Oldest Golf Course At Pebble Beach Celebrates 125th Anniversary

Pebble Beach Golf Links is among golf’s most iconic championship venues, hosting six U.S. Opens with more to come as one of a select few anchor sites for the USGA’s national championship. But Pebble Beach’s eponymous course, which opened in 1919, actually isn’t the oldest at the famed resort on California’s Monterey Peninsula.

That honor goes to Del Monte Golf Course, which this weekend is celebrating its 125th anniversary. Since opening on May 1, 1897 as a 9-hole course, Del Monte has played an instrumental role in popularizing golf out West and is actually the oldest course in continuous operation west of the Mississippi River.

Del Monte expanded to its current 18-hole length in 1902 and quickly attracted many of the game’s best players. It was the birthplace of the California State Amateur in 1912 and four years later was selected to host the Western Amateur, marking the first time of the era’s biggest national amateur tournaments was played west of Colorado.

Del Monte also ushered in bigger and better on the Monterey Peninsula — one of the game’s great golf hotbeds. Today, the Pebble Beach Resort is home to five courses, with Spyglass Hill, Spanish Bay and the Par 3 Hay course (recently redesigned by Tiger Woods) joining Pebble Beach and Del Monte.

Del Monte isn’t only the oldest of the bunch, this tight, inland layout up in the Del Monte forest is also the cheapest at Pebble Beach. By a fairly significant margin.

Pebble Beach Golf Links tops $600 for a round, Spyglass is almost $500 (with cart), and Spanish Bay tops $300. Del Monte, meanwhile, is $135 (with cart) regardless of whether a golfer is staying at the resort of not.

Del Monte is also the second-oldest of almost 1,000 courses in California alone, behind only the Presidio in San Francisco, which was built in 1896. Because the Presidio course was converted into a field for practice drills during the Spanish-American War, it’s Del Monte that holds the distinction of being the oldest course in continuous operation on the West coast. And this weekend, it reached 125 years.