“If I had only one more round to play, I would choose to play it at Pebble Beach.”
Jack Nicklaus
All right. This side of the pond might be short on heather, gorse and grazing sheep, but Americans have been playing golf since the 19th Century. That should have been enough time to develop a few classics.
The problem with superlative American golf courses is that so many of them are frightfully exclusive. For example, you don’t merely pull into the parking lot at Chicago Golf Club in Wheaton, put on your spikes and wait for an opening at the first tee. Rejection hath no greater sting.
No, you must invest thousands in dues and initiation fees; you must seek approval from members who really, really want you to join. You must employ an accountant who can figure out how to write it off. Country clubbing takes big money. It takes clout. Frequently, it takes pedigree. Who says the British Isles hold a monopoly on entitlement?
Over the past two years, I researched an easier — and ultimately cheaper — method by which any golfer might play a matchless course and enjoy the sort of pampering country club members consider their just due. Scotland may offer the links experience of a lifetime, but a few American courses, open to the public, let ordinary blokes pretend for a day that they belong in the golfing heavens, too. Here are eight samples.
Pebble Beach
Pebble could well be the best course in the country that anyone can play — anyone, that is, with a few hundred bucks to spend on a single round. Like so many Scottish courses, Pebble Beach bears no high-profile designer label. Two former California state amateur champions, Jack Neville and Douglas Grant, put it together during World War I.
The greens fee alone is $295, plus $25 for use of a golf cart, although guests at Pebble Beach Lodge or the Inn at Spanish Bay enjoy a $65 discount, i.e. a greens fee of $255, including the cart. (Lodge and inn rates start at $330 per room, plus 10.5 percent tax and a $15 daily gratuity charge that applies only at the hotels, not the golf course.)
It’s wiser to cough up $45 (plus tip) for a caddie. Carts cannot leave the concrete paths, a major inconvenience. Besides, a caddie likely will know the many secrets of Pebble Beach, such as its hidden sand traps, ocean inlets and out-of-bounds.
At 6,799 yards, the course isn’t brutally long, but after five rather undemanding warmup holes, players will face one interesting and unique challenge after another. Pebble Beach, of course, is famous for its celebrity-filled Pro Am, held in January. It will host the U.S. Open in 2000.
Bring plenty of golf balls, extra tip money for the cheerful attendants and an attitude of reverence. As might be expected, tee times are difficult to arrange. Reserve as far ahead as possible, or — if you intend to stay at one of the Pebble Beach properties — the minute you book your room. Tee time reservations are accepted up to 18 months in advance. However, those who call 24 hours ahead — or just show up — sometimes get lucky.
(For phones, see next listing.)
Spyglass Hill and the Links at Spanish Bay
Two more courses in the world’s upper echelon, these also belong to Pebble Beach Co., which owns a good chunk of territory between Monterey and Carmel, Calif. I couldn’t make it to Spyglass (designed by the renowned Robert Trent Jones Sr.), but I believe its sterling reputation. Spanish Bay (Tom Watson and Sandy Tatum) is a true links course, meaning it links land and sea. Native plant life abounds, and the company protects it zealously. This benefits golfers in a couple of ways: Golf carts are equipped with sophisticated guidance systems to keep players from going too far astray. And if duffers do hit into the beach strawberries or sand verbana, they are forbidden to retrieve the ball. That means they can drop a new ball on the fairway without penalty.
Resort guests pay $195 at Spyglass, including cart. Otherwise, it’s $225, plus the $25 cart or $45 caddie. At the Links at Spanish Bay, it’s $165 for resort guests and $185 plus cart for those staying elsewhere. Another Pebble Beach Co. course, Old Del Monte, charges resorters and those staying at the nearby Hyatt $75, plus cart. Outsiders add $5.
Don’t expect a lot of frills at any of the Pebble Beach Co. courses. Flower gardens and other decorations have been held to a minimum (golf purists hate that sort of thing). The Links at Spanish Bay lacks a practice tee; the driving range at Spyglass is nothing fancy, and the range at Pebble Beach Golf Links is off by the horse stables and a long way from the first tee. Tokens for the ball dispensing machine there must be purchased at the pro shop, which is elaborate, a department store of items bearing the Pebble Beach logo. Its inventory includes just about any kind of merchandise you can imagine, except major appliances. The store is mostly for sight-seers, who arrive every day by the bus load.
The Pebble Beach courses and resorts are on the south coast of California’s Monterey Peninsula, between Monterey and Carmel-by-the-Sea, 130 miles south of San Francisco and 330 miles north of Los Angeles. For more information, call 800-654-9300; fax 408-624-6357.
Mauna Kea
Another oceanside classic, designed by Robert Trent Jones Sr., Mauna Kea opened in 1965. It’s a 7,114-yard blanket of lush, green sod that carpets the lava beds of Hawaii — the Big Island. Like Pebble Beach, this is the sort of facility where golf is king and the landscape calls the shots. Its driving range is perfunctory, the pro shop merely sufficient. Players starting out are issued towels and encouraged to fill their free plastic cups from an ice bucket next to the starter’s shed. So much for amenities.
Then the games begin. Jones made the course challenging but forgiving, with wide fairways leading to a lot of interesting greenside situations involving hills, sand or lava outcroppings. Mauna Kea’s signature hole, the par-3 third, calls for a shot nearly 200 yards over a finger of ocean onto a green surrounded by steep crags. Few golf holes in the world could match the beauty of No. 3, where brilliant green meets deep blue under tiny white puffs of cloud. Take out a 2-iron — and a camera.
Greens fee, including cart, for non-guests is $175. Those staying at the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel or nearby Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel pay $95. Call 808-880-3480 for golf information. Hotel rates range from $325 per room, single or double occupancy, to suites that rise from $850 into the stratosphere. Call 800-882-6060 for more information on accommodations.
Kapalua
On neighboring Maui, another big resort boasts two stern, world-class courses — the Plantation and the Bay — rolling through pineapple crops and beside vacation bungalows, distracting golfers with long Pacific Ocean vistas and the roar of surfer-certified whitecaps. A third course, the Village, is slightly more playful and forgiving.
The 7,263-yard Plantation (designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw) is particularly treacherous, a field of nightmares with hidden gulches and weird bends. Now and then, crop-dusting helicopters intrude on the serenity of the place, but most of the teeth-gnashing is provoked by the highly contoured greens. Grain (direction of nap) on these surfaces has a deeper meaning than at most courses. Against the grain, putts must be stroked with considerable force. Putting with the grain, you’ll need the delicate touch of a brain surgeon. And the ball absolutely will curve toward the ocean, no matter how impossible that route may appear.
The Bay and Village courses (both designed by Arnold Palmer)– 6,660 yards and 6,632, respectively — are slightly less cruel than the Plantation and also feature outstanding views. At the Bay in winter, breaching humpback whales occasionally interrupt the backswing. Players staying at the two hotels (Ritz-Carlton and Kapalua Bay) and Kapalua Villas pay a greens fee of $100 at the Plantation course and $95 at the Bay and Village. Add $50 if you’re an outsider. Golf packages sometimes can soften the blow. Guests may reserve tee times seven days in advance, others four days. Call 808-669-8044.
Troon North
Although Troon North in Arizona has very little to do with the Royal Troon in Alan Solomon’s accompanying paean to Scottish golf, it can claim without embarrassment to be nearly in the same league.
Troon North is one of the newer facilities (circa 1990) where a golfer can become Country Club Member for a Day. A drive through the wilds of Scottsdale leads past several beige and pink housing developments that look as if they had grown organically from the desert floor. Cactus plants spring up fortuitously, just where the designers needed to emphasize an architectural detail.
The golf course clubhouse is no exception — another structure with that adobe look — except that it swarms with attendants in caps, busy-patterned shirts and khaki shorts — unloading clubs from car trunks, smiling, greeting everyone warmly, giving thorough directions. Inside the spacious Southwest Moderne clubhouse, more staff members stand ready to be of service, whether you need to set up a golf game or buy a hand-tooled leather golf bag.
At the driving range, those who paid the $150 greens fee (no discounts) have free access to an unlimited supply of golf balls, arranged in a snowy pyramid beside each practice station. Carts arrive at the starting point fully loaded with golf bags last seen at the curbside dropoff area, plus towels. From that launching pad, another enthusiastic employee points the way toward the first tee.
The course covers 7,028 yards of velvety fairway bordered by true Sonoran Desert scrabble, complete with natural washes, seemingly bottomless arroyos, forests of saguaro cactus (the tall, tubular, cartoon variety) and an assortment of lizards, toads and road runners. Obviously, grass is the least natural component in all this, but designer Tom Weiskopf and architect Jay Moorish have cleverly laid out the fairways and greens in a most intriguing and unobtrusive way. It’s a tough course but consistently fun. For tee times, call 602-585-5300 five days in advance.
Jackson Hole Golf and Tennis Club
Yes, it’s Jackson Hole, Wyo., and it’s at the foot of the Grand Tetons. Some experts say golf is a game played mostly between the ears. Here’s a course that jangles your fine concentration with gorgeous mountain views, perhaps the largest collection of spectacular vistas that the game has to offer. Fairways mostly sit flat in the valley, but architect Robert Trent Jones Jr. has seen to it that the snow-capped peaks hit you in the face on nearly every shot. A magical place. The season is limited here. In a good year, the course will be open from mid-April to early October. The greens fee is $105 in July and August and $85 the other months. Call 307-733-3111.
Coeur d’Alene
Golfers rarely get this much attention anywhere, which may be a blessing. Yet Coeur d’Alene — on the shore of the Idaho lake of the same name — could represent what’s in store as golf goes ultra high-tech and tries to spoil us all. Purists get ready to cringe.
Designer Scott Miller has created a 6,309-yard layout of emerald perfection — too perfect, some might say. Are there flower beds? Oh, my, yes. And golf carts are mandatory. Golfers are driven to the course from the modernistic hotel in a speedboat. The driving range has the de rigeur pyramids of golf balls, but you hit the balls into the lake, where buoys display the yardage markers. Meanwhile, a massage therapist sits near the practice tee, ready to smooth out sore back muscles.
Groups of four players, two per cart, are dispatched with a single caddie — one of about 150 — wearing white coveralls with his or her name stitched on the back. On busy days, when a big corporate outing dominates the schedule, golfers may be sent out “shotgun” style, meaning each foursome begins on a different hole. All those carts lined up behind the practice tee boggle the mind.
During slower periods, players start at tee No. 1, where a barrel of red Delicious apples offers instant energy. The caddie stands before the group like a tour guide and describes the features of the hole, suggests the best target for the drive and warns of any unseen hazards. Then the caddie runs up ahead to keep track of all four shots.
As the players reach their landing area, the caddie runs to each ball, takes out a laser sighting device and aims it at a reflector attached to the putting green flagpole, shouting out the exact yardage from ball to hole. This is the routine the entire round, along with any extra help the caddie may provide. Tip of $50 gratefully accepted.
But the high-tech highlight is the par-3 hole No. 14, an island green out in the lake. The flower-bedecked island floats, tethered by cables so that greens keepers can move the whole business in or out. No. 14 can be as short as 100 yards or as long as 175. A sign near the tee reveals the yardage du jour. A local rule permits a second shot at the green if the first goes in the water — no penalty. A boat waits at the dock, piloted by two young women who wish the golfers luck as they debark with their putters. Oh, yes. It’s a free drop from the geraniums.
In April, May and October, the greens fee is $170, including tax, and $197 during June, July, August and September. But the lakeside resort hotel and the nearby Inn and Conference Center often come up with golf packages that could make the room cheaper than the golf or the golf cheaper than the room, or whatever. There’s too much freedom of choice to list all the possibilities and rate combinations in this space, so call 800-417-5116.
What a country.
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Robert Cross’ e-mail address is bobccross@aol.com
