Tiger Woods creates buzz at Pebble Beach

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CARMEL, Calif. - Tiger Woods showing up at the Pebble Beach AT&T Pro-Am after 10 years away creates a buzz. It's kind of like Elvis (if he were alive) showing up to perform at a convention of Elvis impersonators.

Ticket sales for the tournament are up 30 percent to 35 percent, officials say. Their quirky little event is the center of the golf world this weekend, because, you never know, this could be the rebirth of Woods' legend.

So attendance will be way up, TV ratings will soar if Woods is in the hunt, and everyone at Pebble Beach seems to be at least a little giddy.

"We noticed the difference (in a negative way) when he stopped coming, and we can definitely feel it (in a positive way) now that he's back," said Sergio Bindel, a bartender at the Tap Room, a short chip from the Pebble Beach putting green and maybe the world's most famous 19th hole. "We're all excited."

The energy usually doesn't start flowing until the Wednesday of the tourney, but Woods was in town Monday to play a practice round at Spyglass Hill, and folks are getting into it.

"On a normal (tournament) Monday, we do about $15,000" in business, Bindel said Tuesday. "Yesterday, we did $35,000."

So the citizens of nearby Carmel must be dancing in the streets, right? Technically, I'm not sure that's legal in Carmel. Tourism is the town's lifeblood, and the cute little village figures to clean up this weekend. Not that it's not already clean.

But when I toured Carmel on Tuesday at midday, Tigermania seemed to be at a very dull roar.

"If Tiger brings people in, we're a fan," said Roselyn Ferrill, tending bar at Brophy's, Carmel's sports bar, and trying to put on a peppy face while three local fellows sipped beers and shrugged off the Tiger invasion.

There is a lot of informal information floating around town.

"Last year, the hotels (in Carmel) were half-full," one local man said, "and this year, they're full."

Maybe that's a stretch.

"Tiger brings 40,000 more people," said Hass Zein, bartender at the Hog's Breath Inn.

Another stretch, but Woods is golf's No. 1 attraction.

"More people (coming) here, more revenue, so that's a good thing," said Ian Watts, captain at the Carmel fire station. "That's how we fund ourselves."

Now we're talkin': Woods helps fight forest fires.

Watts is not a golf nut, but he pointed out that Woods attracts both types of AT&T fans: the hard-core golf nuts and the celebrity watchers. Plus, there's the comeback angle.

"It's almost like he's a Cinderella rebirth," Watts said.

We should be careful with the Cinderella angle, in deference to Bill Murray and his Carl Spackler character. Murray became the real Cinderella Kid last year when he won the pro-am portion of the tourney.

Murray, unlike Woods, is almost completely beloved. Woods' nine-year snub has not been forgotten.

"The last time he played the AT&T, he complained about the media," said Nigel Felsinger, a local having a beer at Jack London's, a traditional Carmel hangout for caddies and tourney players.

Woods has always loved everything about the AT&T, except for the six-hour rounds, the bumpy greens, one of the courses (Poppy Hills, since 86'd) and the fan-celebrity folderol.

But he's back, and this time it's more of a symbiotic relationship. The tourney always needed Tiger; now he needs the tournament. A win here would be his first on the PGA Tour since September 2009, and considering what he has been through, a victory might be as meaningful to him as winning a major. It would be big news.

Woods could put Pebble Beach and its unofficial host village Carmel on the map, albeit in very small type (Carmel population: 3,722).

"Return of the Tiger!" screamed the headline in the Pacific Grove Hometown Bulletin, but Woods rated only a brief mention in the story. His return is "welcomed and long overdue," but more of the story was devoted to lamenting the absence of Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow, who scratched from the AT&T because of football injuries.

It's true: Tebow would have been a huge attraction, but a novelty. This is golf country, and Woods, in his strange way, still rules that world.

There is major excitement in that world on the eve of the AT&T, although in Carmel, the folks are going to ease into it.

(Contact Scott Ostler at sostler(at)sfchronicle.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)

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