In Defense Of Cypress Point's 18th
The often-criticized finishing hole could play a pivotal role in the 50th Walker Cup.
This is the first in a short series previewing the 2025 Walker Cup from September 5-7.
An average of 9.5 matches have reached the 18th hole in the last six U.S. Walker Cups. Only six contests came to Ocean Forest’s closer, while a whopping 13 of 26 matches made it to Seminole’s finishing hole four years ago.
During the 1981 Walker Cup matches at Cypress Point, eight of 24 matches reached a home hole that famously prompted Jimmy Demaret to label this year’s venue “the best 17-hole course in the world.”
There are hundreds of more impressive finishing holes than Cypress Point’s. It’s never helped by sitting just down the 17-Mile Drive from one of the very best at Pebble Beach. Other nearby closers at Monterey Peninsula CC’s Shore and Dunes, Spyglass Hill, Spanish Bay, and Pacific Grove are generally forgettable for similar reasons to Cypress Point: the architects needed to return golfers from the ocean-adjacent holes and back to clubhouses situated on higher ground.
But is the last hole for this year’s matches really as terrible as Demaret and plenty of others have implied? Or maybe just a letdown after the extraordinary journey that leads up to it?
The earliest land plans for a real estate and golf course development at Cypress Point featured a clubhouse in the location of today’s George Washington Smith structure. And why not? The views would be sensational, the site was main road-adjacent, and the hilltop site would offer options for the architect to send a course out to the dunes and forest before finishing along the Pacific Ocean. Furthermore, putting the building by the ocean might have spoiled the landscape and any chance to build otherworldly holes like the 15th to 17th. Similar thinking likely drove decisions at the other nearby courses and resulted in the seemingly lackluster finishing holes. (Pebble Beach developer Samuel Morse admirably set aside key coastline stretches for golf instead of real estate, but drew the line with a Cypress Point lookout parking lot that could have produced a better angle for an 18th tee.)
Cypress Point’s 18th hole also receives harsher reviews than its neighbors because the rest of the course offers so much drama, jaw-dropping beauty, and thrilling shots to play. No other hole at CPC is as narrow or forces a layup off the tee. And the apathy toward No. 18 also prompts a question: does a finishing hole have to be a rousing, knockdown, drag-out extravaganza of thrills and spills to receive declarations of greatness?
Not every great symphony, concerto, pop album, or story ends with a bang. A good sandwich peaks early before reaching the crust where you’re missing those initial bites. Same goes for a muffin. It’s pretty much all downhill after the top half.
In traditional storytelling structures, the second act’s conclusion is where stuff goes down before the ending provides (sometimes) a satisfying resolution. And it’s not like Cypress Point’s 18th offers a peaceful and gentle fade to black. Two very good shots are required, even if you aren’t entirely sure how to get there.
Part of the problem lies in what comes immediately before the 18th. Golfers are coming off the world-famous 375-yard 17th, even though it's got its share of awkward qualities, thanks to the cypress in the way of most average golfers’ tee shots. That will not be an issue for the Walker Cuppers, who will power drives past them thanks to their relentless high-intensity interval training.
After the beauty of No. 17, Cypress Point’s home hole plays through a narrow thicket of old Monterey cypress. Some are now mere twisted trunks, prompting Lewis A. Lapham, the son of club founding member Roger who hit shots during construction for MacKenzie, to write how the cypress looked “like an alfresco exhibition of modern sculpture.”
Even with recently restored bunkers, the 18th tee view hardly dictates what to do after three straight majestic tee shots where even hardened cranks take in the beauty (and maybe a photo…or four). The Cypress Point golfer is greeted with this less-than-transparent 18th tee scene: