Classic Courses: Pasatiempo

Architect Alister MacKenzie was so pleased with this northern California design, he chose to live there

Of the five Alister MacKenzie courses in America the public can play, one stands supreme. The other four—California’s Sharp Park, Northwood, and Haggin Oaks; and The University of Michigan Golf Course (a co-design with Perry Maxwell)—aren’t in the Englishman’s top echelon. But northern California’s Pasatiempo, located 40 miles north of the Monterey Peninsula in the relaxed beach town of Santa Cruz, is generally regarded as one of the best layouts in MacKenzie’s exceptional portfolio.

As you’d expect of a course that opened in 1929, it has morphed quite a bit over time with many of its classic MacKenzie features softening or being lost to old age and cost-cutting. Two extensive restoration projects over the last 30 years, however, have reestablished the thrills and intrigue MacKenzie put in place.

18th hole (photo by Jon Cavalier)

 

It was the remarkable Marion Hollins that developed the course and surrounding community. A talented athlete from New York’s Long Island, the 1921 U.S. Women’s Amateur champion moved to California in the early 1920s and met Samuel Morse, developer of Pebble Beach, for whom she began working at Del Monte Properties. She created the private Cypress Point Club, working alongside MacKenzie after her original choice for designer, Seth Raynor, had died unexpectedly prior to construction.

In search of her own land to develop, she found it in the high ground above Santa Cruz and turned, again, to MacKenzie to design a golf course. He spent more time at Pasatiempo (Spanish for “pastime” or “hobby”) than he had at Cypress Point, and loved the place so much he bought a house on Hollins Drive beside the 6th fairway where he lived with his second wife, Hilda Haddock. It was also where he could fulfill his long-held desire to practice golf in his pajamas.

While the front nine has its share of noteworthy holes, the better-known back, on higher ground to the north, has two every golfer should see: the 390-yard 11th, split in two by a barranca, and 392-yard 16th, which MacKenzie said was his favorite of all the holes he designed and whose spectacular front-right bunker was restored by Tom Doak to its original dimensions in 2007 during the first restoration.

Like so many of Pasatiempo’s bunkers, it had shrunk considerably while a few of the course’s best and most memorable had been removed altogether. Besides several other changes, Doak put back MacKenzie’s cross bunker, about 150 yards from the tee, at the daunting par-three 3rd; the complex cluster short of the 10th green; and the intimidating pair short of the 18th green.

3rd hole (photo by Jon Cavalier)

 

Doak did very little to the greens, however, as they were deemed untouchable. By 2022, though, they’d evolved so much and so many pin positions had been lost, architect Jim Urbina was hired to rebuild them. A MacKenzie expert and part of Doak’s Renaissance team for the original project, Urbina had set up his own firm in 2010 and, working with superintendent Justin Mandon and course construction company Earth Sculptures, was careful to preserve MacKenzie’s contours. He restored the greens’ shapes and sizes and replaced the old Poa Annua turf with bentgrass, which, says Mandon, should produce 300 days a year with great greens instead of 80.

As it always has, the scorecard says Pasatiempo tips at slightly less than 6,500 yards and plays to a par of 70 (five par threes, 10 par fours, and three par fives). That’s not long, but as Filip Jacubchik’s winning score of 206 (-4) at last year’s Western Intercollegiate clearly demonstrates, Pasatiempo is no easy touch. As he did everywhere he went, MacKenzie crafted a course where power and distance, while useful, certainly aren’t essential, but where guile and precision usually win the day.

 

Thank you for supporting our journalism. If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the Winter 2025 issue of LINKS Magazine. Click here for more information.
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