Prestigious course’s century of splendor
Monterey Peninsula links a symbol of golf, coastline
One hundred years ago, long before Bing Crosby and his Hollywood friends cavorted there and Jack Nicklaus won there and Tiger Woods dominated there, Pebble Beach was a pretty golf course on the Monterey Peninsula. But it wasn’t Pebble Beach. Now, on the brink of this week’s U.S. Open, Pebble counts as one of the world’s most famous sporting venues and a cultural landmark. In the century since the course opened in 1919, it has become as much a symbol of California’s stunning coastline as a stage for major championship golf.
“It’s the most beautiful piece of real estate in the world,” said singer Huey Lewis, who has played in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in all but three years since 1990. “You stand out there and breathe the ocean air, looking out at the sea lions and the otters. When you play badly at some places, you
can blame the course. You can’t really do that at Pebble.”
Even so, the Open stayed away for 53 years. Some of the same features that make the course special — most notably, it’s accessible to the public and nestled in the seclusion of Del Monte Forest — prevented America’s national championship from visiting.
U.S. Golf Association officials were worried about maintaining pristine conditions on a public layout, given their long history of playing the Open at private clubs. The distance between Pebble Beach and a major city (120 miles to downtown San Francisco, 77 to San Jose) also caused concern about attracting sizable crowds.
But the setting ultimately proved irresistible, an intoxicating blend of waves crashing into the shore and the striking contrast of blue water, green grass and craggy shoreline (ideal for high-definition television, as it turned out). Pebble Beach became the first public-access course to host the U.S Open in 1972, launching its rise into another realm.
This week’s Open, starting Thursday, will be the sixth held at Pebble. Only Oakmont Country Club outside Pittsburgh (nine) and Baltusrol Golf Club in New Jersey (seven) have hosted the event more often.
That adds a layer of prestige to a site introduced to the nation, in many ways, by the Bing Crosby-turned-AT&T Pro-Am. The annual PGA Tour event, held at Pebble every winter since 1947, routinely attracted higher television ratings than even the Masters in the ’60s.
Nathaniel Crosby, son of Bing and an accomplished golfer — he won the 1981 U.S. Amateur at the Olympic Club and earned lowamateur honors in the ’82 Open at Pebble Beach — proudly pointed to his dad’s promotion of Pebble, through the Pro-Am. Crosby also understands the impact of the waterfront setting, less common in the U.S. than in Scotland and Ireland.
“You don’t get much golf on the ocean, except in rare places,” he said last week. “It’s impossible to replicate Pebble Beach, because of the drama of the coastline and the beauty of Carmel Bay. It’s an amazing place.”
Crosby joked that he’s still mad at his late father for selling a house on the 13th hole in 1957, four years before he was born.
Much earlier, Samuel Finley Brown Morse, a distant relative of telegraph inventor Samuel Finley Breese Morse, developed the area around Pebble Beach hoping to capitalize on the beauty and keep it accessible to the public. Morse scrapped plans for a housing development; instead, the course opened on Feb. 22, 1919, designed by amateur golfers Jack Neville and Douglas Grant.
They created a figure-eight routing, with the course starting inland, running along Carmel Bay — holes four through 10 are widely considered the most picturesque stretch in tournament golf — and weaving back inland before finishing with a flourish. Nos. 17 and 18 also border the water.
“It was all there in plain sight,” Neville once said. “Very little clearing was necessary. The big thing, naturally, was to get as many holes as possible along the bay. It took a little imagination, but not much. Years before it was built, I could see this place as a golf links. Nature had intended it to be nothing else.”
Morse envisioned the course becoming permanent host of the California Amateur Championship, which it was for nearly 90 years. Pebble Beach also hosted the U.S. Amateur in 1929, including Bobby Jones, the most famous player of the era (he lost in the first round of match play).
The U.S. Amateur was as prestigious as the Open in those days. Nicklaus, as a promising 21-year-old, won the ’61 edition at Pebble Beach.
Pebble began to gain some cachet through television coverage of the Crosby Pro-Am. This was not a conventional tournament, but rather a roving, rollicking party featuring entertainment giants such as Bob Hope, Jack Lemmon and Bill Murray.
Mike Davis, chief executive officer of the USGA, recalled watching the Crosby while growing up in Pennsylvania — and marveling at the contrast in climates.
“As a kid, I loved that event,” Davis said. “Here I am, freezing in the snow and watching people playing golf and having fun — and they’re on the ocean. When I was a kid, it was can’t-miss TV.”
Or, as 1982 U.S. Open champion Tom Watson said of the Crosby, “People went there to play a little golf and have a great, big party.”
Morse wanted more. He vigorously lobbied for the Open during the 1960s, according to former Pebble Beach Co. historian Neal Hotelling, and finally persuaded USGA officials to take another look. When the company agreed to provide a financial guarantee — former USGA executive director Frank Hannigan once put the amount at $250,000 — that sealed the deal.
Soon after the ’72 Open, Hotelling said, demand exceeded supply for the first time at Pebble — even if the cost ($20) was considered extravagantly expensive. Golfers now pay $550 to $595 to play Pebble, which hosts about 60,000 rounds annually.
“I don’t think Pebble became a big deal until the ’72 Open,” said Casey Boyns, who grew up nearby, twice won the state amateur and has been a caddie at the course for nearly 38 years. “It just kind of took off and became more of a destination resort.”
The big-name winners of those early U.S. Opens polished Pebble Beach’s reputation even more. Nicklaus won in 1972, hitting his final-round, 1-iron shot off the flagstick on No. 17. Ten years later, Watson improbably made a chip shot on the same hole to edge Nicklaus.
Then, of course, Woods stormed to an epic, 15-stroke victory in the 2000 Open, probably the game’s single most dominant performance. (Tom Kite in ’92 and Graeme McDowell in 2010 won the other U.S. Opens at Pebble.)
This sense of history — Nicklaus and Woods are widely considered the two best golfers of all-time, and Watson isn’t far behind — only added to the course’s lore. And the success of the event at Pebble paved the way for other public-access courses to host the U.S. Open, which has been held at such a facility 10 times in the past 20 years.
Longtime tour pro Jason Gore understands. He won the state amateur in 1997 and married his wife, Megan, above the 18th green in 2003. He routinely played in the AT&T Pro-Am until taking a job with the USGA, as director of player relations, earlier this year.
Gore, who called Pebble Beach “the cathedral of American golf,” acknowledged he thinks about the course’s rich history every time he plays there.
“There are just a few places where you can walk and think, ‘Wow, I’m sharing footsteps with the greats,’ ” he said. “Everybody who has been anybody in the game has played Pebble. It’s a cool feeling.”
Or, as Davis said, “It really is a national treasure.”