In First Tee Open, Golf Bridges Generations PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. - Tom Kite, a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, still remembers the time he attended the Dallas Open as a boy and Gary Player handed him a First Flight golf ball. It became one of his most prized possessions. "The ball turned green over the years," Kite said. Let me tell you, it sure meant a lot at the time. So did the divot tool and ball marker Kite gave Daniel Gentilucci in 2010 when he followed Kite's group at the ACE Group Classic, a Champions Tour event in Naples, Fla. Gentilucci carries them whenever he plays. "It worked like magic in a tournament last year when I shot 71," he said. This week, Gentilucci and Kite are partners in the First Tee Open at Pebble Beach, a Champions event that pairs junior golfers ages 15-18 with professionals in a 54-hole better-ball competition that ends Sunday. The pros also compete as individuals for a $1.7 million purse. Gentilucci, a 17-year-old high school senior representing the First Tee of Greater Philadelphia, is one of 81 junior golfers - 34 percent of them female - from 50 chapters of the First Tee. "It's a real-life fantasy camp," said the Champions veteran Peter Jacobsen, who hosted the player pairing party with the television host Carson Daly on July 4. There's nothing else like it in any other sport. The tournament is a showcase for the First Tee, an initiative that provides young people with learning facilities and educational programs designed to promote character development and values through golf. The First Tee reaches young people on more than 700 courses, and at more than 4,700 elementary school districts and 120 military installations. Since its formation in 1997, the youth development organization says, it has introduced golf and its values to more than 6.5 million young people. At last year's First Tee Open, PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem announced an effort to raise $100 million by the end of 2012 to support the expansion of the First Tee's programs, with the goal of reaching 10 million additional young people from 2011 to 2017. So far, the First Tee has received more than $75 million in pledges and gifts, according to Joe Louis Barrow Jr., son of the boxing legend Joe Louis and the executive director of the First Tee. "We can see the light at the end of the tunnel," Barrow said. Barrow called the First Tee Open the most sought-after playing opportunity for its participants. It is a chance to play one of golf's great cathedrals with the likes of the Hall of Famer Ben Crenshaw as a partner, in front of galleries and on television. They have photographs taken with Arnold Palmer, hear Peter Ueberroth speak at the Legends & Leaders dinner and might meet Clint Eastwood, the tournament chairman. It is also an opportunity to receive a putting lesson from Crenshaw, Stan Utley or Loren Roberts. But Jacobsen pointed out that this was about more than grip, stance and posture. This was about grooming future leaders. He recalled the time he asked his playing partner if he wanted to be a golf star like Tiger Woods. "He said he wanted to be a Supreme Court judge," Jacobsen said. I scratched my head and realized that the kids in this event don't want to be pros. They have bigger ambitions. The United States Women's Open competitors Paula Creamer and Cheyenne Woods also once participated here, but the junior golfers at the First Tee Open are selected less for their playing ability (boys are required to have handicaps of 6 or less, girls 8 or less) than for their comprehension of the life skills and core lessons learned at some of the 198 First Tee facilities worldwide. Five years ago, Gentilucci, a 4 handicap, picked up the game when he and his friends could think of nothing better to do than go to the driving range. They borrowed clubs from the First Tee. "I kept going back," he said. He also kept applying for the First Tee Open. Twice he was rejected. Of his first time playing Pebble Beach, Gentilucci deadpanned that the famed seaside course was "a little better than on the video game." Yet he could not hide his emotions when he opened a red envelope Wednesday and learned he was paired with Kite. "I got chills," Gentilucci said. Kite threw his head back and laughed at the realization that his playing partner was not born when he had his signature moment at Pebble Beach. It was the final round of the 1992 United States Open, and Kite stood in the deep rough some 20 yards off the seventh green, fighting to stand straight in the 40-mile-per-hour seaside wind. He grabbed his lob wedge, cleared the bunker with a low-arcing pitch, and watched the ball speed across the green, crash into the flagstick and drop into the hole for an improbable birdie. Kite clapped his hands and clenched his fist, and a broad smile broke out across his freckled face. He had finally won his elusive major title. The course still puts a charge in Kite, who in addition to that victory shares the course record of 62 and played with his father four times in what was formerly known as the Crosby Clambake. When he competed in the 2000 Open here, Kite enjoyed a long, emotional ovation as he walked up the 18th hole. As he raised a hand in acknowledgment, Kite said, his eyes watered as he considered that this could be his final appearance here. Then the Champions Tour event was started in 2004. It is a chance for the pros to give back to the next generation and expound on a subject they care for dearly. Kite agreed all that was true, but feeling at once wistful and grateful that all those predawn mornings and long days of practice are not yet behind him, he emphasized that it went both ways. "This isn't giving," Kite said. This is taking. I come here and I'm around these kids, and I feel young again.