Where is Pebble beach golf course?
Pebble Beach Golf Links is a public golf course on the west coast of the United States, located in Pebble Beach, California. Widely regarded as one of the most beautiful courses in the world, it hugs the rugged coastline and has wide open views of Carmel Bay, opening to the Pacific Ocean on the south side of the Monterey Peninsula. In 2001, it became the first public course to be selected as the No. 1 Golf Course in America by Golf Digest. Greens fees are among the highest in the world, at $525 (plus $40 cart fee or $92.50 caddie fee for non-resort guests) per round in 2018.
Pebble beach golf course in history
Four of the courses in the coastal community of Pebble Beach, including Pebble Beach Golf Links, belong to the Pebble Beach Company, which also operates three hotels and a spa at the resort. The other courses are The Links at Spanish Bay, Spyglass Hill Golf Course, and Del Monte Golf Course.
The PGA Tour and PGA Tour Champions play annual events at Pebble Beach, AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and the First Tee Open. It has hosted six men’s major championships: six U.S. Opens and a PGA Championship. It also hosted the 1988 Nabisco Championship, now known as the Tour Championship, the season-ending event on the PGA Tour. World-renowned, the course is included in many golf video games, such as the Links series and the Tiger Woods PGA Tour series.
The course began as part of the complex of the Hotel del Monte, a resort hotel in Monterey, California, built by Charles Crocker, one of the California’s Big Four railroad barons, through Southern Pacific Railroad‘s property division, Pacific Improvement Company. The hotel first opened on June 10, 1880. The famous 17-Mile Drive was originally designed as a local excursion route for visitors to the Del Monte to take in the historic sights of Monterey and Pacific Grove and the scenery of what would become Pebble Beach.
The course was designed by Jack Neville and Douglas Grant and opened on February 22, 1919. Neville also designed the back nine at Pacific Grove Municipal Golf Course on the other side of the Monterey Peninsula. His objective was to place as many of the holes as possible along the rocky and beautiful Monterey coast line. This was accomplished using a “figure 8” layout.
The course was extensively revised in 1928 by H. Chandler Egan. Other architects who have worked on the course include Alistair MacKenzie and Robert Hunter (1927) and Jack Nicklaus (creation of the new fifth hole, 1998).
On February 27, 1919, Samuel Finley Brown Morse formed the Del Monte Properties Company, and acquired the extensive holdings of the Pacific Improvement Company, which included the Del Monte Forest, the Del Monte Lodge and the Hotel Del Monte. (After World War II, the Hotel del Monte building and surrounding grounds were acquired by the United States Navy to its Naval Postgraduate School and the building was renamed Herrmann Hall.) Golf Course Histories has an aerial comparison of the changes to the course, notably the 17th hole, from 1938 to 2014.
The course was bought by a consortium of Japanese investors during the upswing of foreign investments in American properties in the early 1990s. The sale, however, generated controversy when it was discovered that one of the investors had alleged ties to organized crime in Japan. It was then bought by another group of Japanese investors before being sold to the Pebble Beach Co. several years later.
Role of honour
The first professional tournament at Pebble Beach was the Monterey Peninsula Open in 1926, which had a $5,000 purse. “Lighthorse” Harry Cooper of Texas won with a 72-hole score of 293 (+5). In 1929, Pebble hosted its first major—the U.S. Amateur. A match play event, it was won by Jimmy Johnston of Minnesota, while Bobby Jones tied for medalist honors in the stroke play qualifier, but lost his first-round match to Johnny Goodman.
In 1947, Pebble Beach began its run as one of the host courses for the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am tournament, sometimes known as the “Clam Bake”, and now the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. The tournament is held annually, usually in February, and is an unusual four-round tournament. The final round on Sunday is played at Pebble Beach, but the first three rounds of pro-am play are contested in round-robin format at Pebble Beach and two other courses—currently Spyglass Hill Golf Course and Monterey Peninsula Country Club, Shores Course. In August or September, the course also hosts the Champions Tour‘s First Tee Open with the Poppy Hills Golf Course.
Pebble Beach has hosted the U.S. Open six times, first in 1972, and most recently in 2019. It has an exceptionally distinguished set of champions including Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Tom Kite, Tiger Woods, Graeme McDowell and Gary Woodland. Pebble Beach was also the site of the PGA Championship in 1977, won by Lanny Wadkins in a sudden-death playoff over Gene Littler, the first use of the format in a major championship.
Many other high-profile championships have been staged on the course, including several U.S. Amateur Championships; Nicklaus won his second title in the event here in 1961. Eleven years later in 1972, he won Pebble Beach’s first U.S. Open.
In 2023, Pebble Beach will be the first course to host a men’s, women’s, and senior men’s golf tournament in the same calendar year, as the course will host the U.S. Women’s Open.
How much to pay – play Pebble Beach Golf Links
Pebble Beach green fee: $550
Yes, the green fee for Pebble is $550, which was just increased from $525 and $495 a year or two ago. There was a time, of course, that it was quite affordable. Back in the ’70s, you could play it for less than $100, but that was then.
Of course, the caveat is that the five-bill green fee is just the beginning. There’s a requirement that you stay two nights at one of the Pebble Beach properties to get on Pebble Beach if you book it in advance of two days or more. But what many don’t know is that you can book a tee time a day out without staying at Pebble Beach.
If you’re planning a trip to Pebble Beach and don’t book in advance, you could get there and not be able to get a tee time. But if you’re a single, and there are no events the following day, chances are pretty good you’re going to get on. If you have a foursome, it’s a little more dicey but not impossible.
Your strategy, believe it or not, might be to look toward some holidays. The guys in the golf shop tell me that holidays are usually more open than non-holidays. One of the reasons may be that people assume that’s a bad time to come to Pebble Beach. Another reason is that people tend to do non-golf stuff — family gatherings, for example — on holidays, which opens up the tee sheet. Plus, it’s less likely that Pebble Beach Golf Links would stage tournaments or events on those days.
Of course, if money is no object, I like the stay-and-play options. Spend the money, stay at the resort and play a couple more courses. Spyglass Hill is one of my favorites in the world, so that makes a great 1-2 punch. Add in the Links at Spanish Bay and the new Poppy Hills Golf Course, and you’ve really got something.
There are four options for staying at Pebble Beach — the Lodge at Pebble Beach, the Inn at Spanish Bay, Casa Palmero, and the Fairway One Guest Rooms and Cottages.
Fairway One is the newest of the lodging options at Pebble Beach. Located along the first fairway of Pebble Beach Golf Links, it features large guest rooms as well as the Palmer and Eastwood cottages. Prices start at $990, excluding taxes and resort fees, for a Garden View room. The cost escalates up to $6,940 for the aforementioned four-bedroom cottages per night.
The most opulent option is Casa Palmero, which is former mansion acquired by the Pebble Beach Co., in 1994. Ranging from $1,100 to more than $3,000 per night, Casa Palmero is an intimate, Mediterranean-style estate that features 24 private rooms and suites, each with wood-burning fireplaces, over-sized tubs and mostly king beds. Overlooking the first and second fairways of Pebble Beach Golf Links, Casa Palmero is just a few steps away from The Spa at Pebble Beach.
The next level is the Lodge, currently starting at less than $940 per night for a Garden View up to more well over $4,300 per night for the two-bedroom Sloat Suite, and those digs, located along the 18th hole, are pretty special, too. Or you can stay at the Inn at Spanish Bay starting at around $820 per night for a Garden View room.
But you might want to try a tour operator or agent as well. They don’t get discounted tee times at Pebble, but apparently they work deals on the hotel rooms. They can often save you some money on packages that include multiple courses, sometimes saving close to $1,000.
As for booking your own reservations, call Pebble Beach at (866) 249-6232, even if you’re just booking a round at Pebble beach a day out.