Andy Garcia was accused of playing better than his handicap allowed after he and Paul Stankowski won the 1997 Pebble Beach Pro-Am with a record 43-under score. Nearly 30 years later, the Hollywood actor recalled that criticism on We Need a Fourth, along with the advice he got from Kevin Costner, who was playing with Tiger Woods at the time.

“We were still in contention. We weren’t in first, but we were in the top three or four teams, I forget. Kevin Costner was playing with Tiger and came up to me. He said, ‘Don’t listen to anybody. Just win this thing.’ And I said, ‘I’m going to win this thing. I’m going to win it.’ I went out, played well, and we won.” Andy Garcia said.

To understand how impressive those scores were, it helps to know how the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am works. Each amateur plays with a professional, and the team score is based on the best ball, with the amateur’s handicap included. Players with higher handicaps get extra strokes, which can help teams post much lower scores.

The 1997 event also featured a young Tiger Woods, who was about six months into his professional career. He and Kevin Costner drew large crowds. Mark O’Meara won the professional event by one stroke over Woods and David Duval.

Garcia said his handicap was a genuine 16. He told Golf Digest that he received 18 strokes and played the best golf of his life. His handicap index was 15.5 before it was raised to 18. He had also been playing almost every day and taking lessons in the month leading up to the event.

His second round at Poppy Hills proved important. Garcia made three natural birdies. He shot 36 on that nine-hole stretch and contributed nine strokes to the team’s record score.

Garcia said the doubts about his performance continued even after the tournament. At a dinner, members of Pebble Beach’s board questioned whether his performance was genuine. One amateur golfer in his group, who was also on the board, defended him. Garcia explained that people only saw his chip-ins or the final score, not everything that happened during the round.

In an interview with Golf Digest, Garcia said that anyone who wins with a handicap faces questions. He recalled making the cut only once after his 1997 victory. By 2011, his handicap had dropped to 10 soon later.

Sandbagging means playing with a handicap higher than a golfer’s actual ability. The issue came up again in 2023 when Aaron Rodgers had a handicap index of 3 but received 10 strokes. He and professional golfer Ben Silverman won the pro-am. Keith Mitchell criticised the situation, calling it “crap.”

However, a strong performance does not always mean a golfer is cheating. Larry Fitzgerald had a handicap index of 10.6 and received 13 strokes when he played with Kevin Streelman. An analysis argued that the handicap system, rather than Fitzgerald, was the problem. Garcia and Stankowski’s 1997 record also beat the previous mark of 42 under, set by Greg Norman and Kerry Packer in 1992.

Sandbagging accusations can be a serious issue in pro-am golf because handicaps are meant to give players of different skill levels a fair chance. Pebble Beach has faced this issue before. In 1995, amateur Masashi Yamada and professional Bruce Vaughan initially won the pro-am, but officials later disqualified them after discovering that Yamada’s handicap was inaccurate.

Garcia’s case, however, does not establish that he cheated.

Still, Garcia and Stankowski’s record remains in the books. Their final score was 245, or 43 under par. The criticism did not change that achievement, and the advice Garcia remembers is simple: ignore the noise and focus on winning.