy who’s so talented and going to do great things. He says, ‘But there’s one thing I want, one thing I’m going to ask you for, I want to caddie with your group with Bill Murray next year.’ Even though he was working for Phil, he caddied for me at Pebble.”
Jacobsen and Mackay talked Simpson into writing a letter to tournament officials requesting to play with Murray. On paper, it seemed like a mismatch with Simpson, a regular at weekly bible study meetings, considered to be too staid for Murray’s on-course schtick. But two weeks before the tournament the following year, officials asked Simpson if he still wanted to play with Murray.
“Absolutely,” Simpson said. “No one wanted to play with him, and I just thought, you know what, I don’t care what I shoot. This is going to be the most fun week in the world. I didn’t care. Because I get the front row seat. He would slice it over into the people and the people would start clapping because they knew he was coming to them, and rightfully so.
“They had these ladies that would make cookies for all the AT&T executives. He would go, ‘Can I have one of those?’ Oh, sure, Mr. Murray. Next thing you know he grabs the whole batch of them and he’s throwing them to the people in the gallery. One time at Spyglass, he went to a cart of a Ben & Jerry’s vendor and same thing: Can I have one of those? Oh, sure. Next thing you know he’s throwing one to everyone in the gallery, ‘Hey, you look like a Cherry Garcia.’ He emptied it, and the guy who owned the Ben & Jerry’s thing out there, he’s in shock and he goes, “Oh, my God, I wanted him to have one, but oh, no, I’m going to lose money.’ Murray left him like $500. He just went over there and gave him like $500. Just stuff like that.”
Simpson had so much fun that first year that he kept signing up to play with Murray year after year.
“I said, ‘You can play with someone else, you know. He said, ‘Oh, no, we’ve got to win it.’ He says, ‘We’ve got two rules. We’re going to have the most fun and we’re going to win.’ We always accomplished at least one goal,” Simpson said.
Simpson and Murray, who played together 13 times between 1993 and 2007, finished as high as a tie for fourth place in the pro-am division (2004), but never took home the hardware. (Simpson did win the 2006 First Tee Open on PGA Tour Champions with Murray as his partner.)
“He finally won with D.A. Points (in 2011), and he goes on the David Letterman Show, and Letterman goes to him, ‘So, Bill, you won that golf tournament out there, huh?’ ‘Oh, yeah, Dave. Big deal.’ He says, ‘You know, my partner D.A. won the pro thing, but the big news was we won (the pro-am).’ Letterman goes, ‘Didn’t you play with another guy for a long time?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, Dave, I played with this guy named Scott Simpson for about 14 years. He brought me down, Dave. He brought me down. Then he looks at the camera, ‘And you know you did,’ ” Simpson recalls with a laugh. “That was so classic. ‘You know you did.’ Geez. Good fun.”