The Golf To Go Hour With Frank LaRosa Featuring Steve Young

Steve Young Talks About The AT&T Pro-Am At Pebble Beach during Golf to Go with Frank Larosa.

In the last Golf To Go Hour of 2022, Frank LaRosa revisits one of his favorite interviews of the past year, sitting down with Steve Young. In February of 2022, Frank spoke with the revered former NFL quarterback to get his perspective on the AT&T Pro- Am at Pebble Beach, the current 49ers and thoughts on family. You can click this link to listen to Golf To Go with Frank Larose.

Excerpt From Podcast Transcript:

Frank: Steve Young is playing in this week’s AT&T Pro-Am at Pebble Beach. He’s a three-time Super Bowl champion. A two-time NFL Most Valuable Player, a highly successful businessman, and one of today’s most popular sports television commentators. It’s a pleasure to have him on people who play the game. Welcome!

Steve: Great. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Wonderful week.

Frank: Oh boy, it’s going to be really exciting. You’ve got ahead of you.

Steve: You know there’s a group of guys even Harris Barton my old teammate is now famous down on the Monterey Peninsula. And there’s a whole group of guys that just this is this is Christmas week. This is you know, this is the number one week of the year and it means a lot to a lot of people in a lot of different ways but for those of us that have been around the Monterey Peninsula growing up, I mean, every Tuesday, well not every Tuesday, but every once in a while, John Staples, who just joined Cyprus, a friend of Mike Cofer our kicker, would have us down and play in the fog on a Tuesday and you know in in in late November. And I can’t tell you how cathartic and wonderful and memorable those moments were in trying to get through a tough NFL season. So there’s a lot of you know, historical emotion around being down on the peninsula.

Frank: Yeah, it’s, uh, it’s got, it’s the the notion of walking a golf course and walking in the steps of, you know of the Hogans and Palmers and Nicholas’. It’s pretty exciting.

Steve: What’s amazing about golf too is that like people love football. They love watching football. But so few play it. You know, and they don’t play it for very long, maybe high school. So there’s a connection to the game that is unique and different, but golf is completely different. This you can go play. And you can play the courses that the Pros play and you can get a sense of what that expertise is. You can, you can live it. And I think that’s what makes golf so amazing and alluring, is that you’re constantly chasing what you know. You don’t have to wonder about it, you can walk where the pros walk and that’s what’s so fun about this week.

Frank: Well, obviously we’re here to talk about the AT&T National Pro-am and and that’s what we’re going to do. But I’d be remiss if I don’t ask you for a little perspective on last week’s 49ers – Rams game and maybe some thoughts on the 49ers season.

Steve: Well, first of all the 49er seasons. Remarkable in that there was almost halfway through and they had not found their footing. They were floundering and trying to figure out who they were. And that’s a tough spot in the NFL, because every year. Especially today, every year a team gets put together in August and then they just attack them out, you know and they’re like who are we and they and a lot of this. So it’s not unusual to have some challenges and it’s kind of self defining. But what they did is they saw themselves as kind of a middling where they’re supposed to be, a Super Bowl kind of roster, where we’re expected to be. And I always think that it’s about the personalities in the locker room and the and the grit and the galvanizing of the sense of oneness that they can. And it’s hard to describe. People say why is that Steve? What does it look like? What does it feel like when you’re in the locker room? You can’t sense it. And I feel like after watching so many years that I can as well from outside. I saw the 49ers start to build that grit and it just exploded, which is unusual, Frank. Usually football teams can’t grow that organically, fast enough to actually make a difference in the season. And they grew it faster than normal and exponentially like it just mushroomed and who they became and the threat that they were when they took the field towards the end of December, everyone. I remember a lot of commentary heard about after they beat the Rams at the final game of the year. A lot of people lamenting “Geez. We had the 49ers out of this thing so close, now we gotta put up with them. “Lot of playoff teams are like, “Jeez, can we get rid, get rid of these guys? “

And so I think that’s a real, that’s a, that is a testimony to the 49ers, John Lynch to the roster to Kyle Shanahan coaching that that’s not easy to do and those core fundamental leaders in that group that that became that team you know and want a run in the playoffs so, I gotta tell you, from a 49er perspective, it’s the grit and the and the and that oneness in the locker room that made us famous in the 80s and 90s and having it back and around a lot and being able to be drawn on is something really cool to me. I don’t want to belabor, but super fun to think about. But the game itself, obviously Sunday night was, The Rams are a great team and they got better over the last three weeks since we beat them and they showed that. They showed that they’ve gotten better and in the end that was the difference.

Frank: Remarkable. Thank you. The AT&T Pro-Am. It is a special kind of tournament because it brings together celebrities and captains of industry and, you know, the best tour players in the world all on the well, you know, is there a more beautiful location than the Monterey Peninsula? There’s not. What is it to you personally that that’s so special about this tournament?

Steve: There’s multiple things. First of all, there’s a love of the Monterey Peninsula. There’s a love of when you drive in. And for us, it’s local, there’s, there’s it just smells. It’s unique and it looks unique and it feels unique and every every time I’ve ever been down there. And so there’s a there’s that part of it. There’s also the history of the AT&T and the Clambake and the spirit of we’re bringing the pros together with some people who are golf lovers and there’s a camaraderie around that and I can feel that from the even when I play in the AT&T no matter who I get paired with somebody has that sense of history. And so there’s a spirit to our partnership over the next three or four days and it’s different than anywhere else that I’ve ever done that. I played in Pro-Ams and have been with pros before and there’s a natural affinity to athletes getting together, but on the Monterey Peninsula you have the AT&T has this this Clambake history. I think that’s still there. The spirit of what was going on with being with the guys like Clint Eastwood for many years and years, everybody, Arnold Palmer and just people like that. So there’s that part of it and then there’s just the tournament itself, there’s the the Peninsula Foundation, Steve John. You don’t realize how much work that it’s done for good out of the Monterey Peninsula Foundation.

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Steve Young will be playing in the upcoming AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am from January 30 – February 5, 2023.

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