Golf Talk

This is one of those weeks in which we have not one, but two PGA events to follow, even though truthfully, we all know that we will be watching the match play come Sunday afternoon. Yes, folks, it’s the Accenture Match Play versus the Mayakoba Classic, and it’s going to be a punch-down, drag-out fight to the end. Eh, not really. A little known golfer will be returning to the PGA Tour this week, and that is what will make all the difference.

The 2009 World Golf Championships — Accenture Match Play Championship (argh! That word again, over and over) just so happens to be the event in which we will see the ascendancy of Tiger Woods to the throne of Golf’s King. If Tiger weren’t coming back, it would still be a big deal, only because all of the big boys play the Match Play tournament, and that leaves golfers like David Toms and Charles Howell III playing in the Mayakoba.

Not only that, but it is nice to watch golf in a different format, like when it’s Ryder Cup time.

The Accenture Match Play will be played on a new course this year. Same place as last year and the year before, the Dove Mountain planned community in Marana, Arizona. It’s a desert course built for a Ritz-Carlton resort, that includes 300 Ritz-Carlton-branded homes. That is a little weird to me, but then again, I had to leave Southern California due to those kinds of residential tracts in a completely inappropriate landscape. I am not a fan of the desert courses, because of the whole water issue, but there is a little bitterness mixed in since those courses, especially those like the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club, are way beyond what I would feel good about paying for golf. People are starving out there, I don’t need to spend $200 for 18 holes…

Whew. Were was I? Oh, yeah, my liberal guilt-complex. Anyway, the Mayakoba Golf Classic is played in a rainforest, so really, I am just screwed as a golfer and an environmentalist.

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Even for those who know nothing about golf, the name Pebble Beach means something. It’s a legendary course for a reason, and today, I bring you…

The Pebble Beach Story

The Pebble Beach Golf Links officially opened in 1919, but the course was not the first course to grace that part of the Monterey Peninsula. That honor goes to a course called the Del Monte Golf Course. Del Monte, you say? As in canned fruit? Yep, the very same, but the relationship is not as direct as you’d think.

After the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad across the American continent, four railroad tycoons decided to open a high-class hotel on Monterey Bay at the southwestern end of the bay just west of the city of Monterey, California in 1880. That hotel was named after the Del Monte Forest that frames the area. The name was also added to the new rail line that the Southern Pacific ran, which allowed tourism to the area.

The Del Monte Hotel was super swank and provided a great destination to those who road the Southern Pacific’s trains. It’s brilliant really: Build a railroad to what was at the time a remote destination, and then build a hotel for the tourists to spend money at. Those railroad guys, they knew how to make a buck.

Anyway, the Del Monte Hotel enjoyed a really good reputation for quality. And when you have a reputation that strong, the best thing you can do is sell it to the highest bidder. Which is exactly what the owners did. The Pacific Improvement Company, a subsidiary of the Southern Pacific Railroad, licensed out the Del Monte name to the Oakland Preserving Company. I will never look at a can of pineapple the same way again.

The Del Monte Hotel burned down. It was rebuilt, and then ten years later in 1897, the Hotel added a golf course. The Del Monte Golf Course, and it’s still there. It is the oldest golf course west of the Mississippi that remains on its original site. The DMGC started with only 9 holes, but expanded into 18 within 5 years.

Another few years go by, and the Pacific Improvement Company started selling lots at “Pebble Beach.” The asking price was anywhere from $500 to $2500 per lot.

The Del Monte Golf Course became the first western golf course to host the Western Golf Association Amateur Championship in 1916, but around the same time, Pacific Improvement decided to get out of the land development biz. They hired Samuel F.B. Morse (a cousin of the guy who invented the Morse Code) to break down the company. He did — he bought it himself.

Morse’s Del Monte Properties Company got the Hotel, the newly-built replacement Lodge (the original had burned down two years earlier, and Morse convinced Pacific Improvement to rebuild and modernize) that served food to travelers along the 17-Mile Drive, a forest-hugging toll road built to make even more money from suckers — I mean, tourists. And he also got two golf courses including the Del Monte. But the Del Monte Golf Course is inland, and why not put the dramatic coastline to great use by building a golf course along it.

And Pebble Beach was born. Because if you build it, they will come.

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