Pacific Grove Golf Links

Pacific Grove Golf Links is the Monterey Peninsula's quiet rebuttal to four-figure green fees, a municipal layout where the back nine runs along Point Pinos and the cost stays under sixty dollars. H. Chandler Egan built the front nine in 1932, and Jack Neville, the same designer who routed Pebble Beach in 1919, added the oceanside back nine in 1960. People call it the poor man's Pebble Beach. It is a nickname that gets the spirit right and the architecture half right.

The front nine is parkland, flat, short, and unremarkable. You will play it without trouble and without much memory of it. The back nine is the reason you are here. Once you turn for home, the layout swings out toward the Pacific along Point Pinos, the same coastal wind that shapes play at Pebble starts pushing your club selection around, and the round becomes genuinely interesting despite its modest 5,732 yards.

The greens are smaller than average but not heavily contoured. Bunkers are functional rather than strategic. Conditioning reflects a municipal budget, so expect it to vary by season. None of this matters as much as you might think, because the value here is not about challenge. It is about standing on a tee box on the Monterey Peninsula with the ocean in front of you and paying $53 for the privilege.

The back nine is the whole point. Show up for Jack Neville's other course on the Monterey Peninsula, accept the front nine as the price of admission, and walk away with a story that involves the Pacific Ocean and a green fee that ends in two digits.