The following story originally appeared at SMITH Magazine. We would like to thank the author, RB Love, for allowing us to re-post it here.
My fandom for Bill Murray goes deep. Unabashedly deep.
So, you can imagine my surreal thrill when, working a catering gig at a house with a backyard that looks onto the tee box of Number 14 at Pebble Beach, I saw D.A. Points and Bill Murray’s party approaching. I’d just delivered a vodka cran to George Lopez on 14’s fairway, and Lopez had kissed me, told me I was beautiful and that he loved me (in that Hollywood way), then fist bumped me and blew me up. So, I was feeling a little like anything was possible when one of the patrons at the house we were catering for suggested that if I “get a cold beer out here, Murray will come up and get it.”
I put a bottle on my serving tray and headed out to the lawn. Murray hit a fine shot off the tee to much fanfare and as he headed up toward the fairway in his over-sized Elmer Fudd hat, folks from the party around me hollered: “this one’s for you.” He acknowledged us (and the beer) and turned up the rise toward the golf cart path.
I held the bottle with one hand on my tray so as not to spill it on my way down the landscaped embankment, and then I was in front of Bill Murray and a full camera crew with a boom mic guy, a key grip, two cameras, and the caddy. An entourage. And suddenly, I felt like I was in a reality TV show. Wham. Like that.
I managed to pull my gaze up from the strange sheep-skin cover on the hovering boom mic and make eye contact with Bill Murray. I remember the pores in his face. And his eyes. Kind eyes. He shook my hand. He took the beer.
“God bless you for this,” is all he said.
Then he took a hit of the beer. Tipped it all the way back.
“Ah, Mr. Murray.” I stammered. “Mr. Murray, I just wanted to say…I just want to say you’re my all time favorite. Really. I just think you’re the best.”
Bill Murray looked at me and gave me a half a nod. But with kind eyes, you know, like, ‘don’t go gettin’ all respectful on me now, kid, we’re at a golf tournament.’
At the end of the day Murray was asked about the beer he was given on 14 and he said, “The beer was good.”
Bill Murray and D.A. Points won the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am that week.
A photo of Murray holding his beer and me standing next to him with my arm around him ran on Golf.com the next day, then in Sports Illustrated and finally the San Jose Mercury over the next week.
I got a lot of mileage out of that. I gave him another beer at this year’s event when he was wearing his camouflage outfit. We’re a tradition now.