Hole Offers a Whole Lot of Challenges
Much can go wrong at golf’s most celebrated hole, the 18th at Pebble Beach, where the straightest path from tee to green crosses the surging ocean and a long arc of rocky beach.
You might try to play too sharp an angle across the water. You can hook the shot, or hit it short. Thousands of balls plunge into the surf or carom crazily on the rocks.
Lifelong golfer Norm Gordon has suffered both results.
“The 18th,” he says, “is the most intimidating hole I’ve ever played.”
You can be overwhelmed by the beauty--the crashing waves, the sunlight, the trees. Harvey Goldberg flew out from Montreal and found himself transfixed by the ragged shoreline and cypress-covered hills of the Monterey Peninsula. He struggled all day to take a proper swing.
“You’re playing in awe,” he says. “To try to beat [a score of] 80, which I can do back home--forget about it.”
This isn’t just a golf hole, it’s one of the genteel sport’s sacred places. It grew to renown during the earliest days of televised tournaments--the spectacular finishing hole of Bing Crosby’s famed tournament, “the Clambake.”
Generations of golfing legends and celebrities have passed across the manicured fairway and into memory: Clark Gable, Ben Hogan, Bob Hope, Arnold Palmer, Richard Burton, Joe DiMaggio, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods.
Trying to measure up to that greatness can play havoc with the delicate precision of a golf swing.
“I remember standing on the tee, and it’s like, ‘Oh, Lord,’ ” says Anne McAndrews, a top amateur when she first played Pebble Beach. “You can’t help but reflect on who’s been here before you and all the historical significance of the place. You feel like you’re at the Sistine Chapel.”
Her own tee shot at the 18th reflected a due degree of care. She grabbed a four-iron and decided to swing easy.
“At the last moment,” she says, “out of the corner of my left eye I spied the ocean--the deep, blue sea. And that’s where my ball went.”
Disaster always looms. But something about Pebble Beach draws golfers from around the world every day of the year. They come despite fog and rain and icy winds. They come despite some of the costliest green fees in America--$350 a person. Tee times are booked 18 months in advance and, to make the list, you must also stay at one of the Pebble Beach hotels. Rooms at the Lodge start at $475 a night.
“It’s the course to play in the United States,” says Alan N. Stillman, the chairman and chief executive of a New York restaurant group. He walked off the 18th one recent afternoon after firing a double-bogey 7. His second shot hit the rocks and bounced back onto the fairway. He promptly knocked the next one into the sea.
“The hole beat me,” Stillman admits. But he smiles about it. “When you come 3,000 miles to play a course, it must be something special. It was more than I expected it to be.”
Only a handful of holes are well-known beyond the sphere of hard-core golfers. In his book, “The 500 World’s Greatest Golf Holes,” George Peper ranks the 18th at Pebble Beach in his “best of the best” category alongside the 15th at nearby Cypress Point, the 13th at Georgia’s Augusta National and the 17th on the old course at St. Andrews, Scotland.
“As a closer, Pebble’s 18th is in a class of its own, the climax to top all finales,” Peper writes. “[It’s] the quintessential hole on America’s most cherished links.”
Photographer Joann Dost, once a professional golfer, estimates she has shot at least 100,000 frames at Pebble Beach, including aerial shots of the 18th. The 543-yard, par-5 hole is positioned so you could take every stroke, including your final putt, only yards from the surf.
“It’s always, always changing,” Dost says. “I’ve seen 25- and 30-foot waves that have ... hit and broken and gone across the 18th green. You’ve got weather all the time, and that really adds to the challenge.”
Heavy storms sometimes halt play, but generally the golfers bundle up and endure. “At Pebble Beach, the wind can blow so hard the sea gulls are reduced to walking, and wind coupled with driving rain, hail and even snow can make controlling a golf ball nearly impossible,” writes Jaime Diaz, author of “Hallowed Ground: Golf’s Greatest Places.”
Diaz quotes Johnny Weismuller, the Olympic swimmer-turned-Tarzan, after playing through a storm in 1960: “I’ve never been so wet in my life.”
He also quotes Jack Nicklaus: “If I had only one more round of golf to play, I would choose to play it at Pebble Beach.”
The man behind Pebble Beach was Samuel F.B. Morse, captain of the 1906 Yale football team. He came west and made the critical decision to spare the prime lots of the peninsula from development.
The golf course opened in 1919. It was sold a few years ago--along with three nearby courses, hotels and other land--for $820 million, to a group that includes Clint Eastwood, Arnold Palmer and Peter Ueberroth.
Scores of old photos decorate the Tap Room, a pub just off the 18th where golfers congregate after playing Pebble Beach. Some make it here as part of an annual pilgrimage. Others regard the trip as a once-in-a-lifetime indulgence.
Don Wallace still talks about the time he played Pebble 30 years ago. He was a longhaired college kid, with a prodigious slice, dragged here by his parents. Over the first 17 holes, he says, he lost 36 golf balls. On the 18th, he made what he calls “a Copernican leap,” lining up to allow for the massive curvature of his shot.
“Instead of facing the hole,” he says, “I faced straight out to sea.”
One great slice put him in the middle of the fairway. Another put him on the green, to the astonishment of those watching. He three-putted for a five. “Now I can look people in the eye and say, ‘Sure, I played Pebble Beach. I parred 18,’” Wallace says. That became important many years later, when he became an editor at Golf Digest. “Maybe it’s why I got the job.”