Playing golf under pressure is not as easy as it looks

What makes this week's Outback Steakhouse Pro-Am different from other Champions Tour events is a format that pairs celebrity and amateur partners with professionals during real tournament competition.

The pros will be at TPC of Tampa Bay playing for a $1.7 million purse. The amateurs will be there trying not to get sick on their shoes.

"I think I'm a good golfer," Buccaneers defensive back Ronde Barber said. "My handicap says I'm a good golfer. But playing golf under pressure is a whole different animal."

Barber, as the old line goes, can golf his ball. An avid player with memberships at three clubs, the former All-Pro lugs his bag on vacations and owns a 7 handicap. And, you have to figure, the fact he plays pro football in front of 65,000-plus fans and on national television can't hurt.

That's not how he sees it.

"I'm much more nervous than when I put on a football helmet," Barber said. "You feel like you are getting judged on your golf game, which really is not the case, but it still happens."

Barber will be pleased to know - misery does love company - that quarterbacks are no less paranoid.

"When you are playing out on the football field, you are used to crowd noise," said Vinny Testaverde, who retired after the 2007 season - his 21st in the NFL - and will be playing in his second Outback. "But on the golf course it gets real quiet and you realize everybody has their eyes on you. It's nerve-wracking."

If that's what battle-tested pro athletes - even if they are out of their natural habitat - worry about, imagine what the experience can do to your basic 18-handicapper who believes the sixth flight in his club's member-guest is a pressure cooker.

"When it really gets tough is if you've got an amateur who is playing in the group with one of the big celebrities," Champions Tour player Brad Bryant said. "Suddenly he's in there with two golf pros and somebody like George Lopez. Oh, my word. That's a nervous thing because there are all these people watching."

There is no shortage of stories from pro-ams, many with a common theme: What have I gotten myself into? And most of them come during traditional early week pro-am rounds, not during tournament days. Only a few PGA Tour events and no other senior events go with the Outback format.

"The really strange one for me was a long time ago on the regular tour," Scott Hoch said. "I was the defending champion at the USF&G and was to play with President Ford and two other amateurs. One of them from USF&G probably got the spot by selling the most insurance. He got on the first tee and whiffed his first three swings.

"Other people may have stories just like that, but we were playing with the president and we've got the whole gallery."

A Tampa Tribune writer played in a pro-am once. The early morning shotgun sent the group off the 15th hole in fog so dense that tee shots were barely visible from the time they left the club head. Perfect for hiding. Then, just as his group arrived at the 18th green, the sun broke, the fog lifted and, holy cow, people were everywhere.

Ker-plunk.

In most cases, the pro feels an obligation to calm frayed nerves. Hoch points out that Arnold Palmer or Tiger Woods is nowhere around, then wonders "why anybody would be nervous playing with me?" Dave Stockton liked to point out that the gallery "isn't there to see you." Walter Hall's advice is "we're not playing for fingers and toes." Gary Koch uses a speech that includes telling the uneasy amateur that there's "no shot I haven't already seen."

At least he did until an event a few years ago in Savannah, Ga.

"This guy grabs a 4-iron and makes this swing - hits straight down on it," Koch remembered. "It bounces backward, which I have seen before. But it has so much spin on it that it spins around behind him.

"He looks up and says, 'Well, I bet you haven't seen that one before.'"