They were just three little letters, but they caused a lot of head-scratching -- MDF.

I've never been very good at figuring out codes. The CIA will never call me for advice. I need at least a couple of letters per word to figure something out.

OK, I know what PGA stands for. And LPGA. And MC. Even DNF. But MDF? Way over my head.

Anyway, if you saw the third round scores from the Bing Crosby Pebble Beach National Pro-Am AT&T Clambake and Celebrity Fest on CBS-TV last weekend, you too may have been perplexed by the 15 names listed at the bottom of the 54-hole list.

No? You had it all figured out? OK, in that case so did I. As someone once said, I may be one rose short of making a valentine, but I'm not going to confess to being a blooming idiot.

MDF. That's shortese for Made the Cut but Didn't Finish.

Huh?

OK, maybe this has happened before. I'm not sure about that. But in last week's Bing Crosby Pebble Beach National Pro-Am AT&T Clambake and Celebrity Fest, 75 professionals made the cut for the final round.

The way I read it, there just wasn't room for 75 professionals and 25 amateur partners on the course for Sunday, so the 15 professionals who otherwise had qualified were forced to go home a day early. Too bad, they missed the only day with a little of that famous California sunshine.

They missed six-plus hours of being able to stand around and watch the waves of the Pacific eat a few more inches of Pebble Beach. They missed seeing some over-rated comedians trying to be funny and coming off silly. And they missed a serious "I'm back" statement from Phil Mickelson.

This was probably not well received by some of those professionals, who no doubt were convinced in their hearts that Sunday was going to be their best round of the week, and they would move up the list and earn huge pay checks to take home to mama for Valentine's Day.

Sorry, guys, that couldn't happen. There just wasn't room on Pebble Beach for your sorry carcasses. Of course, you could have plunked down about $500 bucks and played the course Monday if you just wanted to get your four rounds in.

I'm kidding, of course. I'm sure Pebble Beach would have worked them in for less than that if they could have hung around for a few weeks. This is a course in demand, you know.

Anyway, getting back to the MDF Fifteen, those four players who had posted 54-hole scores of 216 were given checks for $11,825 with a note saying, "Please visit us again next year."

The 11 players who shot 217 and rounded out the top 70 were presented checks for $11,000, not bad for a 70th-place finish.

The bad news was that the MDF 15 didn't get a chance to improve their lot with a Sunday surge. The good news is that the $11,000 will count as official money won and they will receive points in the Great FedEx Race.

I guess I'm getting old (that's a pretty good guess), but I don't enjoy the Bing Crosby Pebble Beach National Pro-Am AT&T Clambake and Celebrity Fest as much as I once did. For one thing, the celebrities I liked to watch go through their acts are dead or too old to play anymore.

I mean, give me Dean Martin instead of George Lopez. I want to see Clint Eastwood when he was Dirty Harry. I want to see Jack Lemmon fishing a ball out of the ocean.

Seriously, I don't know these guys. I can watch a hit series on television for 16 weeks and I can't tell you the real name of the star. Maybe that's my problem, but I miss Danny Thomas and George Burns and Jackie Gleason and Little Joe.

I'm not saying they should do away with the Bing Crosby Pebble Beach National Pro-Am AT&T Clambake and Celebrity Fest. I'm just saying that they probably need a younger audience to appreciate the celebrities.

But that's another of golf's problems, isn't it?