The Links at Spanish Bay was designed by Robert Trent Jones Jr. alongside Tom Watson and former USGA president Sandy Tatum, opening in November 1987 on the site of a former sand mine whose dune-shaped terrain proved ideally suited to a genuine links-style layout. It plays to a par 72 over 6,821 yards, with sweeping sand dunes, pot bunkers and exposed, wind-affected fairways giving it a character closer to a Scottish or Irish links than almost anywhere else on America's West Coast - so much so that Tom Watson remarked after his opening round that "it's so much like Scotland, you can almost hear the bagpipes playing."
That remark has since become part of the course's identity, with a lone piper closing play each evening at sunset, a tradition unique among Pebble Beach's courses. The Links at Spanish Bay also sits within one of the most ecologically sensitive stretches of the Monterey Peninsula, with an extensive dune restoration programme planting over 100,000 native plants a year, and it has co-hosted the TaylorMade Pebble Beach Invitational since 2015. For golfers seeking an authentic links experience without leaving California, it is one of the standout rounds on the 17-Mile Drive.
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