Pebble Beach - California - USA

Pebble is a special place. Candidly you step on 1 and think....Am I at Pebble? You play 2 and 3 and similar thoughts rumble. You get to 5 and as you traverse thru to 11 you realize you just played maybe the best 6 holes anywhere. A few more ok holes and then 15 thru 18 are sublime. You'll have those that postulate Spyglass is better....They are uninformed. It's a big bite to play Pebble....Yes, But you can play Pebble.

Price not withstanding, a must play. Holes 5-10 and 17-18 are even more breathtaking in person than they are TV.

Wonderful experience in views that are hard to beat in the US. Like Portrush in Ireland, in my humble opinion it should be outside the top 20 and is not quite as good as Spyglass from a course perspective if you ignore the views. Still a fantastic few hours of golf and accessible unlike many others on the list.

Iconic course that I'm sure would be fun and interesting if I played there every day for the rest of my life. Of course it is hard to separate the experience from the course as some others have stated. In my opinion, the incredible ocean views and fun of playing the same holes as your idols do not cover up a course laking in any quality. The ocean stretch is sublime, but the other holes have great interest with some outrageous green complexes and slopes. For me, it's as close to perfection as I have found on a golf course and I just hope I can get another chance to spend a few perfect hours on this course.

The most over rated golf course in the Top 25. Don’t waste your money. Great experience but 4-5 average holes. 4-5 awesome ones (don’t get me wrong) but if PB was on the coast of Ecuador and not California we it wouldn’t even get a mention. More doe if Tara Iti or Cape Wickham we’re next door to it then either PB would be 50 in the world or TI and CW would be 7&8.... go there for the experience. But not the golf.

Who likes controversy? Ok, I'm just going to say it, Pebble Beach is one of the Top 5 overrated courses ranked in the World Top 50 and arguably #1. That doesn't mean I don't think it's not a great course! Everything in the World Top 100 by definition is a great course so in essence we are always picking at straws when ranking them to a certain extent and then we haven't even touched on the matter of subjectivity.

So let me only speak objectively ha ha...the first 3 holes, really average, I mean they would not be special on a single course in the Top 100. The 4th, ok half the hole is decent. The 5th generally seen as great is highly debatable. Yes it has a beautiful location and it's hard with a narrow green for the length of the shot. Great it is not. 6 splits opinions, I'm going to call it a great hole because it has that rare element of quirk in the US and I really like the approach.

7 and 8 are the best holes on the course and yes all-world holes that deserve most likely to be in the lists of the best holes in the world. 9 is excellent, 10 is very good, then the holes up to 17 while good are not special. 17, I'd argue is considered great largely because of Nicklaus. Not in my book, especially because I'm looking at all courses stripped of their history when trying to rank them. What is special about putting a green that's too small and doesn't have many pin positions at the end of a long shot? Again it makes for a difficult hole but a great hole? No chance.

18 is another great hole, no arguments here. I'm counting 3 great holes, a whole bunch of sleepers and a couple others. An amazing scenic placement which is nearly impossible to think away and tons of glorious history that people can't separate from the course itself.

Doesn't sound like a World Top 20 course to me. Yet still it's ranked in the Top 10.

However, as a publicly accessible course it is most certainly one of the best in the US.

Again, don't get me wrong, it's great and I love the place. What's not to love? 6 hour rounds and a hugely tempting pro shop ala Disneyland to commemorate the experience and one of the best logos in the sport.

Love to hear your thoughts on why I'm wrong or right!

I mean, it’s Pebble Beach! Played here most recently right before the U.S. Open and it was a fantastic walk.

The landscape at Pebble Beach is undeniably gorgeous, and Jack Neville knew from the outset he had to take advantage of that spectacular coastline. And he did with holes 4 to 10 all played along the coastline to the furthest point of the course. This sequence of holes is undeniably one of the most dramatic in golf. Holes 7 & 8 are iconic.

And then there is the championship finish at Pebble Beach, when the links returns to the coast for the epic par 3 seventeenth hole, and possibly THE best finishing hole in tournament golf – the par 5 eighteenth hole. It's pure theatre, and something you will never forget!

While Pebble Beach is instantly recognisable from the images of the holes along the coast, the inland holes naturally suffer by comparison. But there are some good holes there of which I find the par 5 fourteenth and the par 4 sixteenth (set in its own ampitheatre) the most interesting.

Over the years the sandy wastes surrounding the playing areas have grown over, and these days the links is beautifully manicured, more akin to an inland course than a coastal links. The greens are small and unremarkable, but can be an elusive target to hit, even if the wind is not blowing. My advice would be to take a caddy, and strap in for the full experience. The caddies at Pebble are experienced and will save you shots. And some of them are real characters!

And don't forget to smell the roses...Take in the amazing views of Stillwater Cove, look around the course at the travelling caravans of people on each hole with groups of 4 and caddies all moving together. And then there are the zillion dollar mansions along the course boundary. Take photos. Take it all in. And afterward celebrate your round with a refreshment on the balcony at The Lodge overlooking the 18th green.

A round at Pebble Beach is more than a game of golf. It's an experience you will never forget.

Peter Wood is the founder of The Travelling Golfer – click the link to read his full review.

I just had my very first golf trip to California a few weeks ago and had the great opportunity to discover the Monterey Peninsula area and its beautiful courses.

After enjoying rounds at Poppy Hills & Spyglass, we teed up at Pebble at 7.30 on a sunny morning with very little wind & no fog at all. We walked the course and did not have to slow down or hurry up at any time during the round.

The course was absolutely stunning.

From the tee boxes to the green everything was in perfect condition.

We have been very surprised with the nasty rough and the very narrow fairways but a few weeks before the Us Open it is very easy to understand.

Finally, regarding the course, i must say that only holes 13 & 15 were disapointing.

All the rest of the course is as beautiful as you can expect. Holes along the sea are brilliant, beautiful & challenging (for a 3 hcp).

I live in France and have played many famous courses across Europe & GB and i must say that for me Pebble Beach Golf Links is one of the greatest golf experience i've ever had.

Growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Pebble Beach was *it* - the pinnacle of public golf in the United States. Thirty of the top fifty public courses on Golf Digest’s 2018 ranking didn’t even exist in 1991 – and many, like Bethpage for example, were still somewhat unknown outside of their local area. That left Pebble Beach as pretty much the singular fantasy course for a young man fueling his obsession with golf. When it finally came to pass that I stepped onto the first tee at the legendary course with a few dozen people watching, the nerves were almost too much to handle, and I hit one of the uglier duck hooks in my career. Fortunately, my ball remained a few feet in bounds, and things got better from there. The Pebble Beach scenery is unparalleled regardless of direction – from the ocean cliffs to the multi-million dollar mansions – and it makes up for some rather mundane holes interspersed throughout the round. We were lucky enough to play it twice on beautifully sunny, nearly calm days which surely made for a different experience than many others.

As the host of many a major amateur or professional championship, Pebble’s layout is well-known, so I won’t go through the “best” holes, but instead I’ll highlight the three most underrated ones. For me, those are: #4, the uphill short par four with a bevy of options for both long and short hitter, #12, the par three with one of the hardest-to-hold greens anywhere, and #14, the boomerang-shaped par five with a crazy elevated and false-fronted green that (unfortunately) was recently replaced because it proved to be too penal under today's green speeds.

Time marches on, however, and Pebble Beach has been criticized by some modern architecture critics of being too much of an example of target golf given its smallish greens and narrow fairways and due to the unpredictable Monterey weather, not often playing firm and fast. It’s a fair criticism and I agree that I’ve had more fun on occasion playing other golf courses, but all in all I don’t care that much about those criticisms. Pebble is a unique, high-end, world-class golf course, and every golfer should try to experience it at least once.