With this week's PGA Pebble Beach Pro-Am event being hosted at three courses I've had the honor of playing at some point in my golfing career, I wanted to highlight a personal story of my experience at Spyglass Hill, notoriously the most difficult of the rounds the pros will face this week.
I first learned of Spyglass though my father who had a colleague that owned a house on 17-mile drive and was a member at Monterey Peninsula Country Club, where I was able to play the great Dunes Course (my review is very old and I did not take pictures back in my high school days, but I remember liking it a lot). The day before my round there, this member's son, who worked at Spyglass, said we could get out and play there for free late in the afternoon, which was great. However, we got stuck behind a last minute group of 12 golfers and we were delayed by 1 hour in teeing off. So, we were stuck and played really slow but I was absolutely blown away by the first 5 holes at Spyglass (we played the 7th in the dark and then walked in). The amazing mix of trees, dunes and ocean was etched into my brain and those holes burrowed in my psyche for a decade until I finally got my first shot to play the entire course in 2004.
I remember begging my brother-in-law to come play golf at Spyglass with me (our wives came along). He'd never spent anywhere near that amount on any round (I rarely had), and, as it turned out, it would be a long time before he would again. After an amazing par/par start, I stepped onto the 3rd tee (pictured above) when my wife took what is now known as "the picture". She snapped a shot (shortly after the one above) right in my downswing, which I clearly heard, and then pulled my short iron 30 yards left in the dunes and made double bogey. As you can imagine, after 10 years of being frustrated about my previous shortened golfing experience, and 10 years of excitement built up to play these holes again, I was very agitated. An older and wiser GolfTop18 author perhaps would have been able to recover, but the youthful golfer on that day was emotionally finished as I lost my temper and my swing, and proceeded to shoot 89 (my worst score in many years before or after that and approximately 12 shots over my handicap at that time) blaming my wife the whole way. Suffice it to say, it was not a good experience for either of us. My brother-in-law shot 108 (close to 20 strokes above his handicap) and was not pleased at spending a lot of money to get crushed either.
I first learned of Spyglass though my father who had a colleague that owned a house on 17-mile drive and was a member at Monterey Peninsula Country Club, where I was able to play the great Dunes Course (my review is very old and I did not take pictures back in my high school days, but I remember liking it a lot). The day before my round there, this member's son, who worked at Spyglass, said we could get out and play there for free late in the afternoon, which was great. However, we got stuck behind a last minute group of 12 golfers and we were delayed by 1 hour in teeing off. So, we were stuck and played really slow but I was absolutely blown away by the first 5 holes at Spyglass (we played the 7th in the dark and then walked in). The amazing mix of trees, dunes and ocean was etched into my brain and those holes burrowed in my psyche for a decade until I finally got my first shot to play the entire course in 2004.
I remember begging my brother-in-law to come play golf at Spyglass with me (our wives came along). He'd never spent anywhere near that amount on any round (I rarely had), and, as it turned out, it would be a long time before he would again. After an amazing par/par start, I stepped onto the 3rd tee (pictured above) when my wife took what is now known as "the picture". She snapped a shot (shortly after the one above) right in my downswing, which I clearly heard, and then pulled my short iron 30 yards left in the dunes and made double bogey. As you can imagine, after 10 years of being frustrated about my previous shortened golfing experience, and 10 years of excitement built up to play these holes again, I was very agitated. An older and wiser GolfTop18 author perhaps would have been able to recover, but the youthful golfer on that day was emotionally finished as I lost my temper and my swing, and proceeded to shoot 89 (my worst score in many years before or after that and approximately 12 shots over my handicap at that time) blaming my wife the whole way. Suffice it to say, it was not a good experience for either of us. My brother-in-law shot 108 (close to 20 strokes above his handicap) and was not pleased at spending a lot of money to get crushed either.
So, when I told my wife I wanted another shot at Spyglass Hill, and that I wanted her to come along, the look of "You're Out of Your Mind" was clearly shown on her face, and she flatly refused. However, after begging and trying to convince her that I was a changed man and that this time we'd fight "the demons" together, she finally relented, and in January of 2005, we went back to Spyglass and were greeted by sunny skies, mild temperatures and about 1 club of wind (in other words, rarely ideal conditions for Monterey, see picture of #7 above). I had a brand new driver (well, it was used, but it was brand new to me) that hit the ball about 30 yards farther than my previous one, and it showed up on this day. I proceeded to make 7 pars to go with 2 bogeys on each side. My wife took amazing pictures, including many of the dozens of deer (there were more deer than people on the course by far) and none during my backswing. To this day, I count that round of 76 from the Gold tees to be one of the top 10 of my golfing career, both for the score and for the great time I had with my wife. The next time I go play Spyglass, it'll be the first time I'll do it without some sort of monkey on my back, and I look forward to that very much.
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