Carl the Asst. Greenskeeper back in action...

[T-Greg]

at the Zurich Classic in New Orleans.

[TJL]

"Cinderella story. Outta nowhere. A former greenskeeper, now, about to become the Masters champion. It looks like a mirac...It's in the hole! It's in the hole! It's in the hole!"
-Carl Spackler

[T-Greg]

I wish the photo was online, but today's Times Picayune has a funny pic of Murray, David Toms and Peyton Manning together. Here's the story (long):

COURSE JESTER

To the delight of playing partners and fans, Bill Murray keeps hittin' and grinnin'
Thursday, April 19, 2007
By James Varney
On a spectacular, sun-splashed day, Eli Manning sidled across the 11th fairway at TPC Louisiana and asked Bill Murray what every starting NFL quarterback wants to know.
"So if you're just sitting around the house on a Saturday and 'Stripes' comes on, do you watch it?" Manning said.
Murray allowed that sometimes he does and in fact recently sat through a showing of "Meatballs." His succinct review: "It wasn't bad."
Manning, the New York Giants' signal caller, pressed the famous actor for details. It was nothing, Murray suggested with a distinctive, impish shrug.
"It was a bunch of cute girls and no pressure, so I said, 'OK, let's do it,' " he recalled.
And so it went Wednesday as the legendary links jester delivered the goods during the Zurich Classic of New Orleans Pro-Am. Murray, familiar to even casual golf fans as a fixture at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, was the most anticipated participant in the traditional warmup to the $6.1 million tournament that starts today.
He did not disappoint. Though there was no impromptu waltz in the bunker with an unsuspecting spectator, he patiently signed autographs at every hole and bantered endlessly with the shuffling crowd that swelled between his tee shot on No. 1 at 8:20 a.m. and his final putt on No. 18 about 1:30 p.m. During the five-hour round, his charismatic insouciance never flagged, to wit:
-- As Murray walked off the third green, Patricia LeBlanc of Covington asked for an autograph. As Murray complied, LeBlanc blurted out she was "a hard-headed dago married to the same man for 41 years." Murray surveyed her bemusedly, then said, "Take it easy on him, wouldja?"
-- On the fifth, Manning and Murray found Manning's slice nestled among mulch and leaves near the adjacent sixth fairway. There they encountered Peyton Manning playing in the group ahead. "His game's quite exciting," Murray said, gesturing toward Eli. "Haven't you heard us yelling? We're seeing a lot of beautiful country out here, and, you know what, I think most of it is available."
When Peyton Manning said he had to run and catch up with his group, which included Switzerland's ambassador to the United States, Urs Ziswiler, Murray perked up. "The ambassador?" he said, before catching sight of Ziswiler down the sixth fairway and hollering at him, "Never trust a guy who can park anywhere!"
-- After his professional partner, former PGA Championship winner David Toms, put one tight by the pin on the seventh green, Murray, emerging from a sunken fairway bunker, saw the ball and said, "David, is that you? Just a guess." Later in the round, Murray goofed when complimenting a Toms drive, saying, "Way to go, Tom!" and covered himself immediately by asking, "Do you mind if I call you Tom?"
-- While munching white chocolate bread pudding on the 17th tee, Murray spoke with a tournament official and a woman, clad in a cooking apron, who had ridden a golf cart out from the hospitality tent to watch him. He turned to the man in mock rebuke: "Get her some new clothes, you tightwad! She looks like the help in the kitchen."
Then, on the green, he heckled Manning when he was preparing to stroke his birdie putt.
"I kind of liked it," Manning said after the round. "It gets me ready for the season."
His round completed, Murray walked off the course and said his future plans are, as always in New Orleans, shaky.
"After I cheat death tonight we'll see what happens," he said.
For all his clowning, Murray is a serious golfer, an 8.8 handicap with forged blade irons in his ragged, collapsible bag. The exaggerated baseball swipe that anchors his pre-shot routine is no imitation of his beloved Cubs players, but rather a physical and mental exercise he said helps purge his mind before the swing.
On No. 8, for example, Murray blistered a drive close to 300 yards down the left side, drawing appreciative whistles and comments from Toms, Manning and the fourth member of the group, Zurich Chief Operating Officer Randy Clouser. But Murray chili-dipped his second when he decelerated sharply on his downswing, then recovered with a lovely lob over a bunker for a kick-in par.
But the fans didn't come to watch his touch around the greens, as the performer who turned cheesy nightclub hosts into art knew. As he walked to the 18th tee, he stopped to chat with Matthew Rudisel, one of the state's most dedicated LSU fans who is confined to a wheelchair with cerebral palsy and autism. Rudisel asked him if he liked LSU.
"I do, I do like the Tigers, and they've had some awfully good teams recently," Murray said. "Of course, I like the Lady Tigers the most."
It is perhaps a measure of his talent that such cheek charmed the Lady Tigers golfers attached to his group, including junior Heather Hoffman, who packed Murray's beat-up sack on the back nine.
"When I found out I was going to be with Bill Murray I called my mom right away and said, 'You'll never believe who I'm with today,' " Hoffman said. In fact, while she remains awestruck by Peyton Manning's athleticism, she said the New Orleans legend couldn't compete with Hollywood.
"The first couple of holes I was up with Mr. Super Bowl MVP Boy, but the truth is I'm kind of more excited to be here," she said.