Pasatiempo Golf Club

Pasatiempo Golf Club in Santa Cruz, California, holds a singular place in American golf history as the only publicly accessible course designed by Alister MacKenzie that he himself considered his finest work. Founded in 1929 by Marion Hollins — the 1921 US Women's Amateur champion — the semi-private parkland layout was conceived as part of an ambitious real estate and sports complex set on the rolling southern hills above Monterey Bay. The course opened on 8 September 1929 with an exhibition foursome of Hollins, Bobby Jones, Glenna Collett, and Cyril Tolley, drawing over 2,000 spectators to the site MacKenzie chose for his American home.

Why Play Pasatiempo Golf Club?

Pasatiempo offers direct access to a complete and largely intact Golden Age MacKenzie design — one of only a small number of public-access courses in America where the original bunkering philosophy, large contoured greens, and strategic barranca routing remain in place. The 2023–2024 restoration by Jim Urbina rebuilt every green and bunker to the 1929 specification, giving visiting golfers the truest available version of MacKenzie's Santa Cruz masterpiece.

History of Pasatiempo Golf Club

Marion Hollins announced the project on 12 January 1928, commissioning MacKenzie — whom she had previously engaged for Cypress Point — to create an 18-hole championship layout with a target of building the finest course west of the Mississippi. Construction proceeded on the sandy, undulating hillside terrain, and the course officially opened less than six weeks before the Wall Street Crash of October 1929 plunged Hollins's development plans into uncertainty.

The Depression forced Pasatiempo into semi-private operation, and by the 1940s, daily-fee play had become the financial backbone of the club. Decades of maintenance compromises dulled MacKenzie's original bunkering and green shapes until club historian Robert Beck uncovered a trove of original course photographs in the early 1990s. These images prompted the club to engage Tom Doak and Jim Urbina through Renaissance Golf Design in 1996, initiating a decade-long restoration programme of tree removal, bunker reinstatement, and green expansion that concluded around 2007.

MacKenzie lived in a home alongside the sixth fairway during the final four years of his life, dying in January 1934. His presence at Pasatiempo during this period means it received more direct authorial attention than Augusta National, Royal Melbourne, or Crystal Downs — all of which he never saw completed. The Pasatiempo Historical Foundation, established in 2010, continues to preserve its legacy through archival and restoration funding.

In 2023, the club contracted Jim Urbina Golf Design for the most comprehensive intervention to date. Working with superintendent Justin Mandon, Urbina stripped the greens to their core — the front nine in 2023, the back nine in 2024 — replacing Poa annua with Pure Distinction bentgrass and rebuilding all bunkers to MacKenzie's 1929 shapes. The project was completed on 5 December 2024.

Course Layout & Playing Experience

Pasatiempo plays to par 70 over approximately 5,944 metres (6,500 yards) from the back tees, with a course rating of 72.4 and slope of 143. The routing divides into two contrasting halves: the front nine descends through tree-lined corridors toward a Pacific Ocean vista, climbing back to the clubhouse via tilted fairways; the back nine enters a hillside canyon where barrancas — deep sand-and-grass ravines — interact with every hole.

Five par threes punctuate the layout, the most discussed being the 18th, a 173-yard carry over the main barranca to a two-tiered green rebuilt by Urbina to allow additional pin positions. The 16th, a humpbacked par four with a second shot played across a chasm to a three-tiered green, was described by MacKenzie in The Spirit of St Andrews as the finest two-shot hole he ever designed. The par-four 14th features a fairway grass barranca running its entire left side — a routing solution found nowhere else in the sport.

MacKenzie's large, adventurously contoured greens — many flared at the rear with tendrils wrapping around flashed bunkers — are the architectural signature of the course. The 2023–2024 restoration recovered lost pin positions across the property and introduced Pure Distinction bentgrass surfaces that roll more consistently than the Poa annua they replaced. The course offers four sets of tees ranging from approximately 4,039 metres (4,438 yards) to the championship distance, making the routing accessible to a wide range of playing abilities.

Pasatiempo Golf Club: The Verdict

Pasatiempo sits in a small category of American golf — pre-war public-access design by a Hall of Fame architect who considered it his personal best work.

The 2023–2024 Urbina restoration has returned every green and bunker to the 1929 specification, giving the course a level of authenticity matched by few Golden Age survivors.

The back nine, with its sequence of barranca carries and MacKenzie's multi-tiered greens, is the primary draw; the club's commitment to semi-private access ensures visiting golfers can experience it directly. For any serious golfer touring California's Central Coast, Pasatiempo demands inclusion alongside the Monterey Peninsula layouts an hour to the south.