Sunshine, fog, and another Walker Cup victory for the United States

Weather. Golf being an outdoor game, the weather is always a part of the story to some extent, and nowhere more so, I think, than on the Monterey Peninsula. The AT&T Pro-Am is famous (or infamous) for “Crosby weather”; it’s January/February spot on the calendar has, over the years, produced everything from calm, idyllic sunshiny days to fog, high winds, pelting rain, hail, and even – in 1962 – snow.

This weekend at the Cypress Point Walker Cup, however, the weather gods and the golf gods have made peace. Saturday morning’s rounds began under overcast skies, but they gave way to brilliant Steinbeck Country sunshine by lunch, and Sunday morning started out under brilliant azure skies which bid fair to stay that way all day. Though fog closed in as the event wound down, it was not a day in which one could complain about the weather.

Stewart Hagestad (USA) reacts to winning his match on the 15th hole during singles matches of the 2025 Walker Cup at Cypress Point Club in Pebble Beach, Calif. on Sunday, Sept. 7, 2025. His win over the GB&I’s Eliot Baker clinched the Cup for the American Team. (Logan Whitton/USGA)

Morning Foursomes

Teeing off in crisp but sunny conditions, the American teams were up early in all but Match 4, in which Sussy and La Sasso tied the first hole with opponents Adam and Shiels-Donegan but never led, seeing themselves sink as far as 5-down by the 12th hole. A late surge in which they won three of the next five holes was too little, too late as the GB&I pair won, 2-up.

Going from the most lopsided match to the most closely contested, in Match #1 San Jose native Jackson Koivun and partner Tommy Morrison took a 1-up lead, briefly 2-up, for the first seven holes before falling back at holes 8 and 9, a two-hole stretch where more than one lead has fallen this week. Morrison was short and right on 8, leaving Koivun an horrific second shot off of a steep slope in sandy waste.

At Hole # 9, the temptingly drivable 279-yard par 4, Koivun repeated a mistake that cost more than one player dearly this weekend – trying the drive-the-green hero shot off the tee to make up for a dismal performance at the previous hole. This time he was the one who left his partner a chancy second shot, out of the powdery sand right of the hole. The resulting bogey to their opponents’ birdie flipped the score in the match, which remained blue until clutch putts by first Koivun, at 17, and then Morrison, at 18, closed out the match and added a point to the score for the home side.

The match with the highest hopes and most dismal finish for the home side was Match #2, which pitted the USA’s Ethan Fang & Preston Stout, who are teammates at Oklahoma State, against Brits Charlie Forster and Luke Poulter (son of perennial Euro Ryder Cup hero and relentless self-promoter Ian Poulter). The Cowboy duo dominated from the first hole, running their lead up to three by the fifth hole, and after a mild reversal when the British pair won two holes in a row, ran it up to 4-up by hole #10. The GB&I players then went on a run of their own, winning five of the next six holes to tie the match with three to play. A GB&I par at the infamous 16th hole to the American pair’s double-bogey put the visitors one up in the match, which is how the issue was resolved after the two teams matched pars on 17 and 18.

The prizes for most dominating performance and most dramatic finish of the morning session go to Match #3. Americans Mason Howell and Jacob Modleski took the lead right out of the gate, one-up, then two-up, and after briefly dropping back to a tie with opponents Eliot Baker and Stuart Grehan after the third hole, held on to no less than a two-up lead for the rest of the match. Howell, the 18-year-old who secured his spot on the team with his win in the U.S. Amateur at the Olympic Club a few weeks back, closed out this match in dramatic fashion with a highlight-reel worthy one-hop hole-out at #17 from 147 yards with a pitching wedge.

Afternoon Singles

The Americans went up early and dominated across the board in the afternoon singles matches, and as the sun faded into a thickening fog bank in the late afternoon and early evening, the GB&I squad showed their mettle, but in a losing effort.

For example: When the match between Connor Grahm of GB&I and Mason Howell of the USA got to 17 all tied up, Graham made a bold move. With the honor off the tee due to having won the 15th hole to tie the match, he pulled driver at 17 to go for the green. He overshot, but compelled to do the same, Howell drove hole-high but well into the left rough. For all the drama off the tee, the two ended up splitting the hole with pars, and did the same at 18 to each put up a half point for their team.

As the fog thickened it got more difficult to see the results of shots off the tee. Preston Stout of the USA, playing Luke Poulter, lost his tee shot at 16 in the fog; it was later determined to have dropped short and ended up in the water. He lost the hole but remained ahead by one going to 17. He then closed out his opponent 2 and 1 with a birdie to Poulter’s par

The last nail in the GB&I team’s coffin came courtesy of Stewart Hagestad, the experienced 34-year-old mid-am who flew under the radar for most of the afternoon while the TV coverage concentrated on the glamorous seaside holes that were being played ahead of him. After losing holes 13 and 14 to Baker, Hagestad sank a lengthy birdie putt at the par-3 15th, closing out his match against Eliot Baker 4 and 3 to put the USA up 13 to 8 for the tournament – enough, as the defending team, to retain the Cup.

The remaining matches were played out, as is traditional, with a final score of USA–17, GB&I–9 being posted for the record book.

It was a memorable weekend, and it was a privilege for all involved to play, spectate, and report on this classic event at Cypress Point. Who knows when the gates of this sacrosanct citadel of American golf will open its gates to the public again?

Saturday at the 50th Walker Cup – a perfect day?

Golf writers wax lyrical about the rocky, scenic coastline of the Del Monte Forest, but as the name implies, there is more to it than the rugged waterfront and the crashing surf. Pebble Beach Golf Links is about the ocean, though the less scenic inland holes have their place and their challenges (Is Pebble Beach As Good As They Say It is?), while Cypress Point is as much about the forest and the dunes as it is the coastline.

Jase Summy (USA) makes his par putt on the 18th hole to win his match as seen during singles matches of the 2025 Walker Cup at Cypress Point Club in Pebble Beach, Calif. on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025. (John Mummert/USGA)

Only four holes of the course run right along the ocean: 14, 15, 16, and 17 – and of those, on #14 you are putting out of sight of the water. The first hole parallels 14 fairway just a few yards farther from the beach, and #13 finishes there, but for a match play competition in which the issue may be settled by the 16th or even 15th hole, the inland holes wending their way through the forest and ancient dunes may be crucial to the outcome of a match.

That’s not to say that those closing holes on the ocean won’t be a factor. Two matches in today’s morning foursomes finished on #16 and the other two finished on #17 and #18. That being said, the status of a match after emerging from the forest will have a lot to do with the amount of pressure that falls on the trailing side/player when the match gets to those crucial closing holes.

Ask GB&I player Dominic Clemons, who with partner Cameron Adams was two down to Americans Michael LaSasso and Jase Summy at the 16th hole. Fresh off of cutting the Americans’ three-up lead through 14 by winning the 15th hole with a par, Clemons pushed a two-iron shot short and right off the tee at 16, his ball rebounding from the rocks and meeting a watery end in the chilly Pacific waters.

Was it over-confidence after racking up a crucial win late in the round, poor judgement to go with a hard-to-hit club that most players don’t even carry anymore, or just bad luck? It’s hard to say, but it was the last nail in the coffin for the only match that the GB&I team didn’t win this morning.

A good example of pressure, expectations, and the importance of when to push and when to play conservatively was the ninth hole, a 289-yard par-four playing (as many holes here do) from a well-elevated tee: 

•    Stewart Hagestad of the USA hit a laser-guided missile to tap-in distance while his opponent, Gavin Tiernan watched his tee ball hit the green right of the hole, loop slowly left and away from the hole and trickle off of the front back to the fairway. Tiernan chipped up but was left with a long putt, and (belatedly, in my opinion) conceded Hagestad’s tap-in. Hagestad, who had been in control of the match from the first hole, went on to win 7 and 5.

•      Ethan Fang of the USA went for the green at 9 but caught the rim of the left-hand bunker fronting the green, and had to watch his ball hop onto the putting surface and then trickle slowly off the front of the green and down onto the fairway. His opponent, Stuart Grehan, also played for the green, but went right, into another bunker. Fang made par, and after Grehan splashed out to makeable distance his par was conceded for a tie on the hole.

•       The final match on the course, Jase Summy of the USA and Eliot Baker of the GB&I, saw Summy making – lets be honest – a real hash of the hole. His tee shot found the sandy native area left of the big left-front bunker, then his second flopped about 10 feet to nestle once more into the fine, soft sand. Baker, who had played conservatively to the fairway, hit a pretty wedge shot to no more than six or seven feet and drained the birdie putt. Summy took a conceded five on the hole, and a match that he had been in command of through seven holes started slipping away from him.

Looking at the big picture, in the afternoon singles matches the USA squad had come out strong, leading at one point in six of eight matches and  looking like they might put six or even seven points on the board, but GB&I pushed back and made the USA fight for every hole and every eventual point. The afternoon session eventually went USA–5-1/2 GB&I–2-1/2 to put the USA one point ahead 6-1/2 – 5-1/2 going into Sunday. 

The final match of the day went all the way to 18 with an overall tie in the balance. Eliot Baker fought back hard from an unfortunate excursion through the left rough, but lost the hole and the match when his 10-foot par putt slipped past the hole on the low side and lipped around the back side to stop on the lip behind the hole. Jase Summy, who had a scary birdie putt from well above the hole (never a good position on this steep little green), missed the birdie but rolled in the par with authority, winning the hole and the match to put the USA up by a full point going into Sunday’s sessions.

Overall, an eventful day of excellent golf, in the kind of weather that the local Chambers of Commerce dream about, on a dream golf course. One hardly dares for as good a day on Sunday, but these two teams, at this venue, in the most beautiful place you can imagine, might just pull it off.

Friday at the 2025 Walker Cup

I’m too old, and dare I say it, experienced, to be too over-awed by just any golf tournament or a golf course – but the Walker Cup is a different animal. Even with a pair each of U.S. Opens and U.S. Women’s Opens, ten AT&T pro-Ams, and a double-handful of lower-tier USGA events and the miscellaneous permutations of what used to be the Fry’s Open under my belt, I feel a different vibe at this tournament.

Even the practice green at Cypress Point Golf Club looked inviting today.

The Walker Cup is a special event, a throwback, of sorts, to the roots of golf, pitting amateur teams from opposite sides of the Atlantic in head-to-head match play – what many people feel is the purest form of competitive golf – and just to take it up a notch, it’s being played on a course of almost mythical mien: Cypress Point.

Cypress Point. The name is whispered in reverential tones among golf fans. The course is an Alister Mackenzie masterpiece tucked into a corner of arguably the most scenic 7-1/2 square miles of coastal land in the United States, the Monterey Peninsula’s Del Monte Forest. Its neighbors are Pebble Beach, Spyglass Hill, Poppy Hills, The Links at Spanish Bay, and Monterey Peninsula Country Club – all save MPCC accessible to the public (though, with the exception of Poppy Hills, the home course of the Northern California Golf Association, at premium prices), but Cypress is private, and exclusive to a legendary degree.

The membership list at Cypress Point Golf Club is reputed to hover at around 150 names, and the cost, well, don’t ask, because they won’t tell you (and as the saying goes: If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.) Cypress has hosted this very tournament once before, in 1981, and the general public used to get a glimpse of this hallowed ground each year during the telecast of the Bing Crosby Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

From 1947 to 1990 Cypress was in the rota of three courses over which the Crosby was played, but the club pulled out in 1991 over a disagreement with the PGA Tour concerning its membership policies. Since then it has been a seldom-seen wonderland of rocky shores, rolling dunescapes, and windswept forests of cypress (naturally) and Monterey pines. A few holes on the course are well-known to the general golfing public, most notably the 16th, a 230-yard par-3 with a daunting carry across rocks and the crashing Pacific surf – but beyond the odd photo in a golf publication or humble-brag social media post, the course has been a mystery to the general public for 35 years.

Until now.

And not only is the course open to the public for this event, but as is standard operating procedure at all USGA amateur championships, spectators are free to walk the fairways (behind the players); only the putting greens are roped off. This level of access affords spectators an amazing opportunity to experience the course at a level that, say, a PGA Tour event does not, and gain a much greater understanding of the challenges that a course presents.

And despite its lack of length, at a mere 6,620 yards, Cypress definitely presents a challenge. Even with a limited amount of time at my disposal to walk the course today – I only got as far as the par-3 seventh before doubling back past 12 and 13 to the media center adjacent to the first fairway – I got a taste of the elevation changes, and the shapes and cants of the fairways and greens, and the genius of this Mackenzie design is evident in every square foot of every hole.

The mystique of this legendary course overrode ticket prices ($100 for the Friday practice round, $200 each for Saturday and Sunday); for Friday, the prospect of a 1:00 p.m. course closure (to prepare for the 3:00 p.m. opening ceremonies) was hardly a deterrent – the parking lot adjacent to the Pebble Beach practice facility, about a mile and a half away, was a good three-quarters full when I arrived at 10:30 a.m. Though not crowded by any means, plenty of spectators were in evidence around the course (most carrying clear plastic bags loaded with Walker Cup-branded items from the merchandise tent), and the anticipation in the air was palpable.

Practice today was short. No full rounds were played; the players and coaches merely testing and refining their feel for the venue, with its variety of holes strung between coast and forest, staying loose and reserving their strength for the weekend. Typical Monterey Bay summer weather was on display, overcast and cool in the morning with the sun breaking out briefly after lunch before a light overcast started to build back in. The light wind was onshore, from the northwest, and if this pattern holds it will be a perfect weekend for golf, at what is possibly the perfect venue.

I can hardly wait.

Starting my second decade at the Crosby

Once again, my favorite week of the year has rolled around. No, it’s not Spring Break, or even Christmas vacation – it’s Crosby Week.

The poster for the first “Crosby” hints at the
fun-loving nature of the event in the early days.

For those in my audience who are below the age of, say, 50, “the Crosby” (officially the “Bing Crosby Pro-Amateur Golf Championship”, aka “the “Crosby Clambake”) is what the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am was called before AT&T brought a bucket of money to the table and started a decades-long run as presenting sponsor of the tournament. Started in the 1930s by crooner Bing Crosby (you youngsters can Google him) as a weekend get-together  for a bunch of his showbiz friends at Old Brockway Golf Course on Lake Tahoe’s North Shore, the tournament was later moved to Rancho Santa Fe, just north of San Diego, where the event’s pro-am format began. Bing would pair touring pros with amateur players drawn from the ranks of his show-business friends and the member of the Lakeside Golf Club in Hollywood, where he was a member (and five-time club champion).

The event came back from a 1942 wartime postponement with a move to the Monterey Peninsula in 1947, where it was played at Pebble Beach Golf Links and a rotating cast of supporting courses such as Cypress Point, the Monterey Peninsula Country Club’s Shore Course, Poppy Hills (home of the NCGA) and Spyglass Hill, over the years. In 1986 the people at AT&T bought out Bing’s widow, Katherine Crosby, changed the name of the tournament, and have been carrying on the tradition ever since.

My own history with this tournament started with watching it on TV as a kid growing up in nearby Salinas. I didn’t play golf, nor did any of my friends or their fathers, but everyone we knew watched the tournament. When I finally got interested in golf, many years later (thanks to the golf writing of Dan Jenkins…) and started playing and then writing about golf, I was lucky enough to get a foot in the door of the golf media world as a part-time freelancer, and get the privilege of entry to the media center at Pebble Beach for this event.

I actually wrote about this event for the first time in 2011, the year that saw long-time celebrity entrant Bill Murray and his then-new pro partner D.A. Points score the historic double, their team taking the pro-am trophy while Points won the pro event. I wrote that article (Cinderella Story) based on watching the event on TV at home, but two years later I was walking into the media center in the conference rooms above the Pebble Beach Gallery shops, a 50-something semi-rookie (I had started my official golf media career the previous year at the 2012 U.S. Open at the Olympic Club), rubbing elbows with the men and women who do this for a living.

I have covered the event every year since (though physically absent during the lockdown year of 2021), so the 2023 tournament marks my eleventh go-round, and the first year of my second decade as more than just a fan of the event.

In that time I have made friends amongst the ranks of the people who cover sports for a living. I kept my ears open and my mouth shut (for the most part), learning what I could from the pros in what used to be called the “press room”, and have enjoyed enlightening conversations with the likes of Bay Area sports writing legend Art Spander; the San Francisco Chronicle’s Ron Kroichick; and Mark Purdy, the now-retired sports maven for the San José Mercury News. When my first media affiliation, with the Examiner.com website, ended with the site’s demise in 2016, the connection I had made with the NCGA through my fellow Salinas homeboy and now NCGA Communications Director, Jerry Stewart, has kept me “in with the in-crowd” (PGA Tour press credentials are not available to freelancers without an affiliation with an acknowledged media outlet.)

It has been a privilege to walk the cart paths of Pebble Beach and the affiliated courses over the past decade, and to write about the events that transpire over these four days. I have seen a varied cast of characters leading and even winning this event, from big names like Phil Mickelson (twice) to no-names like Ted Potter, Jr. (sorry, Ted), and the storied venue and its companions in the rota haves never failed to provide drama and excitement – not to mention the best scenery on the PGA Tour. I look forward to at least a few more years of bringing my audience the stories from Pebble Beach (I’m no spring chicken, after all…) and hope that people enjoy reading about it as much as I enjoy writing about it.

Book Review: “A Course Called America”, by Tom Coyne ⭐⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2-⭐

Having Exhausted the British Isles, Tom Coyne Gets Exhausted in America

Tom Coyne has become a phenomenon in the world of golf. He has a minor golf-related novel to his credit, A Gentleman’s Game (2001), which was made into a movie; and he followed it up with a non-fiction book, Paper Tiger, documenting his 2004 attempt to make it to the PGA Tour. In 2008, married and a father-to-be, the college English professor then undertook to walk the perimeter of Ireland—yes, walk—and play all the links golf courses (and drink in all the pubs) that got in his way.

His Irish golf journey was documented in 2009’s A Course Called Ireland, a book that was very well received, and was followed in 2018 by A Course Called Scotland—in which he documents a run through the links courses of Scotland (with detours to the English courses of the Open rota, and a few other notables), an attempt to qualify for the 2015 Open Championship at St Andrews, and his journey through the beginnings of sobriety.

How to top those Irish and Scottish journeys? What else but take on the wide-ranging variety of courses in his native land, the United States—thus was born A Course Called America.

*****************

I’m late to the party reading and reviewing A Course Called America, I know. It’s not like I didn’t have an early start—I received a bound galley for early review, but I found my self stopping and starting my reading of the book, then diverting my reading time to other books in my to-be-read stack, and the next thing I knew nearly four months had flown by since the book hit the street.

Part of the reason for the procrastination and delay was that, well… I just wasn’t drawn in to the narrative of Coyne’s hop-scotch, criss-cross journey across the United States “in search of the Great American Golf Course” as I had been by his previous book, A Course Called Scotland.

Much is made of the planning and set up of his meanderings, organizing convenient travel to a large number and bewildering variety of golf courses, in all fifty states of the Union. From an all-dirt (no spikes allowed) nine-hole layout on an Indian reservation in Arizona to some of the most revered and prestigious golf courses in the country—including every course that has hosted a U.S. Open—Coyne teed up a golf ball on 295 courses (at least one in every state) for 301 rounds of golf, playing with everyone from local “muni Bobs” to captains of industry (how do you think he got on at places like Cypress Point, Riviera, and National Golf Links of America?)

The trouble, at least for me when I would pick up the book again, was that all the rushing around meant that Coyne was very limited in the amount of page space that he could devote to many of the courses, and while some prestigious and/or distinctive courses got a chapter, or most of one, to themselves, many were mentioned only in passing. All in all, the narrative is less cohesive than in his Ireland and Scotland books; that is what made it difficult for me to stick with the book.

I will admit to jumping ahead to the Northern California chapters—San Francisco, California and Pebble Beach, California—out of order, and then re-reading them when I got to them in reading order, and I feel that Coyne did justice to our little corner of the golf world. I mean, what’s not to like? With layouts like Cypress Point, the Cal Club, Pasatiempo, Pebble Beach, the Olympic Club, Sharp Park, Harding Park, and Pacific Grove Golf Links, we are blessed with an embarrassment of riches (even if most of us will never set foot on some of those hallowed fairways.)

All things considered, I was leaning heavily toward no better than a four-star rating as I approached the final chapters, but his write-ups of the time he spent in California (Northern and Southern) and Hawaii, and especially closing out the book as he had begun—writing about his dad, clinched the last half-star.

I’m still not sure that Coyne made a definitive choice for the “Great American Golf Course”; but frankly, I think that there is no such thing. The variety of golf courses in the United States is reflective of the wide variety of the terrain that is available to build on, and the great variety of the people that build those courses and play the game. And while Tom Coyne may not have nailed down a candidate for the Great American Golf Course, he has certainly introduced his readers to the rich variety of courses there are to play in the USA, and similarly to the wide range of American golfers who play them. In so doing, he has done our country, and all golf fans, a great service.

Golf in the Bay Area: the future’s so bright, we gotta wear shades

In golf as well in other matters, I am an unabashed, unashamed Bay Area/Monterey Peninsula chauvinist. The weather and the geography of the region create an environment for the game that is virtually unequaled anywhere else in the world—as a result, we enjoy the privilege of a disproportionate number of world-class events to enjoy when we are not playing golf ourselves, and that includes the game’s majors.

The highly successful 2019 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach refreshed the region’s reputation as a premium site for golf’s biggest events, and the lineup of big-time tournaments that is coming to Northern California in the next few years illustrates the confidence that the game’s governing bodies have in our area as a golf destination.

Big events return as early as next year, when the 2020 PGA Championship comes to TPC Harding Park in San Francisco. Arguably one of the finest municipal courses in the country, the across-the-lake neighbor to the famed Olympic Club is no stranger to big events, having hosted the Schwab Cup Championship in 2013 and the 2009 Presidents Cup.

And speaking of the Olympic Club, the 5-time U.S. Open venue will host its first U.S. Women’s Open in 2021; two years later the USGA’s ultimate distaff championship will makes its first appearance at Pebble Beach Golf Links.

The year 2025 will see two big-time amateur events in the region. The U.S. Amateur will return to the Olympic Club after an 18-year hiatus, and maybe even more exciting, the Walker Cup—probably the premier men’s amateur event in the world, pitting the best amateur men in the U.S against a team of amateur standouts from Great Britain and Ireland—will be played at Cypress Point, the legendary Monterey Peninsula venue that was once part of the Pebble Beach Pro-Am rota. The opportunity to walk those hallowed Alister-Mackenzie-designed fairways is not to be missed.

The major-event calendar comes full-circle in 2027, when the U.S. Open returns to Pebble Beach, marking the Del Monte Forest venue’s seventh time hosting the national championship. Pebble will then be tied with Baltusrol Golf Club, in New Jersey, for second place in host-club status, behind Pennsylvania’s Oakmont Country Club, which will host its record-breaking tenth U.S. Open in 2025.

And finally, as far into the future as the crystal ball can see, in 2028—when I will need a hovercraft-style floating chair to get me around the course—the PGA Championship will return to the Bay Area, alighting across Lake Merced at the Olympic Club for the first time.

Is Pebble Beach as good as they say it is?

Each year at the beginning of January, Golf Digest magazine publishes its Top 100 lists for golf courses. Some of the local courses from the Bay Area and Northern California make those lists each year, and it should come as no surprise that Pebble Beach Golf Links is the highest-ranked public course in this area.

Pebble Beach is one of only 24 courses in the United States that have appeared in Golf Digest’s rankings every year since the first list, The 200 Toughest Courses in America, was published, in 1966. Pebble is currently ranked No. 7 in the America’s 100 Greatest Courses list, and the classic layout on Carmel Bay enjoyed a brief stint atop the overall listing in 2001-2002, when it ousted Pine Valley, an ultra-exclusive bastion in the Pine Barrens country of New Jersey, from a long run in the top spot. Pebble Beach also occupies the No. 1 spot in the America’s 100 Greatest Public Courses ranking—a position it has held, unchallenged, since the public courses list was introduced in 2003.

Views like this, looking down Pebble’s ninth fairway toward the tenth hole, with the sweep of Carmel Beach in the background, are part of what makes Pebble Beach Golf Links a must-play destination for golfers all over the world. (photo by author)

As with all rankings lists, there is a degree of subjectivity involved, and there is disagreement among golfers and golf writers about the relative merits of the courses which are named. I encountered some disagreement about Pebble Beach from a colleague—an experienced golf writer based in the Northwest—who posted the following comments in a conversational thread on Twitter:

“Sound list sure, but always surprised by Pebble Beach’s ranking.

“I know it’s sacrilege but I’m not American so feel I can say it safely enough... PB is the most overrated course in the world.”

“It’s incredibly beautiful and has 5 [or] 6 of the best holes in the world. But there are too many bland holes to be top 10.”

“There’s nothing wrong with 1, 2, 3, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 but they’re not that special. 11 is terrible and 17 is a huge waste.”

To a golfer who is a native of the Monterey/Salinas region and a lifelong resident of the Central Coast/Bay Area, those are fighting words. To characterize any of the holes at Pebble Beach as bland, let alone terrible, demands a response, and to describe No. 17 as a huge waste—this, the iconic oceanfront par-three where two of the greatest moments in the history of the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach have played out—is beyond the pale.

Amazing on another course is only average at Pebble Beach

The problem, as I see it, is that the most spectacular, most memorable holes at Pebble Beach are so good that they overshadow the rest; the holes cited by my colleague suffer only by comparison with their more glamorous peers. The landward holes at Pebble—1-3 and 11-16—while lacking the spectacular vistas of their seaward cohorts, are far from bland.

That is not to say that the holes which hug the coast are great solely because of their locations and the views—far from it. Even the simplest of them, the short par-3 seventh, poses a strategic conundrum because of the elevated tee box, the bunkers which almost totally encircle the green, and the rocks and water right and long. Throw in windy conditions and even this short par-3, the 18-handicap hole on the course, can be a daunting prospect.

There is little question, however, that 4 through 10, the magnificent stretch of coast-hugging holes which contains three of the four toughest par-4s on the course—8, 9 and 10—comprise the heart and soul of Pebble Beach, with 17 and 18 the dramatic denouement (despite my colleague’s misgivings about 17.) The fact is that the less-renowned holes which are dismissed as bland or unremarkable are anything but.

Underrated opening trio — anything but bland

Take No. 1, a simple-appearing but potentially nerve-wracking par-4. Part of its distinction comes, admittedly, from being the opening hole at the top-ranked public golf course in the United States. You step up to the tee well aware of the hole in your wallet where the $495 green fee once lay, and are now faced with the reality of making golf shots that are worthy of the expenditure. 

A dogleg-right par-4 of about 345 yards from the gold tees, No. 1 tempts you to cut the corner, but the fairway narrows past the bend, and the inside of the dogleg is heavily forested. The elevated, back-to-front slanting green will hold a long approach shot, so there is just no upside to taking on the corner to gain a few yards. It’s guarded by a pair of unwelcoming bunkers flanking the entrance, but is generously sized from front to back, so mind your distance and stay below the flag.

While Pebble’s first hole lacks the visual drama of the famed cliff-top trio of par-4s that come later—holes 8, 9, and 10—it is certainly a hole which requires your attention if you are going to get your round off on the right foot.

The second hole is the first par-5 on the course. At just 460 yards from the golds, No. 2 presents an inviting tee shot to a fairway that slopes away. As welcoming as this hole is off the tee, once on the fairway, even in good position, the player is presented with a daunting approach to the putting surface—a yawning tank-trap of a bunker, flanked by trees, bisects the sweep of the fairway about 75 yards from the green. This looming trench and its arboreal guardians are a visually arresting obstacle which has cowed more than one golfer into laying up to the end of the fairway for the easier 90-odd-yard approach.

The long, narrow putting surface at No. 2 is subtly contoured, requiring a deft touch and a good read to get close to the hole if you’ve left yourself a long putt. I’ve seen many a potential eagle end up as a routine par on this green—including one of my own—so even if you are safely past the big bunker and on the green in two, there’s no letting your guard down on No. 2.

Pebble’s third hole is the last of the inland opening stanza, and while it does offer a first teasing glimpse of the ocean from the fairway, its real distinction lies in the shape of the tee shot it requires. While No. 1 tempts you to work your drive around the corner from left to right, and No. 2 just says “Boom it straight!”, the third hole, a downhill 337-yard par-4, demands that high, arcing, right to left shot that most of us see more often in our dreams than from the tee box. The 3rd fairway turns 45° downhill from a straight line off the tee boxes, so that sweeping high draw is required not so much to hit the fairway—a straight 250-yard pop from the gold tees will hit the center of the short grass—but to hold it.

The third hole’s fairway is topped by a generous landing area at its inland end, but unless downhill approach shots of 170 to 185 yards are your idea of fun, you don’t want to be there. Painting a high draw against the California sky to a spot well down the fairway is the best way to assure yourself of good position on this hole. The kidney-shaped green pitches front-to-back but has a subtle drop-away at the back edge that will allow an over-zealous approach to run down the steep seaward bank. As always at Pebble Beach, this green’s diabolically subtle contours are best attempted from below the hole.

After the seaward stretch – then what?

Of course there is no question about the quality or distinction of the next seven holes. Holes 4 through 10 combine spectacular vistas with outstanding design to create a stretch of the best-known and most-revered golf holes on the planet. After the 10th hole, the course turns inland for holes 11 through 16, which, according to my opinionated colleague from the Northwest, range in quality from “not that special” to “terrible”.

These holes get little of the respect that they deserve, even among folks who should know better. During a recent discussion on social media that began with folks ranking a list of six great California courses, which included Pebble Beach, in their order of preference, another golf writer stated that “…11 at PB exists to get you from 10 green to the resort course stretch, where the most interesting things are the audacious homes that line the fairways.”

As the first hole of the inland stretch after a run of seven visually stunning oceanside holes, the 11th hole at Pebble Beach occupies an unenviable position, and it does lack the visual drama of its immediate predecessors. The fairway is generous in size, which may lull you into thinking the hole is a pushover, but the shape, configuration and bunkering of the green dictate the shape of your first shot from 349 yards away.

The skinny, steeply slanted green runs left to right, with a narrow entry, so for the best angle into the putting surface your position in the fairway should be as far to the left as you can get without being in the rough. The steepness of the green and the bunkering left, right, and long dictate a high, drop-and-stop approach shot—or if you managed a drive into the “A” position on the left side of the fairway, a low pitch that hits short and stops below the hole is your best play. Either way, below the hole is the place you want to be. Play this hole once and you will recognize the strategic genius underlying its undramatic first impression—fairway position is everything.

The twelfth hole is the first par-3 on the back nine, and yet another hole which has a subtle genius underlying its design. At 187 yards from the gold tees, No. 12 is the longest par-3 on the course, and the wide-but-shallow green with its massive front-left bunker and narrow entry poses a strategic conundrum for the golfer. The trees to the left of the green, and left and forward of the 13th tee box, will lift and swirl the usual onshore breeze above No. 12 without affecting the flag, giving little clue to the havoc they can play with a high ball flight. Running the ball up onto the green is a risky proposition at any time—the entry to the green is less than seven yards wide, and being offset to the right, is little help for a low-left hole position. This is another benign-looking hole for which layout and environment dictate the best approach at any given time. 

The thirteenth hole, a 376-yard par-4, is probably the most benign hole at Pebble Beach. The initial flight of your tee ball is shielded from the wind, if present, by some of the trees which also affect the drop into the green at No. 12. The generous width of the fairway is a blessing, but it necks down considerably past the landing zone. Stray right or left and fairway bunkers—three individual ones on the right, and one long bunker complex to the left—will make getting onto the green with your second shot problematic, and even from a good position in the fairway you will be faced with a slightly uphill approach to what was for many years one of the steepest, fastest putting surfaces on the course.

“…13 is a great driving hole and the second shot takes so much geometry and touch.”

– Golf magazine’s Alan Shipnuck, on Twitter

Renovation of the 13th green after the 2017 AT&T Pro-Am added 400 square feet to the top right, reduced some of the more severe contours, and also added a sub-air conditioning system to control moisture. The new green has more available hole positions, but the added lobe brings the right bunker into play when the flag is located there—so 13 green is still no pushover.

#14: Longest, hardest—and only the third-best par 5 at Pebble

Then comes No. 14, a dogleg-right par 5 which is the longest (560 yards from the gold tees) and meanest (No. 1 handicap) hole on the golf course. As part of the aforementioned discussion on ranking California courses, GOLF magazine’s Alan Shipnuck wrote, “Fourteen is better than any par-5 at (Cypress Point), and it’s only the third-best at Pebble Beach.”

Tee shots at #14 should flirt with the inside corner of the dogleg, but too big a bite will bring a pair of fairway bunkers into play. The fairway bends again, just slightly, about 100 yards from the elevated green, demanding precision in your second shot.

The green at No. 14 has probably the smallest usable area of any at Pebble Beach, despite the reshaping which was unveiled at the 2016 First Tee Open, and the green is fronted by a bunker which looks like nothing so much as a huge standing wave of sand guarding the direct line to the flat top of the green. Stray right on your third shot and you’re likely to catch the drop-away front slope that has deposited many a poorly placed approach shot back on the fairway. It’s a kinder, gentler green since the rebuild, but is still not to be taken lightly.

The 15th hole at Pebble Beach, a medium-length par-4, could be bland, but the blind tee shot/forced carry lends it spice. Throw in a middle-of-the-fairway pot bunker, OB left and right, and a tricky bunker complex on the left (added by Arnold Palmer in 1999), and “bland” might not be the word that comes to mind when you get to your tee shot. Even if you land in the short grass off the tee, there is a tricky swale in the fairway about 250 yards out which can leave you with an unwelcome downhill lie.

“The second shot into 16 is sooo much fun.”

– Golf magazine’s Alan Shipnuck, on Twitter

Number 16 tempts you off the tee with a generously sized fairway, and a middle-of-the-fairway bunker that is rarely in play. The trick here is to put the ball in good position in the fairway without catching the downslope 235 yards out and leaving yourself a downhill lie. Similar to #2, there are trees flanking a trench-like bunker fronting the elevated green, another putting surface whose slope and contouring demands vigilance, and respect.

This brings us to the 17th, denounced by my Seattle-area colleague as, “…a huge waste.” The hourglass green, though opened up and reshaped in 2016, remains a severe test even in mild conditions. Bring in the wind and this 150-odd to near 180-yard hole (depending upon hole location) is nerve-racking as a penultimate test in Pebble’s 18-hole examination of your golf game.

And of course, there’s the history attached to #17. Who can forget Tom Watson’s chip-in from the rough in the 1982 U.S. Open, the called shot that led to his victory over Jack Nicklaus? And speaking of Jack, there was his pin-rattling 1-iron in the 1972 U.S. Open, another shot that clinched the Open, this time for Nicklaus over Australia’s Bruce Crampton.

The answer to the question is… YES!

No one questions the quality of the oceanside holes at Pebble Beach, for shot qualities or scenic value; and the inland holes, taken on their own merits and not just in comparison to their sister holes along the water, deserve more credit than they are usually given.

The truth of the matter is that the question, “Is Pebble Beach as good as they say it is?” has a simple answer, and that answer is “Yes.”