It’s not a “links” course in the Scottish sense. The land was almost certainly once underwater when dinosaurs roamed the earth, but it has been home to towering pines and rich, land-borne wildlife since long before the Roman Empire. The course does, however, link the forest to the sea. And it does so in a spellbinding way that anyone who has played there finds hard to describe.

Walk from the 6th green to the 7th tee, for example, and you have trouble finding your breath. At only 100- to 140 yards downhill, the 7th is the most photographed, illustrated and artistically rendered landscape in the game. But until you see it in 3D, until you taste and smell the cold mist climbing up from the rocks, around your chin and into your mouth and nose, until you see the whipping flagstick and the contrast of white and green, sand and grass, you cannot fully appreciate the setting and all the senses it awakens.

Imagine how Harry “Light Horse” Cooper felt when he stepped onto the 7th tee in 1926 at the Monterey Peninsula Open, the first big event ever hosted by Pebble Beach. Cooper was the original best-player-never-to-win-a-major. He captured 31 PGA Tour events in his pre-World War II career. And he won the first event at Pebble Beach with a 5-over 293 total.

The first major at the course would come three years later when the U.S. Amateur was contested at Pebble. Bobby Jones was the big draw. Nobody beat Jones during that time. In a casual challenge match in 1929, Tommy Armour took one shot a side as a handicap against Jones despite Armour being the reigning U.S. Open champion. “That’s how damn good he is,” Armour said at the time. At that year’s U.S. Open, Jones sold in a local Calcutta (a gambling outlet where athletes are auctioned like racehorses) for $23,000, the largest sum ever bet on a golfer at that time.

But at Pebble Beach in the 1929 Amateur, despite finishing medalist in the 36-hole qualifier, Jones was upset in the opening match by a gritty 19-year-old from Omaha named Johnny Goodman. Rather than take a train back to Atlanta, Jones decided to stay in the Del Monte area for the rest of the week. He would sup at the eateries of Carmel-by-the-sea, take his traditional bourbon at the Pebble Links Lodge and enjoy watching golf rather than playing.

History and Beauty Await the Best In The Game at Pebble Beach

****

****

****

****

****

Related Articles