The backstory of how Herbert Fowler transformed the dull par-four finishing hole at Pebble Beach into a brilliant par five
We often take it for granted that an architect merely waved a magic wand and “poof!” a remarkable golf hole or golf course appeared. That’s seldom the case. Holes and courses invariably evolve after conception, with some transformations linear, others convoluted. A smattering of these progressions amaze and even astonish. For example, the 18th hole at Pebble Beach began life as a vapid par four before becoming the world’s most celebrated par five. Here’s the backstory.
For as much as amateur architects Jack Neville and Douglas Grant got right about the original Pebble Beach routing, devising the holes in an ingenious figure-8, their closing hole along Carmel Bay was decidedly underwhelming. By the earliest figures in 1916 and 1917, the hole measured 379 yards, although that was pre-opening. In 1919, the year Pebble Beach officially debuted, the San Francisco Chronicle listed it as 325 yards. Despite its glorious setting, at whatever the listed yardage, the hole was largely derided.
After its March 31, 1918, soft opening, Pebble Beach closed for nearly a year for refinements. Yet, as historian Neal Hotelling noted in his superbly documented book, Pebble Beach Golf Links: The Official History, “Surprisingly, little or nothing was done to the 18th and it remained a nondescript par 4.” In 1920, the California Amateur touched down at the new course and enjoyed a successful event, though the California Golf Association (CGA) criticized the 18th as “a woefully poor finishing hole.” Pebble Beach founder Samuel Morse had heard enough.
Late in 1920, Pebble’s 18th witnessed its first significant change. A new tee appeared behind the 17th green, set into fill that had been placed atop rocks in the sea. Not only did the move add 35 yards to the hole, stretching it to 360 yards, it upped the drama quotient. Tee shots now had to carry an ocean cove.

Some sources credit the design for the new back tee to architect Herbert Fowler. One of the great, if lesser-known, Golden Age architects, Fowler was a tall, athletic Englishman who had already achieved renown in his homeland for his 1904 creation of Walton Heath’s Old course in suburban London. In 1913, legendary scribe Bernard Darwin wrote of Walton Heath, “The course is the work of Mr. Herbert Fowler, who is perhaps the most daring and original of all golfing architects, and gifted with an almost inspired eye for the possibilities of a golfing country.”
Fowler journeyed to America in 1920 in search of design work and found plenty in California. While he was renovating Morse’s original Del Monte course in Monterey, he also wrote up a hole-by-hole analysis of how to improve the new Pebble Beach links. Among his suggestions: expanding the closing hole from a 360-yard par four to a 535-yard par five.
Morse bought in and Fowler delivered the goods. Late in 1921, after another California Amateur and additional complaints about the home hole, Fowler concocted a fix for the ages. As Hotelling tells it: “Fowler arrived at the course late in the year and began formalizing various hole modifications, including expansion of the 18th hole by culverting the creek, backfilling the area as fairway, and moving the green 170 yards up the coast. By January, work on the new 18th green was well underway. Work was completed in late spring, and that summer the CGA expressed their pleasure with the new 535-yard par-five hole.”
Since the playing of the 1922 California Amateur—when Pebble’s new-look 18th made its formal debut—golfers of every ilk have exalted in its daunting challenge and unmatched beauty. Walking up the 18th at Pebble became a bucket-list experience from that day forward.
“For those who believe that man came from the sea and faces a deep, hidden necessity to return to it some day, there would be no better route than to get a golf club and go to the 18th hole at Pebble Beach,” wrote Dan Jenkins in 1965. “There, for a full 530 yards, you find nothing but sea to the left of the tee, fairway and green.” For that thrill, credit—or blame—the team of nature and Herbert Fowler.