In January 1916, the Hotel Del Monte announced they were planning to build a much needed second golf course at Moss Beach, as professional golfers Walter Fovargue, Wilfrid Reid and James Donaldson arrived to remodel the Del Monte No. 1 golf course for the Western Golf Association’s Western Amateur and Open championships, to be held in July.
With California Golf Association secretary, Del Monte Country Club green chairman, and Del Monte Golf manager, Jack Neville, out of town at the Western Golf Association meeting in Chicago (where he offered a free train ride to entrants), the trio made a plan for laying out a new course at Pebble Beach, as an alternative to Moss Beach. All three were designing the new Lakeside course in San Francisco, and Fovargue would shortly design new courses for the Santa Barbara Country Club, the Annandale Golf Club, and Victoria Club in Riverside.
By early February, the Hotel Del Monte announced they were switching the location of their second course from Moss Beach to Pebble Beach, where the Forest Lodge would be transformed into a golf club house. Two weeks later, Wilfrid Reid joined Jimmy Donaldson, who was already on the ground, and together they began construction of the Pebble Beach golf links.
More than a year later, in March 1917, the Hotel Del Monte announced the new Del Monte No. 2 golf course at Pebble Beach was designed by Jack Neville and Douglas Grant of the Del Monte Country Club green committee, who had chosen the best solutions from six different plans to create the new layout, which would cost $100,000, and would open by September 1917.
The first score card that I have found is from March 1, 1917. The back nine should add up to 36, with the course a Par 73. Here is a clip of it from the San Francisco Chronicle:
In an amazing coincidence, or spurred on by Neville’s offer of a free train ride from Chicago for entrants in the Western Amateur, the United States Golf Association revised their rules in April 1916, regarding the “Magna Charta” of the Amateur Golfer, specifically stating that golfers could not accept travel or living expenses for playing in a tournament, contest, or exhibition, and would be deemed professional, if they make money “writing, editing or publishing articles, magazines or books on golf, or to laying out, constructing, supervising or giving advice concerning the layout, construction or upkeep of a golf course or any part thereof.” The W.G.A. followed suit in April 1917, also making golf course architects professionals.
Giving credit for the new course to Neville and Grant as amateur architects, even after the U.S.G.A. changed its rules and started the fight that would end the W.G.A., was unfortunate for the other early contributors: James Donaldson, Wilfrid Reid, Walter Fovargue, George Smith, Del Monte manager Carl S. Stanley, and California golf legends Roger Lapham and Ed Tufts of the California Golf Association, who all played a big hand in the creation of golf at Pebble Beach.
More Pebble Beach golf links articles from Golf Historical Society
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