The U.S. Open at Pebble Beach: Emerald, Sapphire, and Gold

With its exhilarating stretches of holes atop craggy cliffs, Pebble Beach is perhaps the most recognizable and beloved course in American golf. But the layout that hugs the Pacific Ocean on the Monterey Peninsula is far more than just an idyllic course by the sea.

By Jay Flemma, Special to PGA.com

Years ago, when the USGA announced that each 10 years they would celebrate the U.S. Open with a party of special magnificence, a decennial return to Pebble Beach, elated cheers rang throughout the golf world. Beautiful, rugged Pebble has been a national treasure and a crown jewel in the American golf diadem for nine decades. Indeed, when the sun shines over Monterey, the peninsula gleams like an iridescent gem: an emerald by a sapphire sea, bathed in gold.

"This place is the Louvre," gushed Bing Crosby years ago. Then he corrected himself. "It isn't just the Louvre, it's everything that's in the Louvre too, with all of the artists gathered round."

Most golfers agree with Crosby. With its exhilarating stretches of holes atop craggy cliffs, it is perhaps the most recognizable and beloved course in American golf. But Pebble Beach is far more than just an idyllic course by the sea. For decades, Pebble Beach was the only public-access major championship venue and was, therefore, the stuff of legends. Well-traveled, (and well-heeled), golfers that made the trek to Monterey found their reminiscences in great demand when they returned home to envious friends.

Moreover, on a great course where epic major championships have been held, history comes alive with every step, every shot and, indeed, Pebble's beauty is surpassed only by the Shakespearean-in-magnitude sports dramas that have unfolded along its romantic cliffs. This year Pebble will host its sixth major championship: five U.S. Opens, (the others were 1972, 1982, 1992, and 2000), and the 1977 PGA won by Lanny Wadkins. The course also hosted the U.S. Amateur in 1929, 1947, 1961, and 1999. Golfers love historical stories told and retold, but it seems something incredible happens every time the U.S. Open comes to Pebble. In design, drama, beauty, and history, Pebble is a course of surpassing excellence, holding its own in the discussion of greatest U.S. Open venues with Shinnecock, Oakmont, Oakland Hills, and Winged Foot. But despite its enthralling beauty, it took a while before Pebble Beach was ready for golf's grandest stages.

THE GENESIS OF AN ICON

At the turn of 20th century, a lawyer named David Jacks owned the land on which the course now sits. The town of Monterey had deeded it to him at about 15 cents an acre to settle a $1,100.00 legal bill. Shrewdly, Jacks thought, he sold it to the Southern Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads.

Then in 1914, a young lawyer and far-sighted entrepreneur named Samuel Morse, the captain of the Yale football team in 1906 and grand-nephew of the genius who invented the telegraph, found himself in the employ of the Pacific Improvement Company, a subsidiary of Southern Pacific. The company instructed Morse to liquidate what was thought to be an unprofitable holding.

Instead Morse formed a firm of his own - Del Monte Properties Company - and bought a 7,000 acre tract, including seven miles of coastline - for $1.3 Million. The assets he purchased included the old Victorian Del Monte Hotel and the pleasant but pedestrian Del Monte Golf Course, which was inferior for Morse's needs. To attract the well-to-do and sell them real estate, Morse needed a world-class golf course. After consulting with perhaps half a dozen architects, in 1918 Morse had five-time California Amateur golf champion Jack Neville lay out Pebble Beach, with a helping hand from Douglas Grant for the bunkering.

Interestingly, Neville was also a real estate salesman who had worked for the Pacific Improvement Company, but who followed Morse to Del Monte Properties. Tall and laconic, with a dry wit: that's how history remembers Jack Neville. But Neville was also much like Kurt Vonnegut's character Ransom K. Fern from The Sirens of Titan. He knew that in Morse he had found "his man": a man of superlative vision and business acumen to whom he could hitch his financial star.

Neville's routing was brilliant. He realized that the more he could keep to the clifftops and use the natural crags, coves, and inlets as hazards, the more dramatic and memorable the experience. He laid out the course in a figure-8, where the fourth and sixth through tenth holes abutted the ocean. The course then turns inland - though really no further than a drive and pitch away from the ocean - for the stretch from 11 - 16 before turning home and finishing along the Pacific.

But while the routing was majestic, the initial reception for the course as a tournament venue was rather impolite. As golf writer and historian Ron Whitten wrote recently, a 1918 preview tournament was won by Mike Brady's two day, 10-over score of 154…which was a whopping 13 strokes better than the runner-up. "The dozen invited pros were openly critical," Whitten wrote. "Over the next decade, Morse allowed any number of people to make refinements and improvements," including a landscape painter.

While Morse also consulted such great architects as Herbert Fowler, Donald Ross, and Alister Mackenzie, (who both Whitten and golf architecture historian Ran Morrissett agree was likely responsible for designing the eighth and 13th greens), Chandler Egan is the man most responsible for the course design as we see it today. "He replaced 16 of the 18 greens, (leaving MacKenzie's 8th and 13th greens untouched), and completely re-did the bunkering. Egan's redo is one of the great moments in the development of American architecture," wrote Morrissett.

Slowly, yet inexorably, Pebble rose its way to its first U.S. Open in 1972. Neville himself won the 1919 Cal State Am at Pebble. In 1929, Pebble held the first U.S. Amateur west of Minneapolis. Though Bobby Jones lost in the first round 1-up to little known Johnny Goodman, "photos of its spectacular holes appeared in national newspapers and magazines coast to coast," wrote Herbert Warren Wind. "Golfers throughout the country became conscious of Pebble."

The final piece of the puzzle was crooned sweetly into place by Crosby, whose "National Pro-Am" - "The Crosby" to golfers - melded movie stars and television, bringing the majestic grandeur of Pebble to every living room in America at a crucial growing period for pro golf. A star was born…as was a legend.

THE MODERN ERA

While Crosby's grace and class were the sturdy backbone of Pebble's fame, Nicklaus's heroics - and heartbreaks - were Pebble's heart and soul. In 1961 Fat Jack, as he was known then, dominated the U.S. Amateur start to finish. In 1972, while chasing Ben Hogan's major championship record, Nicklaus won what was, until Winged Foot two years later, the hardest Open of the modern era. With half the field scoring in the 80s due to howling winds stirring up waves and whitecaps, Nicklaus's 2-over 290 bested Arnold Palmer in a Sunday back-nine battle. Nicklaus's dagger was the now-immortal 218 yard 1-iron knifing through the King Lear-worthy wind at the par-3 17th, which hit the flagstick, stopped six inches away for a kick-in birdie, and gave the golf world a thrill that still resounds in the annals of golf history.

But that wasn't enough for 17, pint-sized drama queen that it is. One battle of titans was not sufficient, so after giving us Nicklaus vs. Palmer, the great golf battle of the '60s and early '70s, Pebble saw fit in 1982 to give us a second iconic rivalry: Nicklaus vs. Watson.

Back in 1982 it was $70 to play Pebble, but a few years before as a Stanford student, freckle-faced Watson played the course for free. Almost every day he snuck on at first light, played a few holes, and was gone before the bell rang for his first class. Pebble was his de facto home course.

Still, "I was a little nervous when I woke on Sunday morning," Watson reminisced in 1983. So he played with his two year-old daughter Meg, then immersed himself in the Sunday paper, reading about the federal budget controversy, the Royals' prospects for the A.L. pennant, and the earthquake in El Salvador.

Watson started the day at 4-under, tied for the lead with Bill Rogers. Nicklaus started three back at 1-under. Under cheerless gray skies, Nicklaus bogeyed the easy first hole when his approach spun back off the green. He then merely parred the short par-5 second, in truth an easy birdie hole.

But then the Nicklaus magic began. He rolled in a monster birdie putt from across the green at three. He dropped a 23-footer for birdie at four. His 6-iron at the par-3 fifth stopped two feet from the hole for birdie. He reached the behemoth uphill par-5 6th with driver-1-iron and two-putted for birdie. He traded a fifth birdie in a row at seven with a bogey at eight, but was now running apace with the leaders. Bogeys at nine, 10, and 12 dropped Rogers out of the race and the stage was left to Nicklaus and Watson.

Watson briefly grabbed a two stroke lead when he miraculously saved par at 10 with a twisting 35-foot putt, then rolled in a 22-foot birdie putt at 11. But a bogey at the par-3 12th and a Nicklaus birdie at 15 evened the match again.

At the par-5 14th Watson - usually a short game magician - skulled his third shot, a 95-yard pitch. "The lie wasn't good. The ball was above my feet with no cushion under it," admitted Watson. I hit it thin and it went to the back fringe, 35 feet past the hole."

But time and time again that epic Sunday Watson found himself on the deck of a sinking ship, yet each time he battled back from the brink, pitting his little Bonhamme Richard broadside for broadside against mighty Nicklaus's Serapis. Incredibly, Watson sank the long, double breaking downhill putt.

"It broke left at the beginning, then more right than left after that. The speed was difficult to gauge as the line. The putt was downhill as well as curving, and I just hoped to get it close," Watson recalled. "It dropped into the cup for a birdie! It was the putt that won the tournament for me. And for the first time that day, the pressure wasn't pushing me. It simply left and I felt a great inner calm….I knew it was down to a shootout with the greatest player of all time, and I drew on old positive memories. I thought back to the 1977 British Open at Turnberry."

In hindsight, it's odd that Watson should credit his victory to the putt at 15 because as everyone remembers, he bogeyed 16 by driving into a bunker his friend Sandy Tatum deepened to make more penal. "It was the only fairway I missed all day," Watson confessed. He fell back into a tie, setting up his time-capsule, all-world sports highlight reel heroics, the chip-in for birdie at 17 that regained him the lead.

Watson had played the difficult par-3 well all week: two birdies and another near miss. He went for the pin but came over the top just a bit. "I swung too much," he admitted. "The ball landed hard to the left of the green….It rolled to where I could not see it, and I said to myself, 'Uh-oh, now I'm dead.'"

Everyone else thought so too. Four inch rough, short-sided and downhill to a green running away from him: the worst shot a golfer can leave himself, especially with the national championship on the line. By all rights, Watson's chip shouldn't have stopped until it reached Spyglass Hill. One golf writer reminisced that he wrote at the time, "Nicklaus must surely have thought, 'Bogey. I win,' and everyone else thought it too."

"But when I got to the ball I saw I had a good lie, and then the sun chose that moment to come out. I had a good feeling all over," said Watson.

That light was much more than just a sunbeam. It was the touch of the Golf Gods, awakened once more and keenly aware of the incomparable romance of the moment. There was Pebble, a gleaming emerald by a sparkling sapphire sea, bathed in gold, while golf's mighty titans marched across her towering cliffs, trading birdie after swashbuckling birdie. Watson's chip-in was one of those moments where you could feel the touch of the Golf Gods. It wasn't just one of golf's greatest moments, but all of sports, and the cornerstone of beloved Pebble's immortality.

Sadly the spot where Watson played the shot is gone, eroded by a storm the next winter, but the shot lives on in the hearts of every player. Watson's birdie on 18 was merely an afterthought, a victory lap in the sun.

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