Will Pebble Beach ever return the seventh hole to its old look? Our deep dive into the great short par 3

When a golf course is as old and famous as Pebble Beach, it’s tempting to believe we know all there is to know about it. Not only have golfers watched it on television during U.S. Opens and the annual AT&T Pebble Beach Pro Am for decades, many of us have also experienced the unforgettable thrill of playing it, something that cannot be said about most of the country’s most venerated courses.

But as much as we think we know about Pebble Beach, there’s more to it than meets the eye—or the camera.

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With its incomparable setting next to the Pacific Ocean on California’s Monterey Peninsula, Pebble Beach is a bonanza of history and visual stimulation. Every hole tells a story. In fact, the smallest hole at Pebble Beach, the downhill par-3 seventh, encompasses one of the wildest tales of all. Packed inside those 106 yards is a multitude of personalities. It is comic and tragic, loud and serene, fearsome and flirtatious. Above all, it is one of a kind, the thrilling pinnacle of golf played on the sea.

Please enjoy this video as we explore everything there is to know about the seventh hole at Pebble Beach Golf Links.

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Stephen Szurlej

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Sherman Chu

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Evan Schiller

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Getty Images

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Photo by Joann Dost

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Keyur Khamar

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Stephen Szurlej

Previous Next Pause Play false Public Pebble Beach Golf Links Pebble Beach, CA 4.8 47 Panelists

Not just the greatest meeting of land and sea in American golf, but the most extensive one, too, with nine holes perched immediately above the crashing Pacific surf—the fourth through 10th plus the 17th and 18th. Pebble’s sixth through eighth are golf’s real Amen Corner, with a few Hail Marys thrown in over an ocean cove on the eighth from atop a 75-foot-high bluff. Pebble hosted a successful U.S. Amateur in 2018 and a sixth U.S. Open in 2019. Recent improvements include the redesign of the once-treacherous 14th green and reshaping the par-3 17th green, both planned by Arnold Palmer’s Design Company a few years back, and modifications to the green at the famous eighth hole, which we deemed the second Greatest Hole in America. Green modifications have continued, and Pebble re-enters our top 10 after a brief time out the last two years. View Course