“He would be there just zoned out, looking at where a green would be,” says Zoller. “I realized right away that instead of talking to him, I should just leave him alone and not break his concentration.”

Strantz brought his unique brand of intensity to the venerable course’s redesign even prior to being awarded the assignment. “Before we even selected him, I bet Mike put in more than 40 hours, walking around, beating a path out there and trying to get a feel for the land,” Zoller says. “He came to the presentation with an idea in mind already.”

The six-person committee was enraptured by his presentation and his ideas for the layout, which Strantz had sketched in stunning detail. His drawings showed a complete rerouting, with most of the course facing south toward nearby Cypress Point and Spyglass Hill. The original design had faced north from the 5th hole on, offering a middling backdrop of Santa Cruz, typically shrouded in peninsula fog.

In January 2002 the Monterey Peninsula Country Club committee chose Strantz. Around that same time, he also was diagnosed with an aggressive form of tongue cancer. Nevertheless, a year later he moved into a rented house on what would become the 15th fairway.

While its sister course, Dunes, was built in 1926, the construction of Shore came more than three decades later, after developer Samuel F.B. Morse turned the land over to Monterey Peninsula Country Club’s membership for $1. The condition of the transaction was that a golf course would have to be built within two years. On a shoestring budget of $164,000, Bob Baldock and Jack Neville hurriedly built Shore, straightforward layout with flat fairways supported by a hard clay base that softened considerably in the rainy season.

Strantz fashioned 12 new holes and remodeled the other six to add more than 500 yards to the par-72 layout, which now measures 6,743 yards. One of Zoller’s favorite holes is the 178-yard 11th, where Strantz built a hidden tee into a large rock outcropping that previously had been solely decorative.

The 415-yard 15th is a dogleg left with one of the most picturesque approaches on the course—the green is backed by a boulder and cypress, with the ocean farther down the sightline. Strantz’s redesign made ocean views as prevalent as they are at nearby Pebble Beach.

Strantz worked while enduring chemotherapy treatments, losing close to 80 pounds and most of his hair. Occasionally, he would be bedridden for the entire day. Yet he still maintained his reputation as a hands-on designer, marking every nook of the course on his own.

“I couldn’t be in a much better place, and more excited about a design,” Strantz said during the project. “It makes me feel alive. It makes me feel it’s worth the battle. It’s the best medicine there is.”

Shore reopened to glowing praise in June 2004, just after Strantz underwent procedures to remove most of his tongue. But he didn’t have much time to enjoy his masterpiece: A year later, he finally lost his battle at the age of 50. Shore course would be his final design—and likely his best.      

“The last words he said to me when I said goodbye to him, before he had the surgery to take his tongue out, were, ‘Take care of my baby,’” Zoller says. “And I told him I would.” 

Monterey Peninsula Country Club
Par: 72
Yardage: 6,743
Year founded: 1961
Architects: Bob Baldock and Jack Neville, Mike Strantz