BY GEORGE WATKINS • The Salinas Californian • February 11, 2009 PEBBLE BEACH – If there’s one golfer you can trust this week at

the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, it’s J.P. Hayes. Hayes, 43, made the honor roll for honesty at qualifying school last November after essentially disqualifying himself. He discovered a ball he was using was a prototype and had not yet been approved by the U.S. Golf Association. As soon as he turned himself in, he was disqualified. “I knew what the penalty was going to be,” said Hayes on Tuesday after practicing for the start of Thursday’s AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am tourney. What he didn’t know was the reaction he’d get once his DQ story appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
“I started getting these phone calls from Mike and Mike (a network sports radio talk show) and Dan Patrick and Charlie Gibson,” Hayes said. “It was a bizarre response to a story that I certainly had never intended to get out, but it did. The response was overwhelming, a little bit embarrassing to be honest.”