adminThis week’s PGA Tour is the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Professional golfers and celebrities play together. Pebble Beach Golf Links in Pebble Beach, California, USA, where the tournament is held, is called ‘the course created by God’. Right next to the course is the huge Pacific Ocean, which boasts a beautiful view every hole. Jack Nicklaus said, “If I had only one round left in my life, I would choose Pebble Beach.” The nearby private road, ’17 Mile Drive’, is considered one of the most beautiful drives in the world.
The history of Pebble Beach dates back to 1880. A company called ‘Pacific Improvement Company’ (PIC) built a resort hotel ‘Del Monte’ here. When the four owners who founded PIC all died by 1900, the descendants wanted to go their separate ways after liquidating the company. However, the property was not sold until 1916. Then they hired Samuel Finley Brown Moss, a real estate developer. He was also related to ‘G Morse’ (Samuel Finley Breeze Morse), who invented Morse code. Moss decided to build a golf course for the purpose of easily liquidating real estate including hotels. He had no interest in the course in the first place, to the extent that he said,
Moss commissioned two amateur golfers, Jack Neville and Douglas Grant, to design the course. Both were talented golfers, but had never designed a course before. Nevertheless, Pebble Beach has become the best course in the world. Neville later said: “We made as many holes as possible along the bay. We only needed a little imagination. All we did was remove some trees, put in some sprinklers, and seed the lawn.” Pebble Beach opened on February 22, 1919. As Moss predicted, the Del Monte Hotel and property were soon sold. It was only 5 days after opening. But the buyer was none other than Moss. Moss, who was fascinated by the natural scenery, rode his horse, ‘Moonlight’, around the Pebble Beach area a year before the course opened, and imagined how to develop it.
Moss was a real estate developer and environmentalist. He spent 50 years developing the Pebble Beach area in an eco-friendly way until his death in 1969. That’s why Morse is called ‘The Duke of Del Monde’ and ‘Creator of Pebble Beach’. Moss also contributed to the creation of another world-renowned masterpiece from Pebble Beach, Cypress Point. The person who designed Cypress Point was Alister McKenzie, and Bobby Jones, who saw his work, entrusted the construction of Augusta National to him. Thanks to Moss, prestigious courses were born one after another.
The most famous hole at Pebble Beach is the par 3 7th. The sight of the Pacific Ocean creating white foam behind the green and showing off its anger is spectacular. It’s only 106 yards, but it’s so changeable that you’ll have to hold a 3-iron if the wind blows against you. The straight 8th hole (par 4) is considered one of the best holes in the world. The sea is indented between the fairway and the green, which is visually beautiful, but the burden when shooting is greater than anywhere else. This is the hole where Jordan Spieth hit a dizzying shot from the edge of a cliff last year. In 2021, Tiger Woods redesigned Pebble Beach’s par 3 course, The Hey. The combination of Pebble Beach and Golf Emperor was praised as a ‘heavenly combination’. At the 100th U.S. Open held here in 2000, Woods beat the second place by a whopping 12 strokes to reach the top.
Pebble Beach Resort is currently valued at about $3.5 billion (about 4.3 trillion won). Homes near golf courses are famous for being among the most expensive in America. Movie star Clint Eastwood, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and businessman Charles Schwab live here. Apple founder Steve Jobs, painter Salvador Dali, novelist John Steinbeck, and guitarist Jimi Hendrix also lived in Pebble Beach.
In 1972, the US Open was held on a public 스포츠토토 course for the first time, at Pebble Beach. So far, six US Opens have been held at Pebble Beach. In June of this year, the US Women’s Open visits Pebble Beach for the first time.