Sylvester Stallone and Jack Nicholson

What began in the 1950s with the category of Hollywood hacker expanding to include stars from every avenue of the entertainment world reached full flowering in the '90s with golf becoming an almost inescapable ingredient in popular culture and celebrities assuming the pose of near-professional golfers.

Today, celebrity players include Hollywood royalty and aspirants, veteran and emerging TV stars, members of the print and broadcast news media, fashion designers and models, and the rich and famous from baseball, football, basketball, and hockey. For many of them, golf is not a goof or an opportunity to party with the real pros and get some gratuitous, PR-friendly face time on television.

Celebrity golfers aspire to play well, and the competition on a golf course can be as keen as between actors vying for the same part in a big-budget movie. Unlike the executive suite and pre-production maneuvering, the celebrity swingers must try to win armed with clubs -- and, of course, wonderful-looking clothes -- not with managers and agents. And a producer or studio boss can be a total pussycat compared to a 7000-yard, par-71 course.

Ever wonder what the handicaps are for some of the top hackers in Hollywood?

 • Jack Nicholson is an 11. So are Clint Eastwood and Andy Garcia.
 • Less accomplished are Robert Redford at 12, Kevin Costner at 13, Will Smith at 14, Sean Connery and Michael Douglas at 15, Cheryl Ladd and Martin Sheen and Bruce Willis at 16, Matt Damon and Catherine Zeta-Jones at 20, Tom Cruise at 23, and Mel Gibson at 27.
 • Stars who might be dreaming of Q School are Adam Baldwin at 3, Jack Wagner at 4, Craig T. Nelson and Kevin Sorbo at 5, Alice Cooper and Randy Quaid at 6 and Dennis Quaid at 7 (there's some sibling rivalry for you), and Tea Leoni, Sylvester Stallone and Samuel L. Jackson at 8.
 • In case you were wondering, because he may be the most visible actor/golfer on the planet, Bill Murray plays to a 13 handicap.

Ray Romano and Andy Garcia

Celebrity-sponsored golf events are not new, they officially date back to the first "Crosby Clambake" in 1937. What is different today is the wide range of celebrity-sponsored and studded golf events and that golf-star struck and par-struck celebs even have their own tour.

Just a scratch-the-surface mention of celebrity- sponsored and filled events held every year:
 • American Film Institute Golf Classic at the Riviera Country Club outside Los Angeles
 • Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation Celebrity Golf Classic, also at Riviera
 • Hootie Golf, sponsored by the rock group Hootie and the Blowfish and televised by ESPN, held on Kiawah Island, South Carolina, site of the 1991 Ryder Cup and where parts of The Legend of Bagger Vance were lensed. John Daly, Gary McCord, and Charles Barkley are among the regulars, and the competition is followed by a big party and -- what else? -- a concert by the hosts.
 • The Electrolux USA Championship, an LPGA event hosted by Vince Gill and Amy Grant in Tennessee Another LPGA event, and one of the most enduring, is the Jamie Farr Kroger Classic
 • And of course the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, formerly the Crosby, and Bob Hope's Palm Springs 90-hole extravaganza.

The Celebrity Golf Tour brings film, TV, and sports stars to courses around the U.S. in the summer and fall, and while most of the events are officially charity fundraisers, the celebs play for real purses, trophies, and intense bragging rights.

Joe Ponturo and Peter Gallagher

The most well known stop on the tour is the American Century Celebrity Challenge in Lake Tahoe every July (with the first-place check over $100,000). While media stars like Matt Lauer, Tommy Lee Jones, Kenny G, and Joe Pesci continue to participate, it has lately been dominated by between-seasons football and basketball stars, some of who have distinguished themselves. In a recent event, Jerry Rice broke 80 for the first time and place-kicker Al Del Greco fired a final-round 65. On the other hand, the event also featured hoopster Chris Webber, who shot a 130 . . . in just one round.

For truly dedicated celebs and certainly for the golf pros who bother to keep tabs on such things, the celebrity events are just a sideshow to the big league, which are the pro-am segments of tournaments on the PGA Tour.

If his schedule allows, Kevin Sorbo, known primarily for his seven-season run as the half-god in "Hercules" on TV, likes to play both the AT&T Pebble Beach and Bob Hope tournaments along with a handful of celebrity events. (At one in Colorado, he launched a 368-yard drive.) With his 5 handicap and memberships in both the Sherwood Country Club in Los Angeles and the Rees Jones-designed Atlantic Golf Club in the Hamptons (he has a house in Sag Harbor), Sorbo can hold his own when matched with a pro. His biggest problem is what the crowd's expectations are given his most famous role.

Jamie Crow and Kevin Sorbo

"As I'm getting set on the tee I can hear them saying, 'This better be over 500 yards, Hercules,'" Sorbo told me in an interview. However, "After I hit the ball, they can see I'm really mortal."

He enjoys competing with the pro players and the give-and-take with the crowd, which is usually good-natured. "What I don't like to hear is some drunk muttering, 'I can take him.'"

Pro-am events are a mixed blessing for the pros, especially the top ones who have a reasonable chance to win the tournament, cash a huge check, beef up their career win total, earn Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup points, and in other ways enhance their income and professional standing. To them, it can be fun to play with celebs, especially the ones whose work they actually like or admire, and the mid-level and lesser-known pros can enjoy a gallery following bigger than they would command in other tourneys.

The pro-ams mean much more to the celebs. They hope to learn a few things from the pro, they spend two or three days living vicariously through the member of the foursome or fivesome who's been to (golf) war, and finishing at or near the top of the leader board can be as satisfying as an Academy Award nomination. As the late Jack Lemmon once said, "I'd trade one of my Oscars just to make the cut at Pebble Beach." (Sadly, he never did.)

But back to the pros: Why is it a mixed blessing? A major reason is that "these guys are good," as the PGA Tour slogan goes, but 95% of the people they are placed with in pro-am foursomes are not even close. At best, having to play with these hackers is mildly amusing for the pro and/or the broadcasters and spectators.

Donald Trump and Carolyn Kepcher

Other times, though, it can be very frustrating and even dangerous to play in a pro-am with a less-accomplished celebrity swinger. Plus the pros still have Sunday to look at because how they finish that day is the difference between a low-rent finish and an $800,000 first-place check. An autograph from Ray Romano or Sean Connery or even Michael Jordan doesn't come close to closing that gap. (If anything, the celebs are eager for players' autographs.) The players understand the charity angle and that the celebrity connection infuses more overall money into the sport -- with most pro golfers being Republicans, they believe in trickle-down economics -- but many times they find themselves wading in grin-and-bear-it experiences.

Just a sampling of episodes from the pro-am front:

 • During the former Los Angeles Open one year, Hale Irwin was partnered with Rich Saul, then the center for the Los Angeles Rams. Saul's tee shot was so bad it caught Irwin between the eyes. Irwin played the rest of the tourney looking like a sikh, the top of his head wrapped in bandages.

 • One year at the Colonial in Texas, Phil Mickelson and his pro-am partner were at the 10th hole. His partner had a tough bunker shot. He caught it thin and it sailed head-high across the green and struck a spectator so hard just above one eye that the ball ricocheted back across the green and landed into the same bunker 50 yards away. "It was not good," Mickelson commented afterward. "Blood everywhere."

 • Wayne Gretzky should have a "Wanted" poster above his locker at pro-ams. One year he was in a tourney foursome with Gerald Ford, and he hit such a bad hook that he knocked out the Secret Service agent guarding the former President. Another year, at the first hole of the pro-am portion of the Canadian Open, Gretzky hooked another one and knocked out a 16-year-old boy. In trying to block the puck-like incoming golf ball, the boy broke two fingers.

 • Back to the Hope Classic: Poor put-upon yet persevering Mickelson found himself in a foursome with Joe Pesci, Mike Ditka, and Lawrence Taylor. Pretty formidable bunch of tough guys, huh? Well, they couldn't do it on the par-5 18th, with only Mickelson putting the ball in play. His third shot landed 30 feet from the cup. He struck a beautiful downhill birdie putt that was dribbling toward the center of the hole . . . when a ball came rushing across the green and hit Mickelson's two feet from the cup, sending it six feet away. Turns out that Taylor had sculled a practice chip. Mickelson ended up with a bogey.

Dennis Hopper

 • At the Milwaukee Open, Mark O'Meara was on the driving range as next to him one of his pro-am partners was also getting loose. It didn't look promising: The guy was shanking everything. Then the pro-am experiences of O'Meara reach a new low. After hitting a drive and while O'Meara was in his follow-through, his partner hit a shank so bad that the ball ricocheted off the face of O'Meara's club.

Despite such frustrations and even anguish, there may be another reason why the relatively clean-cut pro golfers put up with the wide range of celebrities who have made the links their second home: For some of these actresses, producers, and sports stars, golf has replaced less savory activities in their lives. Really, why else do you see former party animals like Alice Cooper, Eddie Van Halen, and Dennis Hopper on golf courses?

"A lot of guys who did drugs and alcohol, they reformed by coming out of their dark rooms and going straight to the golf course," Hopper said. "Golf is addictive. It replaces the drugs. It replaces the alcohol. It's just you and that little white ball. You concentrate on totally getting into your own scene. I see it as a natural progression, I suppose, that if you survive your drug days, you have golf ahead of you."

Then he added, "That is, if you have any brain left at all."

Comments, questions, and tickets to see "The Greatest Game Ever Played" this weekend can be sent to "Links Life" at Hondo7@optonline.net.