Monterey Peninsula Country Club (Dunes)

The Dunes golf course at Monterey Peninsula Country Club is a 1926 Seth Raynor layout that was completed by Alister MacKenzie’s partner, Robert Hunter, with advice from MacKenzie. Remodeled by Rees Jones in 1999 and renovated by Fazio Design in 2016, MPCC's jewel now provides a vastly different challenge to that originally envisaged by Seth Raynor. Described by the club as occupying “sacred ground,” the fairways of the Dunes course are sympathetically routed through woodland, around sand hills then along the Californian coastline.

The par threes on the Dunes course comprise as fine a set of short holes as you could ever imagine on a golf course. The first of these, the 233-yard 4th, plays downhill to a “Biarritz” green, with sand protecting the right and left flanks of the putting surface. The 189-yard 7th also requires precision play off the tee to a plateau green that falls away on all sides.

Commencing the back nine, the 170-yard 10th brings golfers to the coastline in spectacular fashion as the hole drops downhill to a sand-fortified, raised green by the edge of the Ocean. Four holes later, the crowning glory of the Dunes course is revealed at the 176-yard 14th, where Rees Jones audaciously repositioned the green out on the rocks beside the Pacific.

The Dunes, for so long lying in the shadow of Mike Stranz’s redesigned Shore course, is now equal to, if not better than, its younger sibling after the fabulous 2017 remodel work carried out by Tom Fazio and his former associates at Jackson Kahn Design, bringing in new sand dunes, waste areas and bunkers, along with removing trees to open out the views.