Pebble Beach's Improved 10th
The most beautiful par 4 anywhere receives a long-overdue green restoration. A look at the work and Chandler Egan's duel-fairway 1929 redesign.
There are still tiny green lovers in our age of architectural enlightenment. This has not been a good week for them now that the Pebble Beach Company gets to show off the expanded and restored tenth green during this week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Some, apparently unaware of the beautiful 10th’s backstory, curiously decried the loss of another one-dimensional green at Pebble Beach.
While there’s a case that some of the expansion work undertaken to date at Pebble Beach’s sixth, eighth, 11th, 13th, and 14th greens has failed quite miserably to capture the character of those shrunken greens and their lost corner hole locations, it’s hard to fathom decrying the return of more than two serviceable hole locations or the dimensions that come with the new (old) possibilities. Pebble Beach’s greens average 3500 sq. ft. thanks to normal evolution and plenty of neglect. But never because the designers subscribed to the idea of presenting an itty-bitty target.
Take a look at the once multi-faceted seventh and 12th greens during this weekend’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Assuming your inner-architecture geek can stomach what’s become of these two gems due to years of flying bunker sand and rough encroachment, largely caused by gradual changes in mowing patterns.
Before last summer’s reclamation project, the incredible downhill par-4 10th culminated at a putting surface reduced to just a few hundred square feet of pinnable putting surface. Anyone could see how old green space had morphed into rough and was crying out to be green again.
Thankfully, sanity has prevailed at the 10th:
This week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am is providing a nice test run for next year’s U.S. Open, when things will be playing much faster and firmer, necessitating all the hole locations they can find.
Generally, the 10th’s green-in-regulation rate during U.S. Opens has hovered around 40% and closer to 50% during the wintertime pro-am when the green is more receptive. With half the field through on a pretty benign Thursday, the average was 70%.
Hearing those numbers, clueless green committee types might scream and do what they do best by losing sight of what a well-designed hole is supposed to do: reward shots and offer fresh dimensions the more it’s played.
The expanded green now features newly available holes galore:
In the front and middle right near the
hazardpenalty areaIn the front, middle, and back left behind the bunker.
In the back center, where it was placed in round one to highlight the old faux dune-turned bunker.
The hole has always been a favorite at Pebble Beach thanks to the way everything about it fits with the incredible land and setting. Views of the white sand beach below and Point Lobos never get old.
The tee shot should start at the left-hand fairway bunkers, and a hanging lie second provides all the trouble anyone needs to be fully engaged. But it didn’t start out that way.
The course was remodeled for the 1929 U.S. Amateur by a committee consisting of Chandler Egan, Roger Lapham, Robert Hunter, and superintendent Joe Mayo. With the nation getting its first glimpse of Pebble Beach, the idea was to have a course that showcased the little-known region. Overhauling the original 1919 design meant stripping out the geometric features and installing more strategic elements couched in a photograph-friendly faux naturalness.