Yes, that is indeed Bill Murray, sporting an interesting beard!

Of course that’s a reference to Bill Murray’s facial hair. The Pebble Beach National Pro-Am regular is making a scene, per usual. He’s partnered up with D.A. Points, who won the event in 2011 — the pair were also victorious in the pro-am portion of the tournament.

Murray and Points played at Monterey Peninsula Country Club’s Shore Course on Thursday, and posted a team effort of five-under 65, putting them in a tie for 51st after the opening round.

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The Westwoods: Father-son bonding

The first round of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am kicked off this morning at the three different venues: Pebble Beach Golf Links, SpyGlass Hill Golf Course and Monterey Peninsula Country Club, Shore Course. Rookie Henrik Norlander is off to a fast start — he’s five-under through 11 at Pebble. Hunter Mahan is five-under through nine holes at Pebble. So is Matt Every, who has three holes to play.

There are some tidbits from the pre-tourney festivities that I wanted to share before we get into the tournament. (As you may have read in previous posts or tweets, I don’t have internet at the motel I’m staying at this week, so good news is I can’t work once I leave the media center, and bad news is I can’t work once I leave. Ah well — life goes on.)

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Bill Murray wore this two years ago at the event. Seriously.

We saw some entertaining antics that veer from golf’s usual decorum at the Waste Management Phoenix Open last week. Well, the “fun” continues at Pebble Beach, where the rich and the famous play with the pros for the “pro-am” portion of the event.

It’s probably just me, but it seems like there are more bold-faced names than usual on this year’s list, which can be found here — though I have an updated version below, with additional entries, like Jim Harbaugh (the brother who was on the losing side of the Har-Bowl Super Bowl) and Condoleezza Rice. Also, I’ve noted their pro partner in parenthesis.

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Welcome to Balls in the Air, where I size up my Fantasy Golf picks of the week, featuring guys to watch (or not) and interesting story lines. Disclaimer: My picks may suck, but I do think through the factors that may weigh in.

Keegan Bradley really likes playing in pro-ams

Apologies for not posting the column at the usual time, but I was too busy icing my ankle. I did make my picks before the deadline. With hindsight, they’re not the best, except my Group C players are lighting it up. Pebble Beach is one of my favorite places in the world and I’ve actually played all three of the courses in the rotation. Don’t ask me to pick a favorite, though! I wish I were in beautiful Monterey instead of nursing my ankle in icy NYC (which is a terrible place to navigate in crutches — I keep worrying I’m going to slip and hurt my good foot).

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SI‘s John Garrity passed along some more photos of our outing at MPCC last week, and what do you know, he’s not just a great writer, he’s a fantastic photographer.

The one above is pretty priceless — and despite what it may look like, I was actually reacting to a good shot on a par 3, where I stuck it to about 10 feet. More gratuitous pictures of me (after all, it is Wednesday…) and the stunning MPCC after the jump.

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