When Robert Trent Jones Sr. was designing Spyglass Hill Golf
Course in the mid-1960s, the working title was Pebble Pines. But Richard
Osborne, son-in-law of Pebble Beach visionary Samuel F.B. Morse, ordered
a brainstorming session to come up with an alternative. Morse himself—no doubt
familiar with the work of Robert Louis Stevenson, who lived in the area in the
1870s—offered Spyglass Hill.
Although Treasure Island is set in England, it’s clear
Stevenson had the Monterey Peninsula in mind when he wrote in the novel: “The
doctor opened the seals with great care, and there fell out the map of an
island, with latitude and longitude, soundings, names of hills and bays and
inlets, and every particular that would be needed to bring a ship to safe
anchorage upon its shores. It was about nine miles long and five across, shaped,
you might say, like a fat dragon standing up, and had two fine landlocked
harbours, and a hill in the centre part marked ‘The Spy-glass.’”
The golfer sees something very close to Stevenson’s
description from the 1st tee, a wonderful visual introduction to the course.
There is the broad sweep of Monterey
Bay, with the city of Santa Cruz to the north and Monterey to the south.
Spyglass always has been considered two courses in one—a
spectacular opening quintet on dunesland, followed by a mostly uphill, 13-hole
march through tall pines and cypress trees. Those first five holes are the most
popular—their sandy wastes, stunted shrubbery and coastline setting reminiscent
of the game’s Scottish origins. They certainly captured my heart when I first
played “The Glass,” in 1971. The rest, however, was a slog.
