Pebble Beach & Spyglass
1700 17-Mile Drive
Pebble Beach, CA 93953
831-624-3811
Cost: Varies $565
Pebble Beach Resort Overall Empty Nester’s Guide (ENG) Rating 4.9/5.0
Pebble Beach — ENG Rating 4.7/5.0
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.
Spanish Bay Lodge — ENG Rating 4.8/5.0
Tucked between Del Monte Forest and the Pacific Ocean, The Inn at Spanish Bay offers a luxurious enclave on California’s Monterey Peninsula. Recent renovations throughout the property and its 269 guest rooms and suites have further evolved the contemporary styling and relaxed sophistication of this very special place at Pebble Beach Resorts.
Spyglass — ENG Rating 4.7/5.0
Spyglass Hill was designed by Robert Trent Jones, Sr., and opened 53 years ago on March 11, 1966, after six years of planning, design, and construction. The course has been in the rotation for the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, a February tournament on the West Coast Swing of the PGA Tour, since 1967. It plays at 6,960 yards (6,364 m) to a par of 72 from the championship (blue) tees, with a course rating of 75.5 and a slope rating of 144. The first five holes all have views of the Pacific Ocean, and the other thirteen wind through the Del Monte Forest. The course record of 62 is jointly held by Phil Mickelson and Luke Donald. The back tees at Spyglass Hill were called “Tiger tees” when it opened, long before the birth of Tiger Woods.
Originally called Pebble Beach Pines Golf Club, the course was renamed to Spyglass Hill by Samuel F. B. Morse(1885–1969), the founder of Pebble Beach Company after the place in the 1883 novel Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) who had spent time in the Monterey area in 1879. All the holes at Spyglass Hill were named by Bob Hanna after characters and places from the novel.
