Pebble Beach Golf Links

Lore & Background

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 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 champion golfers 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 coastline. 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. The Golf Course Histories website 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. In June 2026 caddies at Pebble voted to unionize under the UNITE HERE union.

In Their Own Story

The morning mist clings to the Monterey pines as a player tees up on the seventh hole. Below, whitecaps crash against the granite rocks lining the fairway. There is no room for error here; a slice finds the ocean instantly. With a steady grip and eyes fixed on the flagstick, he swings, watching the ball hang in the salt air before landing softly near the green.

Reader's Guide

The first Pebble Beach Championship for Women was played February 9–12, 1923, with Marion Hollins as champion over Doreen Kavanaugh. Pebble Beach hosted the first California Women's Amateur Championship in 1967 as well as subsequent tournaments until it was moved to Quail Lodge & Golf Club in Carmel Valley in 1987. 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 Spyglass Hill Golf Course. Pebble Beach has hosted the U.S. Open six times: 1972, 1982, 1992, 2000, 2010, and 2019 and is scheduled a seventh time in 2027.

Did You Know?

• Pebble Beach has hosted the U.S. Open six times (1972, 1982, 1992, 2000, 2010, 2019) and is scheduled for a seventh in 2027.
• In 2001, it became the first public course to be selected as the No. 1 Golf Course in America by Golf Digest.
• The course was designed by champion golfers Jack Neville and Douglas Grant and opened on February 22, 1919.
• It hosted its first women's major championship, the 2023 U.S. Women's Open, on July 6, 2023.
• In June 2026 caddies at Pebble voted to unionize under the UNITE HERE union.