CPC_10_21

LIMITED MEMBERS’ EDITION

table of contents

author’s note

touched with wonder — x dramatis personae — xii

cypress point

ancient impressions & new names — 4

cupressus macrocarpa — 14

a place of meeting — 20

samuel f. b. morse — 24

the club

a moment in time — 34

founding vision — 42

marion hollins — 48

forming the club — 56

a club or a golf club? — 72

roger d. lapham — 86

challenges — 92

the clubhouse

simplicity & elegance — 102

the golf course

discovering the course — 162

dr. alister m ac kenzie — 170

stories

leaders & characters — 238

caretakers & caddies — 248

traditions & events — 258 the crosby — 266 the walker cups — 274

postscript

acknowledgments — 291

a letter to future members — 293

Opposite: Cypress Point, as viewed from the clubhouse surrounds

Previous pages: Fan Shell Beach, 1928

Following pages: The ninth hole

author’s note

touched with wonder

Even without some knowledge of their history anyone would be touched with wonder, coming for the first time upon the old cypress trees clinging to the rocky coast of the Monterey Peninsula; when one learns that they are the only native growth of their kind left on the earth, the wonder grows, and one would learn more.

THE CYPRESS OF MONTEREY: AN HISTORICAL SKETCH, 1922

AS WITH THE ANCIENT CYPRESS TREE, the more one learns about Cypress Point, the more one would want to learn, for it is truly a place touched with wonder.

The purpose of this book is to produce a story worthy of the name of Cypress Point. In content, form, and design, the club wished to create for its centennial history an ethos inspired by the place itself: beautiful, intimate, understated, refined. The author, in turn, sought to honor the club by learning more about its origins, founders, and subsequent caretakers so that current and future members may better appreciate and preserve the spirit of the club they have inherited. This is an opportunity for members to share with their friends an insight into the characteristics that have made their club so valued, generation after generation, and the reverence they have for the privilege of being associated with this special place.

By arranging the storytelling around the core elements that make Cypress Point what it is — the history of the land, the club and clubhouse, the golf course, and some of the members’ many stories — this book forms a portrait of an institution defined not by the activities of each decade or generation, but by the cumulative impression of a century of shared efforts. As envisioned by the club’s founders and early supporters — the Dramatis Personae of this centennial history — this is the story of how a small group of “congenial” members sought to create and maintain an ideal golf links overlooking Cypress Point, as they begin to celebrate their first hundred years.

— DAVID NORMOYLE

dramatis personae

From 1925 to 1930, these key individuals shared an ambition to create “the best golf links in the State of California” and “the greatest golf course in the world in that particular locality.” The Cypress Point Club was the product of their collective efforts. Profiles of the four leading characters appear as noted below, with supporting characters listed as they appear throughout the story.

SAMUEL F. B. MORSE, Pebble Beach, California (Profile p. 24–29) — Around the time Sam Morse was captain of Yale’s undefeated football team in 1906 he met Templeton Crocker, who hailed from one of California’s “Big Four” railroad families of the late-1800s. This led Morse to a job out West, managing Crocker ranches, and he was soon asked to liquidate Pacific Improvement Company holdings at Pebble Beach and Cypress Point. Instead of selling the land, Sam wanted to become its developer, envisioning a “Newport of the West” at Del Monte with the creation of golf courses as the centerpiece to attract buyers of prime real estate. His tiered strategy of having a spectacular public course at Pebble Beach, a private country club at Monterey Peninsula, all crowned by an exclusive social club at Cypress Point, shaped the future of the peninsula, which he personally oversaw as president of Del Monte Properties Company from 1919 to 1969.

MARION HOLLINS, New York, New York (Profile p. 48–55). — Perhaps America’s greatest sportswoman in the early twentieth century, there seemed to be nothing Marion Hollins couldn’t do. Along with a man’s handicap at polo, she was a proficient sailor and racer of motorcars, and in golf became the 1921 U.S. Women’s Amateur champion. She then developed the only all-female golf club in America. Marion first came to Pebble Beach in 1916 to play polo, returning to visit society friends in the 1920s. She was hired by Sam Morse to sell real estate at Del Monte to her wealthy circle. Morse then engaged Hollins, “the best saleswoman I have ever known,” to develop the Cypress Point Club. Along the way, she created the legend of the 16th hole by convincing golf architect Dr. Alister MacKenzie that, if a woman could drive a golf ball 200 yards across the water to the site of the green, it should play as a par 3.

ROGER D. LAPHAM, San Francisco, California (Profile p. 86–91) — Known as the “Brahmin of San Francisco golf,” shipping magnate Roger D. Lapham was a founding member of Cypress Point who served with Marion Hollins on the organizing committee of the club beginning in 1925. Lapham provided a long list of names for potential members, was vice president of the USGA Executive Committee that organized the 1929 U.S. Amateur at Pebble Beach, oversaw construction of Cypress Point’s course with Robert Hunter and Alister MacKenzie, and became the club’s president in 1928. As its longestserving president, he remained in that role until 1943, when he resigned to become mayor of San Francisco. The animating spirit behind the creation of the Hook & Eye Club, Lapham led Cypress Point through the challenges of the Great Depression and World War II, when membership dropped below fifty and its future was imperiled. Roger Lapham was unquestionably the club’s most vital member.

DR. ALISTER MACKENZIE, Leeds, England (Profile p. 170–175) — Already famous for his architectural theories in the United Kingdom, Dr. Alister MacKenzie first set foot at Cypress Point in February 1926 having never designed a course in America. In a stunning coincidence, he arrived in California by train six days after the untimely death of original architect Seth Raynor. Marion Hollins tapped MacKenzie and design partner Robert Hunter to take up the commission. Cypress Point provided the retired Scottish medical doctor his greatest opportunity to apply his philosophies of golf design, blending the strategies of St. Andrews with a routing that embraced sand dunes, forests of pine and cypress, and stunning finishing holes along the Pacific Ocean. Working with horse-drawn scrapers, MacKenzie and Hunter transformed the land into a triumph of naturalism where the hand of man remains camouflaged.

EDITH CHESEBROUGH VAN ANTWERP, Hillsborough, California — The club’s founding secretary and personal friend of Marion Hollins, socialite Edith Chesebrough was a champion amateur golfer who set the tone for the early membership ideals at Cypress Point. An all-around athlete like Marion, Edith was an accomplished horsewoman and six-time Northern California golf champion, winning the California state and West Coast titles in 1911. (See p. 47, 76)

SETH RAYNOR, Southampton, New York — Originally hired by Sam Morse and Marion Hollins to design thirty-six holes at Monterey Peninsula Country Club, Raynor also laid out a proposed routing of Cypress Point in February 1925. The plans were never developed due to Raynor’s unexpected death at age fifty-one in January 1926, whereupon the design commission was assumed and routing significantly modified by Dr. Alister MacKenzie and Robert Hunter. (Profile p. 59–61)

HARRISON GODWIN, Carmel, California — Owner of Carmel’s Pine Inn and noted illustrator of California maps, Godwin entered the Cypress Point story as a twenty-eight-year-old salesman for Sam Morse at Del Monte. When Marion Hollins was incapacitated, he carried the membership drive over the final hurdle, signing up the remaining members needed to reach one hundred, allowing the club to incorporated and fund construction of the course. (See p. 54, 68, 238)

FRANCES ELKINS, Monterey, California — Monterey’s leading interior designer in the 1920s, Elkins redecorated Morse’s new Hotel Del Monte in 1924, along with many glamorous Pebble Beach homes. Her elegant, domestic style influenced an understated clubhouse interior that remains unlike nearly any other conventional golf club in the world; a century later that style continues to shape to the social nature of the Cypress Point Club. (Profile p. 136–137)

JULIAN P. GRAHAM, Pebble Beach, California —

As the official photographer of the Del Monte Properties Company from 1924–1963, “Spike” Graham took more than 40,000 photographs of the famous people and places surrounding Pebble Beach. His detailed images of the creation of Cypress Point have proven invaluable to efforts to restore the course in subsequent decades. Julian Graham’s photographs memorialized Sam Morse’s vision. (Profile p. 204–205)

GRANTLAND RICE, Nashville, Tennessee — As America’s leading sportswriter in the 1920s, Rice added valuable promotional efforts to enlisting new members. His early descriptions appeared nationwide in a syndicated column, calling the course, “the final word in golf from every known angle of beauty and play,” adding, “It is quite possible that Cypress Point may take its place as the most spectacular contribution to the 500 year old game.” (See p. 36, 47)

WILLIAM

C. VAN ANTWERP, Hillsborough, California

Labeled a “New Giant of Wall Street” in 1916, Van Antwerp came west to run E. F. Hutton’s San Francisco office in the 1920s after writing a best-selling history of the New York Stock Exchange. A noted book collector married to champion golfer Edith Chesebrough, he joined Marion Hollins and Roger Lapham in 1925 on the club’s Organizing Committee (See p. 63–64) before becoming Cypress Point’s inaugural president in 1927.

FRANCIS McCOMAS, Pebble Beach, California —

A Tasmanian-born artist drawn to paint watercolors and oils of the Monterey Peninsula and its distinctive cypress trees, McComas was a left-handed golfer who became enamored with the game and developed a friendship with Sam Morse. Serving as secretary of Cypress Point, he oversaw development of the clubhouse and held sway in creating the distinctly social, intimate nature of the club. (Profile p. 130–131)

GEORGE WASHINGTON SMITH, Santa Barbara, California — Born on George Washington’s birthday, Smith became fascinated with Spanish architecture in the early twentieth century. He moved to Santa Barbara and established an architectural practice specializing in Spanish-revival structures throughout California. His buildings defined Pebble Beach’s golden age of the 1920s before his untimely death prior to the clubhouse’s completion. (Profile p. 108–111)

ROBERT HUNTER, Pebble Beach, California —

Known as the “millionaire socialist” due to his bestselling 1904 book Poverty — and his heiress wife — Indiana’s Robert Hunter became a resident of Pebble Beach and devotee of golf architecture. His 1926 book The Links remains a landmark in American golf, and his partnership with Dr. Alister MacKenzie yielded famous designs at Cypress Point, Meadow Club, and The Valley Club. (Profile p. 199–203) xiii

ancient impressions & new names

IN A TIME BEFORE land grants were determined by bureaucrats, the first people to lay any sort of claim to the area that would become Cypress Point were the Costanoan tribes of Central California. Derived from the Spanish word costaños, meaning “coast people,” they formed a broad collection of tribes with different languages and customs who dwelt from the San Francisco peninsula down to Point Sur. The Ohlone and Rumsen Nations gathered around the catchment lands that flow into Monterey and Carmel Bays, providing ready access to hunting and fishing grounds.

Cypress Point’s first recorded name came from Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, a Portuguese explorer sailing under the flag of Spain. Cabrillo’s ship entered Monterey Bay on November 16, 1542, without coming ashore. “On November 18th,” according to ship logs, “they were hunting a port and discovered some snow covered mountains with a cape running out from them which they named ‘Cabo de Nieve’,” or Cape of Snow, believed to be Point Cypress. Was there snow on Cypress Point that November in 1542? Or was it the pure white sand of the dunes they saw beyond? An analysis of Cabrillo’s Portuguese-language journals reveals that “cabo” marked a change in the general direction or character of the coast, meaning Cypress Point was more likely the “Change of Snow” at the northern end of the snow-covered Santa Lucia Mountains, rather than a snow-covered cape itself.

In 1774, Spain commissioned Juan Pérez to explore the Pacific Northwest, christening a new age of discovery. The Santiago recorded the first sightings of “Terra Incognita.” On board was missionary assistant Tómas de la Peña, remembered by history for the journal he kept of the voyage. De la Peña’s diary on June 15, 1774, (opposite) recounted seeing the “Punta de Cipreses,”

Previous pages: Originally known as Rancho El Pescadero, the future site of Cypress Point’s golf course, prior to construction, 1926

The first known written reference to “Cypress Point”: Tómas de la Peña’s journal entry from on board the Santiago, June 15, 1774

“On the 15th we woke up in front of Punta de Pinos on the western side and clearly saw Punta de Cipreses, Carmelo Inlet and the Santa Lucia mountain range.”

suggesting the oldest recorded name of Cypress Point had achieved popular use following the 1770 landing of Father Junípero Serra. Previously, English cartographer Emery Molyneux adopted Cabrillo’s “B. de Pinos” to describe the Monterey Peninsula in a 1592 map, which included an outline of its distinctive westernmost point. Sebastián Vizcaíno, the Spanish explorer who gave Monterey its name in 1602, was the earliest European to detail contact with native tribes having any connection to Cypress Point. “The land is well populated with Indians without number,” Vizcaíno wrote of his brief visitation near the Monterey coastline in December of that year.

“Cypress Point, Monterey,” by Jules Tavernier, 1876, oil on two panels, courtesy Carmel Public Library; Tavernier was one of earliest members of the Monterey artist colony to display works of Cypress Point.

The next Europeans to record impressions of potential occupants of Cypress Point were Gaspar de Portolá and Father Juan Crespi in late 1769, who journeyed from San Diego in search of Monterey Bay. According to diaries and ship logs, Portolá and Crespi explored the Monterey Peninsula but did not report any initial contact with Indians. Crespi noted in his journal, “At Point Pinos [near Monterey] no port is to be found nor have we seen on all the route more unpopulated country than in this neighborhood, nor people more rough than are to be seen in this diary, considering to the contrary the voyage of commander Sebastían Vizcaíno.”

Father Junípero Serra arrived in Monterey on June 1, 1770, beginning the Spanish missionary settlement of the Monterey Peninsula that forever altered the customs of the native Costanoans.

With Serra’s arrival, along with the establishment of a presidio, Monterey soon became the military and ecclesiastical capital of what was then known as Alta California, inviting the possibility that new generations of voyagers might note their travels past Cypress Point. Seven Spanish missions were soon founded, and authority for granting of lands was given by the Viceroy of Mexico in 1773. The French explorer La Pérouse’s famous 1786 map from a global journey commissioned by King Louis XVI identified the area as “Pointe des Pins en Cyprès.” Mexico’s subsequent revolt from Spanish rule in 1822 established a separate empire that led to the first formal land grants outside of European influence being given to a parcel of land that included Cypress Point.

In 1836, for the first time, the “Punta de Cipreseses” had an individual owner. His name was Fabián Barreto. From that moment until 1906, the land grant known as Rancho El Pescadero was hobbled by a series of protracted legal disputes over ownership. Use of the lands encompassing Cypress Point shifted among various subsequent owners, as the sovereignty of California transferred from Mexico to the United States. The Rancho consisted of over 4,400 acres of scenic land leading from Fan Shell Beach north of Cypress Point, south along the ocean to the Carmel River, and included most of the modern Del Monte Forest and Pebble Beach.

Associating the formal name of Pescadero with Cypress Point, meaning “where fishing is done,” goes back to at least April 2, 1835, when “La punta del pescadero” was mentioned in a letter from that year. Whether the name of Pescadero Point or Rancho Pescadero came first, when Fabián Barreto received a Mexican land grant in 1836, the land was labeled Rancho El Pescadero.

Barreto, Cypress Point’s first legal owner, was born circa 1800 in Hidalgo, Mexico. He came to Monterey in 1827, and, as a new permanent resident, was granted “one league” of land on March 3, 1836, by the Mexican governor of California, Nicolas Gutierrez. The grant was not approved in the Mexican assembly until 1840, and while little evidence exists as to what Barreto actually did with the 4,426.46 acres (opposite) in the short time he owned it, the crucial moment affecting the subsequent

fate of Cypress Point in the decades to come occurred when Fabián Barreto died unexpectedly in a construction accident in 1841, making his widow, María del Carmen Garcia Barreto, the sole owner.

María Barreto became a well-known resident of Monterey and remarried, but she was unable to pay the taxes on the vast tract of land despite its immense potential value. In 1846, the widow Barreto sold Rancho El Pescadero to John Romie, a German immigrant who came to came to California when it was still part of Mexico. Romie left Monterey not long after buying Rancho El Pescadero to seek his fortune in the Placerville gold rush, eventually dying there in 1850.

This is where the story of the land that included Cypress Point becomes entangled, as John Romie’s widow was also unable to pay taxes on the Rancho after the death of her husband, and the family was forced to sell the land in a probate court auction. The winner of the auction was a recent arrival from the East named John C. Gore. This sale to Gore was legally binding, as accepted by the California Supreme Court. Therefore, in 1853, John Gore became the third legal owner of Cypress Point and its surrounding lands, following Barreto in 1840 and Romie in 1846.

Born in Boston in 1806, Gore was forty-six years old when he arrived in Monterey in September 1852 seeking a milder climate to improve the health of his two sons. Gore resided near what is now known as Stillwater Cove prior to his own death in 1867, patrolling the land and keeping miscreants, neighboring sheep grazers, and lumber thieves at bay. The Gore boys, Arthur and John Jr., wrote diaries of their adventures growing up and exploring what became known as Pebble Beach and its surrounds in the middle part of the nineteenth century. Gore built a two-story log house roughly where the Beach Club sits today. Evidence appears in early maps of a shelter constructed by Gore overlooking Cypress Point and Fan Shell Beach (opposite on p. 11 and on p. 8).

After his sons were of college age, Gore returned east in October 1860 and instructed his attorney to find a buyer for the property. Edward Tompkins, orginally of Binghamton, New York, and recently resident in San Francisco, was interested and agreed to trading a property back east for Rancho El Pescadero. In 1861, Tompkins married Sarah Haight, daughter of the owner of nearby Rancho Canada and sister of a future California governor, and would subsequently become established in California as a state senator and one of the founders of the University of California.

In 1862, however, Tompkins got word that Gore was unhappy with the trade and sought to invalidate the contract. Wanting nothing to do with future disputes, Tompkins sold the land to David Jacks in 1862 for $10,000 with the understanding that Jacks would assume all legal exposure.

The legacy of David Jacks in Monterey County, let alone with respect to Rancho El Pescadero, is a complex and fraught tale. As Robert Louis Stevenson once noted of Jacks, a wealthy though disreputable land owner and businessman, “The town lands of Monterey are all in the hands of a single man. How they came there is an obscure, vexatious question, and rightly or wrongly, the man is

Plat of the Rancho El Pescadero conveyed to David Jacks, April 1864, displayed in clubhouse

hated with a great hatred.” However, as Jacks laid legal claim to becoming the fifth owner of Cypress Point and was the one who ultimately sold the land to the Pacific Improvement Company in 1880, a glimpse of his tale is worth telling.

Born in Scotland in 1822, Jacks came to New York in 1841 as a young man plying at assorted trades until, like countless others, he heard of the discovery of gold in California. Jacks became a 49’er, sailing around Cape Horn and arriving in Monterey in January 1850. Rather than prospecting, however, he began working with an attorney named Delos Ashley, from whom he

learned his future lay in the accumulation of vast land holdings. Jacks began a series of acquisitions via purchase, exchange, foreclosure, or buying out tax-delinquent tracts, culminating in what was considered the most infamous of his land grabs: securing thirty thousand acres of City of Monterey lands with Ashley for a mere $1,002.50.

By 1877, Jacks would accumulate some seventy thousand acres in Monterey, includinghis interests in Rancho Pescadero. For comparison, under Sam Morse’s leadership, the Del Monte Forest holdings totaled a mere 5,500 acres in 1919. The sheer size of his holdings dictated that he may well have been the most influential person in Monterey County, if not the most hated.

In 1886, however, the saga surrounding Cypress Point ownership took an unusual turn when John C. Gore, Sr. died, and he willed Rancho El Pescadero to his twenty-seven-year-old son, John Jr., ignoring both the 1862 trade to Tomkins and the subsequent sale to Gore. Though Jacks already had reasonably clear title from Tomkins, he sought and received a patent from the U.S. Government on the Rancho El Pescadero property. When Gore Jr. learned of Jacks’ patent on the land, he moved back to San Francisco, hired an attorney willing to take the case on contingency and filed his first of many suits — one such lawsuit measuring 544 pages in length.

The lawsuits, which now included the U.S. Government for having issued the patent to Jacks, dragged on and by 1880, Jacks sensed an opportunity to get out and sold the land to the Pacific Improvement Company, which was then building Hotel Del Monte. Gore Jr., undaunted, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, after losing his final action in San Francisco in 1905. In December 1905, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case and thirty-seven years of litigation was finally resolved a few months before Gore died in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.

The acquisition of Rancho El Pescadero lands by Sam Morse’s new Del Monte Properties Company in 1919 (p. 27–29) yielded a seventh owner of the lands. In 1927, the incorporation of the Cypress Point Club gave the club the rightful claim to being the eighth legal owner of Cypress Point, following Barretto, Romie, Gore, Tompkins, Jacks, and the Pacific Improvement and Del Monte Properties Companies, dating from the time when Mexican land grants governing the “Punta de Cipreses” commenced in the first half of the nineteenth century.

AQUESTION to consider when something exists naturally in only one place on the planet is whether the Monterey cypress should be seen as the last of their kind, the lone remnant of what was once a vast inland forest? Or are they the first of their kind, a detachment of troops that established an ancient beachhead, clinging to life in a never-ending battle with the sea, owing their existence to the particular climate of the granite cliffs surrounding Carmel Bay waiting to advance?

Though there are fourteen named varieties of cypress trees worldwide, only the Monterey cypress thrives in this native habitat, reproducing itself through offshoots of the parent root. Cypress bark may be weathered gray on the outside, but underneath the outer wood is a ring of deep red brown, while the inner core becomes lighter, adopting a clear yellow hue streaked with rose red. It possesses an aroma that is not unlike cedar.

Before the ancient Greeks knew the sequoia to be the oldest living thing on earth, they created the myth that the cypress was the symbol of immortality. Known by many cultures as the “Tree of Life” due to its long age and consistently green foliage, cypress species from Egypt to Rome and throughout global cultures have frequently been associated with the religious implications of death, resurrection, and the afterlife.

Scattered through the rich green vigor of the grove are the ashen skeletons of trees still stretching their knotted arms to the sky or lying where they have fallen, like whitening frames of huge animals. But the green predominates, the richest of green, the cypress green, that shows all the more vivid against the background of grey rock and blue and white ocean. THE CYPRESS OF MONTEREY: AN HISTORICAL SKETCH, 1922

Though Robert Louis Stevenson, a poet and author of great imagination and famed resident of the Monterey Peninsula, once called these creatures “ghosts fleeing before the wind,” he admitted that the cypress trees of Monterey were difficult to describe fully in his own vocabulary.

“Another characteristic that makes the Monterey cypress trees curious and provocative is the way each tree seems to project a unique personality,” wrote Catherine Christopher in the Monterey Herald, “as if reflecting the individuality of its own resident dryad. Perhaps this is the reason cypress trees, here and everywhere, have fostered a kind of mystique or cult in the minds of men throughout the ages. Call it arboreal charisma.”

Untold artists have delighted in the challenge required to capture these creatures in paint or pencil, or even photographs, perhaps because they are the most human-like of all trees. To glimpse the sea through the gnarled vistas of a Monterey cypress, it has been said, is to be privy to some of nature’s cosmic secrets.

The reflections of one longtime member, shared in a letter among friends during the confusion of the pandemic of 2020, included the following rumination about the philosophical convergence between the Monterey cypress and the Cypress Point Club.

“Being the cypress is my favorite tree,” Sam Reeves noted, “I began asking myself many years ago, ‘What is their secret?’ The secret of their strength lies in the unseen world. Its visible splendor is driven by its invisible unseen roots. It’s where their strength lies. Monterey cypress roots often graft one another. Each nourishing the other. Creating their own ecosystem. Transferring carbohydrates and starches between each other. Literally in constant communication with each other. A stump can stay alive because of the nutrients of fellow trees. Transplanted Monterey cypress trees often struggle to survive alone because they live within and are part of an intimately connected community. Our human culture vastly underestimates the power of community.”

The characteristics of the Monterey cypress, to Sam’s way of thinking, should be considered transferable to the culture of the club named in its honor. Unique sculptures that each withstand harsh conditions. An admirable expression of stability and endurance. Outwardly independent, yet inwardly connected. A community of shared dependence, unseen below the surface.

The trees at Cypress Point stand out against the horizon, distinguishable from a mile or more away, due to their branches spreading fan-like and crouching low against the wind, in contrast to the upwardly vertical nature of the constantly encroaching Monterey pines.

Cupressus macrocarpa was first identified and named in 1846 by Karl Theodor Hartweg, a German botanist and explorer representing the London Horticultural Society who happened to be born the same year as his fellow scientist, Charles Darwin. Hartweg’s arrival in Alta California coincided with the U.S. Navy’s occupation of Monterey Bay amid a newly declared war with Mexico. In the same week Commodore Sloat raised the American flag over Monterey at the old Customs House on July 7, Hartweg undertook a cross-country walk to Carmel at a time when foreigners may have been viewed with equal suspicion by the warring Mexicans and Americans. Hartweg wrote in his diary of July 1846:

Under these circumstances I cannot venture far away from Monterey, nor is it advisable that I should do so, as I might fall in with a party of country people, who could not be persuaded that a person would come all the way from London to look after weeds… I, therefore, confine my excursions within a few miles of the town. Crossing the wooded heights near Monterey I arrived at Carmel Bay, after an easy walk of two hours; here I found Cupressus macrocarpa, No. 143, attaining the height of 60 feet, and a stem of 9 feet in circumference, with far-spreading branches, flat at the top like a full-grown cedar of Lebanon, which it closely resembles at a distance.

Botanist Charles Sprague Sargent stated in his late-nineteenth century series of books called The Silva of North America that, “Although its seeds appear to have reached England in 1838, Cupressus macrocarpa was first made known to botanists in 1847 by Karl Theodor Hartweg, who had found it at Cypress Point the previous autumn. It is now the most universally cultivated coniferous tree in the Pacific states, where it has proved hardy from Vancouver’s Island to Lower California.”

In 1921 a University of California botanist named Harry Ashland Greene counted some 10,550 cypress trees in the fifty-acre grove that constitutes the surrounds of Cypress Point. In an attempt to have Cypress Point turned into a national monument, Greene had written in 1914,

“The grove of Monterey cypress is a relic of very great interest,” adding, “It should be the privilege of these people to lead and control the safeguarding, for ourselves and our posterity, of these trees.”

Macrocarpa means “with large fruit,” which is found under the dark green crowns that often lie prostrate due to strong ocean winds. While the dry cones are apt to be inconspicuous, mature fruit can be remarkably beautiful, massed in glossy, bronze clusters (right).

Another professor from the University of California named W. L. Jepson petitioned the federal government in the 1920s to protect the native Monterey cypress groves, stating, “It would be a crime to allow the two groves of cypresses to run the risk of being injured. By having them included within a reserve which would be under competent charge, they would stand more chance of being preserved and handed down to future generations.”

This formal stewardship of the Monterey cypress eventually happened, though not as a federally governed national monument — instead they have continued to be overseen by other interests, beginning with Sam Morse and the Del Monte Properties Company. Subsequently, the Cypress Point Club and Pebble Beach Company have continued Morse’s vigilant protection of Monterey cypress in conjunction with the Del Monte Forest Conservancy, complementing the Point Lobos State Reserve begun in 1933.

Everywhere is shaded light under heavy foliage and springy soil under foot; and here, too, is the mysteriousness that hangs about any bit of old forest with those hints of a past only its trees know.

THE CYPRESS OF MONTEREY: AN HISTORICAL SKETCH, 1922

a place of meeting

CYPRESS POINT stretches out to touch the sea with an eternal grace, shaped by the constant collisions of waves that evoke a time before human memory. It is occasionally colonized by swirling pelicans and cormorants during the migratory seasons, with perpetual residence claimed by noisy sea lions, seals, and otters.

In the centuries prior to the 1880s, before railroads and development made the westernmost point of the Monterey Peninsula accessible to more than a few people, this remote strip of land occupied little recorded significance apart from its various names — Cabo de Nieve, Punta de Cipreses and Rancho El Pescadero — appearing in ship logs or on maps created by European explorers, or as part of vast Mexican land grants. It was a place that always seemed to be one of the most remote in California, despite being situated mere miles from the state’s first capital in old Monterey.

Only in the last hundred years, since the 1920s, have more than a handful of residents made the environs surrounding Cypress Point their permanent home. Prior to that, almost every person who glimpsed this incomparably beautiful meeting of land and sea was merely a temporary visitor.

Nobody really possesses Cypress Point for long, a fact that remains central to its allure.

From the 1880s to the 1920s, a double-track road for vehicles profaned the now-sacred sites of the 15th and 16th greens at Cypress Point. At first, this path accommodated horse-drawn carriages bearing guests from the Hotel Del Monte on a seventeen-mile pleasure loop. A colony of artists disseminated paintings, postcards, and stereogram images to tempt those who couldn’t take part in the journey themselves. As the road was improved, chauffeured motorcars carried picnickers and thrill-seekers to land’s end on the very tip of Cypress Point at “The Loop.”

Opposite: Automobiles and horses exploring the future site of the 16th hole, 1926

With the democratization of the automobile for millions in the 1910s and 1920s, scores of tourists rounded the cartoonishly narrow path around The Loop in vehicles ranging from the humble Model-T to concours-worthy saloons. After decades of popular use, the road was rerouted in the fall of 1927 to make way for the construction of a golf course at Cypress Point.

The advent of airplane travel allowed people from around the country and around the world ready, casual access to what was once an impossibly remote section of forest, surrounded by towering dunes of pure white sand, all of which collided with the crashing surf of a great ocean. Collisions define the essence of Cypress Point — not limited to natural forces like sea, sand, forest, and land, but also how people themselves have come to find this place of meeting.

What first drew people to this far side of the world? Was it the phantasmic trees, making up the oldest collection of native Monterey cypress on the planet, that mystified and enthralled all comers? Hardly, for when undertaking to trek across the rugged, aromatic sand dunes or along the ocean’s edge one sees hoof prints of animals, footprints of humans, natural shapes that couldn’t be made by either — all while being overwhelmed by competing smells of juniper, kelp, and the sea air.

There is the ever-changing, raucous ocean. For it is only upon visiting Cypress Point in person that one soon realizes it’s not just the scenic thrill of seeing waves exploding on the rocks that beckons people here — anybody looking at a photograph could appreciate that — it’s the sound and feel of waves colliding with the very ground where you happen to be standing. This is the percussive chord of the universe resonating.

The confluence of these sensory experiences is an ongoing reminder of what Sam Morse knew as he sought to maintain the natural beauty needed to attract people to his “Circle of Enchantment,” crowned in his mind by a pinnacle social institution at Cypress Point. Morse, the central Dramatis Persona of the story, understood that in such scenes man is a necessary partner for the preservation of fragile and enchanting landscapes. He must have known at some level that dramatic settings like those at Cypress Point are possible only in places where there is a meeting of natural forces, of ideas new and old, and of generations of people committed to valuing the land for itself.

Samuel F. B. Morse

THE ORIGINAL IDEA for the Cypress Point Club belonged to Sam Morse. He said so himself.

“As I had conceived of the club and was responsible for its organization,” Morse dictated in 1959 for his unpublished memoirs, “I naturally, as President of the Del Monte Company, did not want to appear in any official capacity, or even appear as the first member, until after the club was completely organized and a going concern, entirely in the hands of people who had no connection whatsoever with the Del Monte Properties Company.”

Determining which persona Morse decided to adopt in what moment is one of the more intriguing aspects of Cypress Point’s history.

Was it as the Del Monte Property Company’s president, advancing its interests while exuding a Teddy Roosevelt-like masculinity along the way? Was it as the captain of the Del Monte Polo team, or chief promoter of the luxury lifestyle in his “Circle of Enchantment,” or as publisher of the society rag Game & Gossip? Was it as a member of Cypress Point’s “Fearsome Foursome” — so-named by former caddiemaster Joey Solis — despite Morse’s protestations that, as he had no use for the game of golf the company should reimburse his club dues? Was it as a landscape artist with a painter’s soul who personally reviewed and approved the architectural plans for every house and building in the Del Monte Forest

from 1915 to 1969? Or was it as the “Duke of Del Monte,” a nickname Morse secretly liked, even if he claimed publicly to be embarrassed by it?

Whichever persona Morse adopted — developer, socialite, athlete, enthusiast, or artist — his enduring vision for placing the Cypress Point Club at the top of the Pebble Beach social hierarchy will always be central to the reputation he earned as Del Monte’s great panjandrum.

Samuel Finley Brown Morse’s namesake and distant cousin invented the telegraph half a century before Sam was born on July 18, 1885, in the Boston suburb of Newton, Massachusetts. They never knew one another. Morse’s father was a prosperous Boston lawyer who had been scarred by combat as a teenager in the Civil War. His mother was a painter and a sculptor. From his parents, Sam adopted the dual persona of being both a fighter and an artist.

Projecting a vigorous masculinity and excelling at athletics were early priorities in Morse’s life, dating to his days at Andover and Yale. Sam developed a love of outdoor pursuits at the family’s summer camp in Maine and grew to have muscular features, a sharp jaw line, and an easy smile. He was voted “most popular” his senior year in college and captained the undefeated 1906 Yale football team.

Though never a great student, at Yale he became a great student of people, developing connections that would be 25

more important than any book learning. Templeton Crocker, from the famous San Francisco family, became a friend. So did Harris Hammond, whose father John Hays Hammond, a noted professor of mining engineering at Yale, offered Morse a path out west after graduation in 1907.

Teddy Roosevelt made a significant impression on Sam’s generation by promoting a lifestyle defined by manly outdoor pursuits. Central to Roosevelt’s biography were his experiences operating a cattle ranch in the Dakotas in the 1880s, which fostered an appreciation for land conservation, later inspiring development of the National Parks and Forest Service. “He was a dynamo,” Sam was quoted as saying of Teddy, “the kind of man I admired tremendously.”

From 1907 until 1915 Sam emulated Roosevelt by overseeing ranches in California’s San Joaquin Valley. His first property development job in Visalia came from the connection with John Hays Hammond. In 1910, he began working for W. H. “Will” Crocker, uncle to his Yale friend Templeton and head of the Crocker family’s interests, which included the Crocker Bank. Working for Hammond and Crocker on their ranches, Morse developed a love of roaming properties on horseback and became recognized as a capable manager of complicated land holdings.

San Francisco’s 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition attracted some 18 million visitors from around

the world to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal a year earlier. Will Crocker served as chairman of the “Pan-Pacific” Exhibition, as he had been among the major bankers who helped rebuild San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. Several of those leading banking families, including the Crockers, Tobins, and Fleischhackers, would become original members of Cypress Point Club.

As a child of the East who discovered himself in the West, Morse was drawn to the temperate climate and dramatic scenery of the Monterey Peninsula. It was a place where the sensory overload of everything he encountered — sights, sounds, smells, and tastes — inspired new romantic visions of an older way of life.

On the heels of Sam’s success managing the Crocker family ranch in Merced, in 1915 he was offered a position as manager of the Pacific Improvement Company. His mandate was to liquidate the company’s holdings in sixteen different corporations and distribute the assets to various heirs and investors. That is where Morse’s formal history with Pebble Beach begins, though he had visited for years before.

For more than half a century, Samuel F. B. Morse singlehandedly oversaw the development of Pebble Beach and the Del Monte Forest, as well as the emergence of the Cypress Point Club as the crowning feature of his vision for how to transform a rustic outpost into a land of luxury.

When Sam arrived in 1915 as the nearly thirty-year-old general manager of Pacific Improvement Company including the nearly 20,000-acre “Del Monte Unit,” Pebble Beach had not much to speak of in amenities. There was an aging log cabinstyle lodge where picnickers could stop for refreshments, a ramshackle Chinese fishing village where the Beach Club now stands, and the famous seventeen-mile road loop for tourists. There were a few places to live but fewer places to play.

As early as 1914, according to a 1923 article on the history of Pebble Beach by Francis McComas, later corroborated in a personal letter by Sam, when Morse and Will Crocker first began to discuss the creation of new golf courses at Del Monte, Sam imagined a role for the sacred piece of land at Cypress Point in his vision for the future.

First, Sam had to preserve Del Monte’s pristine coastline from the same crass overdevelopment he observed in neighboring communities throughout California.

“On the entire California coast, which I know from one end to the other,” Sam wrote in 1965, “there are only two places that have presented possibilities beyond any others, and which no other place can ever compete; one, of course, is the Monterey Peninsula, and the other is Santa Barbara.”

Then he had to attract wealthy people to buy in. To achieve his reinvention of Del Monte, Morse imagined that Pebble Beach would become the athletic and social center

of this new community, attracting leisured classes to a tasteful environment unlike any other similar real estate venture on the Pacific coast. Central to this recreational lifestyle would be the emergence of new golf courses, anchored by the historic Del Monte course built in Monterey in 1897 and continued in 1919 with the opening of what became known as Pebble Beach Golf Links.

Sam anticipated the glamorous clientele he sought to attract would prefer larger lots for gracious homes, along

with other activities of conspicuous leisure like tennis and equestrian pursuits such as polo, which he himself enjoyed, to complement golf, about which Sam knew little at first. Golf courses would preserve open views of the coastline while driving business to the hotels and increasing the scenic value of lots on which to build houses further inland.

From hosting the Western Amateur at Del Monte in 1916, Sam learned that competitive golfers were often wellconnected and wealthy — just the kind of people he would need to support his ambitions.

His opening gambit was to turn over the diminishing quality of the patrons at the Hotel Del Monte and attract a higher standard of customer by improving the facilities and service, charging a higher price, and making guests feel more like members of a club than bargain-rate tourists. The influx of global visitors during the year-long 1915 “PanPacific” helped fund this strategy. With respect to property sales, Morse’s predecessors had explored ideas for development at Pebble Beach by placing more than four hundred narrow home sites, similar to existing parcels in Pacific Grove, crammed onto the scenic headland where the current Hole Nos. 5–13 are laid out at Pebble Beach Golf Links.

In 1918, after beginning to reconstruct a new, modern Lodge and commissioning amateur golfers Jack Neville and Douglas Grant to lay out a new cliff-top golf course along Stillwater Cove instead of the home sites, Morse identified a

potential buyer for the Del Monte Unit — a Yale friend named G. Maurice Heckscher. As a leading polo player with a family fortune that came from mining and real estate, Heckscher found the idea of owning Del Monte appealing but wanted to keep his old friend Sam involved as a manager, not an owneroperator like Morse envisioned. When Heckscher’s offer was rejected by the Board, Morse countered with a successful offer to buy Del Monte outright, even though he didn’t have the money to pay the asking price of roughly $1.4 million. Nevertheless, the Board gave him a year to arrange financing.

Sam Morse went to his boss, Will Crocker, to secure the funds but was surprised and disappointed when the Crocker Bank declined, seeking to avoid being both the “Vendor and Purchaser” of the Del Monte Unit. Crocker ended his letter to Morse on a prescient note, however: “I have no doubt you will make a great success and I very much hope that you will.”

Commuting to Del Monte by train while living in Hillsborough, Sam kept a foot in three camps — an office in San Francisco provided access to money and influence as he developed connections with the social elite through the Burlingame Country Club. Sam ultimately convinced Anglo Bank’s Herbert Fleischhacker to help him set up an entity called the Del Monte Properties Company in 1919, with Morse as president and Fleischhacker and Heckscher as vice presidents and major shareholders. Hotel golf courses were niceties, but the real money would come from real estate.

Opulent residences set the tone for Del Monte’s new hierarchy. Fashionable designers like Frances Adler Elkins and architect George Washington Smith became in great demand during the Pebble Beach home-building boom of the 1920s.

Elkins decorated the new Hotel Del Monte following a 1924 fire, as Morse chose to replace the Victorian aesthetic of the 1880s with a Spanish-revival style. The Santa Barbara-based Smith expanded his California-coastal designs to include the Monterey Peninsula. An Australian-born artist named Francis McComas, a keen golfer and friend of Sam Morse, was commissioned to paint murals at both the new Hotel Del Monte and The Lodge at Pebble Beach.

With professional golf coming to the Monterey Peninsula in 1947 with the Crosby Clambake, culminating in numerous U.S. Opens for men and women in the decades that followed, Morse’s vision for golf as the grandest of all activities leading the development of Pebble Beach has been validated many times over.

“I shall never cease being grateful to Sam Morse,” Cypress Point member Bing Crosby said to sportswriter Ted Durein in the 1972 U.S. Open program. To Crosby, Morse was, “the man whose vision, dedication and almost religious devotion to quality, tradition and keen sense of the dramatic made the Monterey Peninsula one of the showplaces of the world... Without Morse there would be no Pebble Beach, Cypress Point or anything. It would all be Coney Island.”

Following pages: The 15th hole at Cypress Point

a moment in time

FOR A FULL CENTURY NOW, the defining experience of those fortunate enough to play golf at Cypress Point has been the anticipation and thrill of hitting a single golf shot across the precipice of a great ocean.

If executed with skill, the act of safely propelling a golf ball hundreds of yards into the air, over an inlet of roiling waves to a clearing of turf on a point jutting into the sea, surrounded by nothing but bunkers and peril, imprints a memory to last a lifetime.

Not only is it implausible to be playing golf in such an im possibly beautiful setting. So many historical contingencies were necessary for such a scenario to be possible, let alone plausible, let alone something that generations of golf enthusiasts have come to celebrate as central to the story of the game worldwide.

Imagine if a golf course and private club at Cypress Point had been envisioned and created in any era other than the moment in time that occurred from 1925 to 1930.

Any earlier than the 1920s, and Sam Morse’s encompassing vision for Del Monte would have been at a premature stage with the surrounding infrastructure of Pebble Beach, its newly rebuilt Lodge, and first generation of new owners all in their infancy. Any later and the economic Depression of the 1930s would have

Opposite: The 16th tee by Ansel Adams, as published in Fortune, 1940

Following pages: Marion Hollins exploring the future site of the first green, 1925.

“When this course is completed there will be something for the golfer to talk about until the years are old.”

GRANTLAND RICE

resulted in a concept that failed to launch before it even began. During the war years of the 1940s, the land would likely have been requisitioned for its strategic military value, as it was when the club ceased operations for a period of time from 1942 to 1944.

In the 1950s and the 1960s, a clubhouse in some form could have been constructed overlooking Cypress Point, but the modernist architectural fashion in other buildings of the day might have produced something unfamiliar to the California coastal aesthetic of George Washington Smith’s ode to old Monterey, an understated white stucco clubhouse adorned with dark-green shutters and matching trim.

Dr. MacKenzie’s artistic bunkers from golf’s golden age of architecture were eventually modified during the lean post-war years into conventional, rounded forms that were more easily maintained. What would the course have looked like if it was built in the first instance during an era defined by the bulldozer instead of the horse-drawn scraper? While the faithful restoration of Cypress Point’s bunkers that began in the 1990s may stand out as an exception, it is doubtful that a course featuring MacKenzie’s radical naturalism could have emerged in times less heralded for such craftsmanship.

If the idea for Cypress Point was born in the 1970s or 1980s and beyond, the increasing emphasis on coastal regulation may have produced a golf links unable to engage so closely with the very landscapes prized by Sam Morse’s glamorous clientele. What’s almost certain is that if a golf course were proposed at Cypress Point at any time in recent decades, it would have been all-butimpossible to secure planning permission on environmental grounds — let alone appear in any form recognizable to what came about during the club’s formal gestation period from 1925 to 1930.

From the perspective of history, the window of opportunity for the creation of the Cypress Point Club remains inconceivably narrow. The bringing together of the main characters required a tiny sliver to open in the vein of time. Into that breach walked Sam Morse, Marion Hollins, Roger Lapham, Alister MacKenzie, Robert Hunter, George Washington Smith, and Francis Elkins, among others. Particular characters for a particular moment in time, with their own particular sensibilities.

When playing any of the celebrated shots over the ocean along Cypress Point from the 15th to the 17th holes, or overlooking the turbulent sea from the comforts of the clubhouse, or traversing the pristine forest and inland dunes, there is an overwhelming sentiment that holds true for every generation of members who came after the creators — a sentiment best expressed by something along the lines of, “Thank goodness they built this for us to enjoy today.”

Thank goodness these creators gave future members and guests the opportunity to share in the anticipation and thrill of hitting a single shot across the precipice of a great ocean.

Following pages: The 16th hole

“No one but a poet should be allowed to write of the beauties of Cypress Point.”

S. F. B. MORSE

TO UNDERSTAND the history of the Cypress Point Club, one must first understand Sam Morse’s vision for the early development of Del Monte, especially the period from roughly 1915 to 1930. Though he’s often remembered as a distinguished older man in a tweed jacket or a bow tie, at the time Sam ranged in age from twenty-nine to forty-four years old.

In the beginning, S. F. B. Morse imagined Del Monte would be his “Newport of the West,” a fashionable resort development on a rugged tract of remote land. His concept for Del Monte was to draw aspirational tourists and wealthy home buyers to the most desirable portion of the Monterey Peninsula — the same scenic section that had been deemed unprofitable and dispensable by heirs and investors in a conglomerate called the Pacific Improvement Company. Formed in the mid-nineteenth century by California’s “Big Four” railroad barons — Crocker, Stanford, Hopkins, and Huntington — the Pacific Improvement Company was a vast holding corporation with broad interests. In time, the renown of Pebble Beach came to replace Del Monte as the brand identity of the development, but both names reflect the expansive vision first conjured by Morse. It was a vision that began to take shape in the years after 1915 when Morse was tasked with the responsibility of liquidating the Pacific Improvement Company’s holdings, including the “Del Monte Unit,” not reinventing it.

The conventional story of many private clubs begins with a group of like-minded people who come together to meet the needs of their existing community. They pool their resources to invest in the creation of facilities where friends can gather. While that is what the Cypress Point Club eventually became, that is not how it began. Cypress Point began as an adjunct in support of a larger concept: Sam Morse’s new Del Monte.

Opposite: Illustrated map of Sam Morse’s vision for 17-Mile Drive and the Del Monte Forest, by Jo Mora, 1935

Sam Morse sought to develop golf courses throughout the Monterey Peninsula, as portrayed in a map by William Howell Bull, 1926.

This trifold illustration was created to promote the Monterey Peninsula Country Club and also appeared that same year in the original Cypress Point Club prospectus.

While the public-access golf at Old Del Monte and Pebble Beach drew tourists and competitors to patronize Hotel Del Monte and the newly rebuilt Lodge at Pebble Beach, Morse knew he needed the allure of private golf clubs to secure permanent residents who would buy lots and build homes. His tiered approach first required the creation of a full-service country club to meet the needs of local residents, including a sizable population of military retirees. That became the Monterey Peninsula Country Club, which was formed in 1925. Then, as the crown jewel for the ranks of the social elite he hoped to attract from throughout California and across the country, Morse conceived of an exclusive private club on the most scenic piece of Pebble Beach land. For Morse to fully achieve his concept of a “Newport of the West,” and all the grandeur that title implied, he needed a mythological siren that would beckon sailors of only the finest ships, as described in the 1926 Cypress Point prospectus.

It is now proposed to organize a club to acquire property that is generally referred to as Cypress Point, and to construct thereon a golf links for the use of members only. The site of this club is extraordinary, both from a scenic standpoint, and from its natural adaptability to the game. It is doubtful if any more desirable terrain for a golf course exists in the world. This is a broad assertion to make, but innumerable golfers who have played the game in various parts of the globe have been authority for the statement.

It has been stated by Seth Raynor and by Dr. MacKenzie that it would be possible to build the greatest golf course in the world in that particular locality.

This is where the vision that would become Cypress Point Club began, not only as a remarkable golf course, or a club for like-minded friends that might enhance a growing community, but as the ultimate halo attraction for his inspired reinvention of the Del Monte luxury lifestyle.

However, as president of the Del Monte Properties Company, Morse could not be seen as the proponent of this private club. Maximizing his company’s financial gains to provide returns for major stock holders like Herbert Fleischhacker of the Anglo Bank in San Francisco meant driving value through real estate sales, not subsidizing money-losing private clubs.

Morse therefore sought to identify an agent to act on his behalf in the development of a private club at Cypress Point.

“Shortly after Pebble Beach got well underway, I induced Marion Hollins to join the staff as saleswoman,” Sam Morse wrote in an early draft of his unpublished memoirs, believed to be dated in the 1930s. “She was one of the outstanding sports women of the world... Her acquaintance was tremendous and she developed into the best saleswoman I have ever known.”

“I offered her compensation in the shape of a piece of land, in the event she was successful,” Morse later wrote. “We laid out the plan for her, and she did the selling.”

In New York’s Marion Hollins, Sam Morse found his ideal.

Marion Hollins

BORN ON DECEMBER 3, 1892, into a New York family with a tradition of wealth and prosperity going back generations, Marion Hollins remains largely an enigma to the modern sports world. A deeper search into the newspapers of the day reveals that she was a major star, profiled nationwide. Her peak of fame from the 1910s through the 1930s predated most existing recorded newsreels and the sweeping power of the modern television age.

“The most curious aspect of the Marion Hollins story,” said Betty Hicks, winner of the 1941 U.S. Women’s Amateur and an important advocate for women’s golf, “is that she did not become many times more celebrated than she was.”

Marion’s father, Harry B. Hollins, was raised in New York City and dropped out of Harvard to become a Wall Street runner. He worked his way up to start his own firm in 1879, and H. B. Hollins & Co. soon held a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. Hollins was a club man through and through, with memberships at a dozen social or sporting clubs that included golf clubs such as Garden City, The Links, Saint Andrew’s, and the National Golf Links of America. Harry Hollins was also elected the inaugural president of the Metropolitan Golf Association in 1897. Marion’s mother, Eveline Knapp, traced her lineage back to the Plymouth Colony, perpetuating the fashionable aspects that such a genealogy required in Manhattan’s Gilded Age.

Harry Hollins was a business confidant of William K. Vanderbilt, heir to America’s greatest fortune at the time. Hollins’s stature increased when his company personally backed Vanderbilt’s threatened position in 1884, stemming a panic at a time when Vanderbilt’s father, Cornelius, was the wealthiest man in America. Along the way, Hollins built an estate commensurate with the family’s social position on six hundred acres in East Islip, Long Island called “Meadowfarm,” where Marion and her four brothers were raised. Their winter home at 12 West 56th Street in Manhattan, three blocks south of Central Park near the corner of 5th Avenue, later became the Consulate General of Argentina.

Horses, sports, and activities dominated Marion’s childhood as a precocious tomboy, keeping up with the energy of four brothers. She learned to play tennis at Meadowfarm, where there was also a private, three-hole golf course.

Marion began to play golf with some intent starting at age six. Her teacher was a former caddie from Sandwich, England, named Arthur Griffiths. Harry Hollins met “Griff,” as he became known, on a trip to the Royal St. George’s Golf Club in the early 1900s and liked Griff so much he hired him to be the professional at the Westbrook Golf Club in Long Island. Marion learned the fundamentals of the game from Griff and was often referred to as the “girl from Westbrook” in contemporary newspaper accounts.

International travel was a feature of the family’s lifestyle, and Marion was exposed to grand tours of Europe through her father’s business interests nearly every summer prior to World War I, with constant motion becoming the habit of a lifetime as she emerged as an amateur golfer and horsewoman who traveled the world.

Marion became a celebrated driver of four-in-hand horse-drawn coaches, appearing in numerous newspaper articles for her exploits both in America and Europe. As a polo player, she was acknowledged to be the only woman who carried a man’s handicap. As was the case on her first journeys to Pebble Beach, when she appeared in society pages,

she was more commonly identified as, “the well known horsewoman and polo player.” She received her society debut in 1908 at the age of sixteen, and began entering significant golf competitions in 1912 when she was not yet twenty.

Marion reached the final of the 1913 U.S. Women’s Amateur in her first appearance. Though she lost 2 down on the final hole to England’s Gladys Ravenscroft, had she won she would have joined an illustrious triumvirate of champions in 1913 alongside twenty-year-old Francis Ouimet, who shocked the world by winning the U.S. Open at The Country Club in a playoff, and Jerry Travers, who claimed a record fourth U.S. Amateur title at Garden City.

Several times in the United States and abroad, Marion came close to a breakthrough championship victory, only to lose in the end. She was finally good enough in 1921, when she defeated Alexa Stirling, 5 and 4, over 36 holes to win the U.S. Women’s Amateur at Hollywood Golf Club in Deal, New Jersey. Marion was twenty-eight years old.

Marion often enjoyed taking friends and especially British visitors to the National Golf Links of America in Southampton, New York, which she played often, as her father Harry B. Hollins was one of the founding members. Her familiarity with the ideals of the National would play an important role in several future golf courses in which she became involved with developing, including Cypress Point.

One such visitor was the British ladies champion Cecil Leitch, who wrote, “Nothing is a trouble to Miss Hollins, and she will undertake a long journey for a round of golf which

few would consider worthwhile. No one is more appreciative of the good features of a course, a quality which makes her an interesting and satisfying partner or opponent. For many reasons, I shall never forget that day of golf over the National Links on Long Island.”

Having won the 1921 U.S. Women’s Amateur, in early 1922 Marion began to assemble a group of leading female golfers for the purpose of developing a golf course designed and built exclusively for women.

“When I first satisfied myself that it was practical and timely to build a course only for women,” Marion wrote in Golf Illustrated in January 1923, “the point uppermost in my mind... was to create a course which would bring out the best in women’s golf, without sacrificing length or hazards.”

The name for her enterprise, clearly inspired by her experiences at the National Golf Links of America, was to be the Women’s National Golf and Tennis Club, the first and, to date, only all-female golf club in American history.

Marion organized working groups to identify potential subscribers, secure a piece of land at Glen Head, Long Island, and finance the endeavor, all of which would serve her as she developed Cypress Point. She traveled to Britain in the style of C. B. Macdonald’s tours prior to his own design of the National Golf Links, playing many of the leading courses in an attempt to scout out the best holes for women.

Though a celebrated success upon its opening in 1924, the Women’s National was sadly short-lived. Due to the effects of the Depression and other financial factors, the club

merged with The Creek Club in 1941, only to be sold off to satisfy a mortgage shortly thereafter and was subsequently reconstituted as the Glen Head Country Club in 1947.

Surprisingly little is known about what prompted Marion Hollins to first come to the Monterey Peninsula or when she began to chart her future in the West.

On March 12, 1916, an innocuous column appeared in the society pages of the San Francisco Examiner. “Polo at Del Monte is always a drawing card,” the report proclaimed, “but polo with one of the most famous sportswomen of America playing with the home team makes for an attraction of notable interest.”

It was the then-twenty-three-year-old Miss Marion Hollins, “known as America’s greatest horsewoman,” who was the attraction of notable interest, playing polo — and golf — as a guest of Mr. and Mrs. Charles W. Clark in Del Monte for the coming season, underscoring Marion’s strong society connections in the West well before she arrived or was ever employed by Sam Morse to sell real estate.

Charles Clark, one of Morse’s original directors of the Del Monte Properties Company, was an avid horseman and scion of a Montana copper fortune. He married Celia Tobin, socialite heir to the Hibernia Bank fortune, who hailed from one of San Francisco’s most prominent families.

As Mrs. Celia Tobin Clark, she later became one of the thirteen original Cypress Point members who were women and built one of the showplace homes along the coast south of the club. She frequently hosted Hollins at her home as

Hollins never actually built a home in Pebble Beach. While Marion came for polo in 1916, it wasn’t until later that Marion began visiting Pebble Beach in earnest.

In March 1920, Marion visited Del Monte as a guest of polo player G. Maurice Heckscher, Morse’s Yale classmate (p. 29) who, rather than buying the Del Monte Unit, became an investor and vice president in Morse’s company.

Following Marion’s stay with the Heckschers, the New York Tribune reported, “Coast Lures Miss Hollins,” adding,

“The California women’s golfing fraternity will likely be pleased to learn that Miss Marion Hollins, of New York, rated as one of the expert women golfers of the country, has purchased a piece of land at Pebble Beach, and is intending to erect a house and make her home there part of the year.”

The San Francisco Chronicle’s society section ran a full page of photographs on February 20, 1921, featuring

figures of note who eventually played key roles in the creation of the Cypress Point Club. Marion Hollins was the central character, on horseback, with interior designer Frances Elkins also pictured. Harry Hunt, the club’s early secretary, and later president, appeared with his future wife, Jane. Finally, Byington Ford was both an original member of Cypress Point and the sales manager for the Del Monte Properties Company, as well as Morse’s new brother-in-law through Sam’s 1919 marriage to his second wife, Relda Ford.

In a nationally syndicated article published on March 3, 1921, several months prior to her victory in the 1921 U.S. Women’s Amateur, sportswriter Jack Walker reinforced the point that many in amateur golf were discussing:

If reports from the Pacific coast are true, the East is due to lose the super woman of the athletic world, for news has reached us that Miss Marion Hollins has purchased a home site at Pebble Beach near

the famous seaside golf course where the California amateur championship is to be played and is figuring on locating there permanently... Miss Hollins is known as the most versatile sports woman in the United States. While better known for her achievements in the golfing world than in any other line of sports, Miss Hollins does not let golf take up all her time by any means. She has gained distinction as an expert horsewoman and is considered the best woman polo player in the country today. Again, very few men could show her anything when it comes to sailing a boat as this sport has been a hobby with her for years, and she has become proficient in the art. It has been suggested elsewhere that Sam hired Marion as his “Director of Athletics” after she won the 1921 U.S. Women’s Amateur but other than her creating the Pebble Beach Championship for Women in 1923, there’s little known evidence to indicate her role was more than to attract wealthy society members. As we will see, the organization of

Cypress Point from 1924 to 1927 occupied much of Marion’s energy following the opening of the Women’s National.

Longtime Cypress Point caddiemaster Joey Solis, who was born in 1921, recalled caddying for Marion as a young boy: “Marion played a lot of golf there in the early ’30s. She used to hit balls before playing. I used to catch the balls on the fly and bring them back to her. Every time she came out there, she’d say ‘I want Little Joey to shag for me.’ She played with Sam Morse, Harrison Godwin. Of course Hollins and Godwin were real estate people and they were trying to get people to come over here and join Cypress Point.”

Sam Morse had offered Marion a piece of property as compensation for setting up Cypress Point. “When she injured her back and was incapacitated she fretted and worried about it a good deal,” Morse wrote in 1959, “but couldn’t do much about it, and the membership drive began to recede. A number of people decided to drop out. Marion in the meantime had of course actually lost any right to the land on the waterfront, but her health had improved and she came to me and said she would like to compensate Harrison Godwin to the extent of $10,000, which I had agreed to give him, and take over the piece of property on the waterfront, to which I agreed.”

While Marion remained a member of Cypress Point until the end of her life, after the club’s organization was completed in 1927, she began to turn her attention almost wholly to new interests in developing Pasatiempo Golf Club in Santa Cruz. Two months after the opening of Cypress

Point’s golf course in 1928, Marion struck it rich as an oil wildcatter when a geyser blew on a oil dome in the Kettleman Hills near Fresno, California (photo p. 52).

Marion had been the lead investor on the project, and when the $10.5 million sale went through in May 1930, she netted $2.5 million in profit from Standard Oil. Despite coming from a wealthy East Coast family, Marion became a millionaire several times over on her own terms as a business -

woman in the West.

The day before her forty-fifth birthday, on December 2, 1937, Marion’s car was struck by a drunk driver. She declined medical treatment and was thought to have suffered a severe concussion that affected her for the rest of her life. Though she continued to compete and win golf tournaments — including her seventh Pebble Beach Championship for Women in 1942 — friends said she was never the same.

After pouring her fortune into Pasatiempo and other failed investments, eventually the car accident and the Depression took their toll. She lost everything and was forced to sell it all, including her home in Santa Cruz. In 1941 she returned to Pebble Beach, where Sam Morse gave her a nominal job selling real estate and arranged a place for her to live as a house sitter. On April 1 that year at Cypress Point, “Upon motion made and seconded, and unanimously approved, the Secretary was instructed to write a letter to Miss Marion Hollins extending to her all privileges of the Club until same is revoked.”

By 1944, her health had deteriorated significantly. A subsequent resolution was made by the Cypress Point Board.

The Ass’t Secretary read a letter dated January 17, 1944 of the Club Secretary relative to the condition of Miss Marion Hollins, commenting on her present physical and financial troubles and the great service she rendered to the Club in the past. On motion, duly made, seconded and unanimously carried, the Board, in consideration of the services of Miss Hollins to the Club, elected her an Honorary Member of the Club for the calendar year 1944, subject to extension by order of the Board, said membership to carry all of the privileges of a regular membership, without the payment of dues, excepting voting rights or proprietary interest in Club properties.

Marion died seven months later in a nursing home in Pacific Grove, on August 27, 1944, after a brief illness. Though she had been unwell, it was unexpected. She was fifty-one years old. Sam Morse paid for Marion to be buried in the Cementerio El Encinal in Monterey in a plot with a simple headstone that he provided.

Following a significant increase in interest about her accomplishments as a result of Marion’s election to the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2020, the marker was replaced by her family to recognize her achievements. The original headstone was then donated to the Cypress Point Club, where it forms part of the foundation walls of the Hollins Terrace, overlooking the 16th hole (p. 150)

Today, after many decades when her legacy was overlooked if not forgotten, increasing numbers of people now agree with what golf historian H. B. Martin first wrote in 1936: “No woman golfer had done more for the game of golf in America than Miss Marion Hollins.”

GIVEN HER HIGH PROFILE in Pebble Beach as a champion golfer, leading polo player, member of fashionable society, developer of golf courses back East, and saleswoman to the elite through the Del Monte Properties Company, Marion Hollins was the obvious and natural choice for Sam Morse to handpick to develop the Cypress Point Club.

According to his memoirs, at an early point in their relationship, and certainly by 1924, Sam took Marion to view Cypress Point. Sam explained to Marion how he envisioned an exclusive private golf club on this exquisite piece of property. Upon hearing his proposal, Marion, at least in Sam’s recollections, “immediately became tremendously enthusiastic.”

Documents in the S. F. B. Morse personal papers at Stanford University record that Marion was indeed Sam’s No. 1 salesperson — male or female. Marion led the sales figures for the first few months of 1927, as Cypress Point was ramping up, and she finished the year strong. She achieved the highest volume in dollars of property sold but, curiously, ranked second-to-last in total number of sales. Marion Hollins was, as might be expected from her “tremendous acquaintance,” a big-game hunter, in a manner of speaking.

Opposite: Marion Hollins driving from the second tee at Cypress Point, 1929.

Seth Raynor, Charles Carstairs, and C. B. Macdonald at the Lido in Long Island, New York, 1915

“She did tremendously well in selling the Pebble Beach property,” wrote Morse in the 1930s, “and earned a great deal of the credit for the establishment of the Cypress Point Club. I took her over the ground; told her about the Cypress Point zone and what we hoped to do; and suggested an exclusive club — this was after Pebble Beach had thoroughly arrived!” Operating independently from Marion’s employment arrangement with the Del Monte Properties Company was the compensation agreement Sam and Marion reached regarding her development of the Cypress Point Club. At roughly the same time, inspired by ideas dating back a decade, prior to the formation of the Del Monte Properties Company, Morse and Hollins engaged Seth Raynor and C. B. Macdonald to design 36 holes of golf at the proposed site for the Monterey Peninsula Country Club north of Cypress Point. Macdonald, one of the forces behind the founding of the United States Golf Association in 1894 and the inaugural U.S. Amateur champion in 1895, was arguably the leading golf architect in America at the time. Seth Raynor, having recently advised Marion Hollins and Devereux Emmet on the Women’s National Golf & Tennis Club in Long Island, was another natural choice to lead the design of multiple new golf courses for the Del Monte Properties Company.

Raynor visited Pebble Beach on several occasions for the design and construction of Monterey Peninsula Country Club, including both late 1923 and 1924, though Macdonald never did. During these visits, Hollins also took Raynor to survey the land at Cypress Point, whereupon Raynor produced a preliminary routing for a course commissioned by the Del Monte Properties Company. Raynor’s proposed routing, dated February 1925, has been held in the Cypress Point Club archives since that time, and while it was incorporated into contemporary promotional maps like W. H. Bull’s illustration (p. 44–45) and other planning documents, Raynor’s version of the routing was never built.

Seth J. Raynor

FOR ANYONE SETTING OUT to build a golf course in America in the mid-1920s, especially one with great ambitions like Cypress Point, the connoisseur’s choice for an architect would not have been Dr. Alister MacKenzie, who had yet to construct a course in America. Instead, the choice likely would have been Charles Blair Macdonald, regarded as the father of American golf architecture, or his protégé, Seth J. Raynor.

As C. B. Macdonald began to create the National Golf Links of America in Southampton, New York, in 1906, he needed a surveyor and construction supervisor to bring to life the concept of replicating famous holes for his ideal golf course inspired by their British originals. Seth Raynor, a Princeton-educated engineer in his early thirties at the time, was employed as the civil engineer for the Town of Southampton. Though Raynor knew nothing about golf at that point, Macdonald engaged him to solve the technical challenges of constructing the National.

When Mr. Charles Macdonald laid out the National Golf Links twenty years ago, there was not a single course in America to compare with the classic links of Great Britain. As soon as the National was completed, it set a new standard, and ever since then it has been customary for the architects of new courses to assure their patrons that the new ventures will equal or excel the National.

“Yet in all these twenty years,” Whigham subsequently protested, “how many links in this country are in the same class as the National?” He cited only two: Pine Valley and Macdonald’s Lido golf course on Long Island.

In September 1925, newspapers in California (p. 66) proclaimed the development of a “Wonder Golf Course” led by Marion Hollins, who, “with the assistance of Seth Raynor, golf course architect of national note, hopes to construct a creation which will even surpass such notable links as Lido and the National” — foreshadowing the comparison Whigham described after his visit to Cypress Point in January 1928 and publication of the article.

In the lead up to its formal opening in 1911, the National received wide acclaim, immediately becoming the new accepted benchmark for golf course development in America. Upon first visiting Cypress Point in early 1928, H. J. Whigham (p. 39), editor of Town & Country magazine and a former two-time U.S. Amateur champion, wrote how the National had created a paradigm rarely equaled:

Macdonald and Raynor eventually created more than a dozen courses together, several of which became the leading clubs in America, though no projects met the standard set by their first collaboration. Macdonald received more design requests than he wished to undertake, and by 1914, Raynor began to accept the commissions instead, building or reconstructing some fifty courses of his own,

specializing in Macdonald’s method of applying copies of famous holes from classic Scottish and English golf links.

Marion Hollins’s father, H. B. Hollins, was a founding member of National Golf Links; she modeled her development of the Women’s National Golf & Tennis Club on Macdonald’s approach, traveling to study the famous holes of the links courses of Britain; and Raynor assisted Devereux Emmet with the design of Women’s National. At that club’s first organizational meeting in March 1925, Hollins, Roger D. Lapham, and William C. Van Antwerp cited NGLA as a model for Cypress Point (p. 64).

However, as Marion had not secured enough members to fund construction of the course or to incorporate the club by the end of 1925, no further progress was made on Raynor’s preliminary routing prior to his unexpected death on January 23, 1926, at age fifty-one. History may only presume how Raynor might have applied his methods of presenting copies of “famous holes” at Cypress Point.

“Now the point of all this discussion,” as Whigham concluded in May 1928, “is that the new Cypress Point course on the Monterey Peninsula presents one case where the architect may truly say to the prospective member: I have made a course which will surely equal or excel the National. Or, rather, if the architect, Dr. Alister Mackenzie [sic], will allow me to make a correction, he ought to say: Nature meant this for the ideal links; I have carried out what nature intended.”

On February 24, 1925, for the grand sum of ten dollars, Marion Hollins secured an option from the Del Monte Properties Company on several parcels of land valued at roughly $1,000 per acre. The total agreed price was $150,000, offered by Morse and the Company at one-fifth of its market value. The actual L-shaped parcel consisted of 169 acres that included Cypress Point and the site for a clubhouse before crossing the 17-Mile Drive to venture up the ancient drainage ravine and sand dunes leading from Fan Shell Beach into the Del Monte Forest. The original proposed parcel terminated at Drake Road, built several years later across from the equestrian center and polo fields situated on the other side of the road.

With the option in hand and a routing from Raynor for reference, Hollins began the process of organizing the club by attracting members to fund construction of the golf course and clubhouse. She established an Executive Committee with Roger D. Lapham and William C. Van Antwerp, experienced golfers and members of the San Francisco Golf Club.

At an initial organizational meeting in March

This page and opposite: Marion Hollins’s original solicitation for membership in Cypress Point Club, October 1925

1925, Hollins, Lapham, and Van Antwerp discussed the cost of developing the club, along with the proposed nature of the membership and club itself. They quickly settled on a budget for development: $150,000 for the land, $150,000 to build the clubhouse, and $200,000 to build the course; a total capital requirement of $500,000, most of which would be loaned by Del Monte Properties.

To meet the club’s financial goals, Hollins first contemplated up to five hundred members paying at least $1,000 each, but upon further discussion the committee settled on the model of a smaller, “more congenial” membership to fund construction of the club’s facilities. From that moment to the present, the membership at Cypress Point Club has never exceeded 250 members.

The precepts envisioned for attracting new members to pay $2,000 appear directly in the notes from that first organizational meeting:

1st. That a first class golf course was built and maintained in the best possible condition, it being the idea that it should be known as the best links on the Coast, in some such way as the National Golf Links of America is regarded the best on the Atlantic Coast.

2nd. That the club house, while not necessarily large or elaborate, be made thoroughly comfortable with a limited number of sleeping rooms, say, eight or ten, and the best possible service in the club house provided.

3rd. That with the membership limited to 200 instead or 400 or 500, a better balanced and more congenial membership could be secured.

The simple, original ideas with which Hollins, Lapham, and Van Antwerp formed the basis of the club remain as true a century later as they did in that first organizational meeting in March 1925: an exceptional golf course that was the pride of the Pacific Coast, a thoroughly comfortable but modest clubhouse with excellent service, and a small, friendly membership.

Opposite: The club’s original prospectus, 1926

Promotional articles and photographs of Cypress Point began appearing in newspapers and golf magazines (opposite), touting the “Wonder Golf Course” that Marion Hollins would be creating. By the end of 1925, Marion had secured the option on the land at Cypress Point, a routing for the course, a capital plan for funding development, and, through Lapham and her own acquaintance, a list of potential names from San Francisco, Burlingame, and across the country to solicit as founding members. In October she issued formal, printed solicitations for people to join the new enterprise (p. 62–63). Then her plans hit one of several snags.

In January 1926, while in Palm Beach, Florida, Seth Raynor died unexpectedly at the age of fifty-one. In an amazing coincidence and historically significant bit of good fortune, Dr. Alister MacKenzie, a well-known Scottish golf architect based in Leeds, England, happened to be on a train crossing the heartland of America bound for San Francisco at the time of Raynor’s death.

MacKenzie arrived in California only six days after Raynor’s passing. One purpose of his maiden journey to the West Coast was to develop a course north of San Francisco at Meadow Club, which he did with his eventual design partner, Robert Hunter (p. 199). Three days after arriving, MacKenzie toured Cypress Point for the first time on February 2 while visiting Hunter at his Pebble Beach home.

With Raynor recently deceased, Marion Hollins needed a new architect quickly, and MacKenzie and Hunter were poised to assume Raynor’s design commission. How Hollins came to know MacKenzie is only rumored, but they occupied overlapping social circles in British amateur golf; Robert Hunter, already an ongoing fixture in the Pebble Beach golf scene, was certainly involved. He inscribed a copy of his brand-new golf architecture book The Links, published in 1926, to Sam Morse on April 12, just weeks after his February 2 visit to Cypress Point with MacKenzie (p. 200).

By the end of February 1926, MacKenzie and Hunter produced a new stick routing for the course, followed by a revised topographical routing in March. They borrowed in some instances from Raynor’s counter-clockwise treatment of the four holes around Cypress Point, developed with Marion’s input, but diverged greatly from Raynor’s plan on the balance of the holes across 17-Mile

Opposite: Early articles promoting the development of Cypress Point Club Game & Gossip, December 1926, and the Los Angeles Evening Express, September 24, 1925

Drive, the more challenging portion of the property on which to route a course. (See p. 182–183)

MacKenzie also developed a design with detailed features of the golf course’s greens and bunkers (p. 200–201) sufficient for Albert Barrows to produce an artistic aerial map of the course dated 1926 (p. 164), though MacKenzie would not return to California until the following year.

For the rest of 1926, with her architectural quandary resolved in a matter of days, Marion’s plans suffered an even greater setback — she injured her back, reportedly playing polo, and the drive for membership stalled as she became incapacitated. Subscribers dropped out.

The question of whether Cypress Point would come together was imperiled. Fortunately for Marion, for Sam Morse, and for the whole project, a twenty-eight-year-old salesman for the Del Monte Properties Company named Harrison Godwin became one of the unheralded Dramatis Personae of the story and took up the cause of enlisting members.

As Marion recuperated from her back injury, Godwin carried the ball over the line. By the late spring of 1927 it was Harrison Godwin who secured the requisite final members, some one hundred total at $2,000 each to fund the estimated cost needed to construct the golf course and other facilities.

The full purchase price of the land was financed by the Del Monte Properties Company at 6 percent interest,

requiring limited outlay for the club to secure the property beyond the ten dollar option Marion Hollins paid. The initial $150,000 in clubhouse construction costs was to be financed by the company, commencing only after the golf course had been completed and became a “going concern.” All of which is why the clubhouse was the final piece of the Cypress Point project to be completed when it opened in September 1930.

On March 15, 1927, Byington Ford, sales manager at Del Monte Properties Company who later became a member himself, sent an interdepartmental memo mentioning several points, the fourth of which was:

The Cypress Point golf club is under-written. I think 98 have actually signed, and three or four others have stated that they would sign. As soon as the hundredth one is signed, they will start construction of the club. They have already had topo made of the club site, and have selected

George Washington Smith to design the clubhouse.

With “fur flying,” to use Sam Morse’s phrase when describing the frenzy of activity that accompanied Marion whenever she swept into town from the East Coast, Hollins and the Executive Committee chaired by William C. Van Antwerp gathered in San Francisco in July 1927 to formally incorporate the “Cypress Point Golf Club.”

Official incorporation document and by-laws signed by officers of Cypress Point Golf Club, August 9, 1927

Directors the founding directors

James A. Mackenzie

William C. Van Antwerp

William H. Orrick

Roger D. Lapham

Albert J. Houston

Marion Hollins

Frank G. Noyes

William C. Van Antwerp President

Edith Van Antwerp Secretary

Construction on the golf course, led by MacKenzie’s and Hunter’s American Golf Course Construction Company, began that fall and proceeded at a breakneck pace through the end of the year, felling acres of trees and creating a naturalized landscape for golf out of a complicated site that mixed sea, sand, and forest. All eighteen greens were contoured and ready to be seeded in less than three months.

After Marion Hollins began to turn her attention to the development of Pasatiempo in Santa Cruz after striking oil in the Kettleman Hills in late 1928 (p. 52–54), Cypress Point’s ongoing development was left to be carried forward by the members. These efforts were led principally by Roger Lapham, who chaired the club’s Golf Course Construction Committee and who became the new president of the club in 1928 after Van Antwerp’s brief tenure. Lapham would serve in that role throughout the 1930s, in tandem with Morse’s careful oversight from the Del Monte Properties Company, until Lapham finally stepped aside from his voluntary duties as president in 1943 having been elected the mayor of San Francisco. (See profile p. 86–91)

Original bank register for “Cypress Point Golf Club,” 1928

71

On August 11, 1928, the golf course opened for play ahead of schedule and under budget, thanks to creative construction techniques and scientific turf-grass analysis developed by Hunter’s and MacKenzie’s experienced crew. While the course was met as an instant success and heralded around the world, the development of the club and achievement of a full roster of members remained an ongoing challenge for years to come. The first major change to take place at the newly incorporated Cypress Point Golf Club would be the name of the club itself.

a club or a golf club?

THE ORIGINAL ELEMENTS OF CYPRESS POINT CLUB STILL HOLD TRUE:

a superlative golf course more beautiful than its reputation; a comfortable clubhouse more modest than one would expect in such a setting; all supported by a coterie of 250 “congenial” members with an emphasis on couples who enjoy socializing and playing golf together. The club exists, as intended from the beginning, solely for their pleasure.

“This is a club,” in the words of one senior member, “to which nobody deserves to belong. We feel that every time we drive in the grounds. Even after all these years, I still pinch myself that they let me in.”

Though the finer points of any club’s culture are constantly in flux, as members are forever joining and departing, over the last century the nature of how members enjoy the Cypress Point Club has settled into a familiar rhythm whose greatest strength is that it appears to have always been that way. To read the early records of the club, however, one might think it began with an identity crisis. To start with, Cypress Point chose to legally change its name in the first year after incorporation.

On June 18, 1927, Burke Corbet, the San Francisco attorney who arranged the incorporation of the club, wrote to Sam Morse:

I notice that the copy of the contract, which has just been furnished to me by Mr. Orrick, refers to the name as “Cypress Point Golf Club”. The subscription to the shares of stock taken in October, 1925, by Miss Hollins [p. 62–63], states that the name contemplated for said Club at that time was “Cypress Point Club”. In your letter you refer to it as “Cypress Point Club”.

In discussing the matter with Messrs. Kingsbury and Lapham, they suggested the interjection of the word “Golf” in the name, so as to make it read “Cypress Point Golf Club”. This, in my judgment, is the better name.

Opposite: Original prospectus for Cypress Point Golf Club, 1926 Original by-laws and roster for Cypress Point Club, 1928

In the original articles of incorporation the “Cypress Point Golf Club” was formally organized on July 26, 1927.

Corbet’s judgment wouldn’t last for long. On August 22, 1928, just year after the original incorporation, the name of the club was formally changed with the California secretary of state back to “Cypress Point Club,” omitting reference to the word golf. That subtle shift mirrored the intent early members had for the club.

“It was to be a sanctuary of the group that first came to Pebble Beach and golfed before golf became everybody’s game,” wrote Fortune magazine in a January 1940 profile of Sam Morse’s Del Monte. “And that’s what it is; Cypress Point is the inner circle... It has only 70 members — rarely more than 20 players on its lovely greens — and few of them own land at Pebble Beach. Mr. Samuel F. B. Morse can no more use it for selling lots than he could use the pulpit of his church.”

The club’s original prospectus, developed in 1926 to entice members to join, laid out five “salient points” (p. 65) for those considering investing in the club, points that had far more to do with Cypress Point’s financial prospects than its social atmosphere.

First, the acquisition price of the land was emphasized to be one-fifth of its actual value, a statistic borne out by a contemporary memo from January 13, 1927, prepared for Sam Morse by Byington Ford, sales manager for Del Monte. The memo recommended prices for twenty-one lots in a proposed Cypress Point subdivision on the ridge above the seventh and eighth holes. The average price-per-acre was $6,200. The agreed price-per-acre of the Cypress Point Club land under the option agreement, on the other hand, was $1,000 — nearly 85 percent below market for the adjacent properties, especially on a site of such stunning scenic beauty and history.

In the second point, the prospectus, typical of an era of frenzied speculation, emphasized the value of the membership as an investment. The third point, however, is the one that might stick out to members and those most familiar with the current club’s facilities.

While the principal object of the club is the development of the golf links, the club will have an attractive home, which will offer all the accommodations and attractions of a country club. There will also be facilities for tennis, bathing and other outdoor sports.

According to the original Articles of Incorporation, filed on July 26, 1927, the legal object of the club was: “To construct, purchase, erect, and maintain a Club House, Club grounds, tennis courts, polo grounds, golf courses, and all of the usual and necessary accessories in connection therewith.”

The intended provision of tennis courts, swimming pools, and other outdoor, equestrian sports at Cypress Point would surely take members of today by surprise. That kind of club culture, with an expansive vision for country club amenities and profitable real estate holdings, is contrary to the prevailing sentiment that subsequent generations of members have subscribed to and upheld.

Though Sam Morse may originally have had grand visions for a Cypress Point subdivision that would yield vast profits for Del Monte Properties, in time he acquiesced to and embraced an atmosphere promoted by gracious Pebble Beach inhabitants like Harry and Jane Hunt and a platoon of

Crockers, among others, all of whom sought to be part of, in the words of artist Francis McComas, “a very small and elite club, with perfect food and service, in which all members could be great and good friends.” (See p. 130–131)

The inaugural Cypress Point roster from 1928 listed 103 names out of a potential 250 proprietary members allowed for in the by-laws. Eighty percent of the founding members came from California. Half of those members hailed from the San Francisco Bay Area. The remaining 20 percent coming in equal proportions from the Monterey Peninsula, Southern California, or the eastern United States, with a few at-large members completing the balance. Twenty percent of the founding members first appeared on a list of prospective names provided by Roger Lapham to Marion Hollins following their inaugural organizational meeting in March 1925.

Of note, thirteen of the original hundred or so members were women, including the first membership certificate issued — No. 1, to Helene Irwin Crocker (opposite). Women have been key members of Cypress Point Club from its inception, with the custom of all spouses enjoying full club privileges.

In addition to Marion Hollins being the developer of the club, she was joined as a founding director by socialite and amateur golf champion Edith Chesebrogh Van Antwerp, who briefly served as the club’s initial secretary (p. 70). When the time came to decorate the clubhouse in 1930, six leading female members stepped up to furnish the upstairs bedrooms and lobby (p. 141).

Women at Cypress Point have, from the beginning, participated on and, at times, led the House Committee, setting the tone for how members enjoyed the club beyond the golf course. Leslie de Bretteville, daughter of former club President Charles de Bretteville (1965–1973) recalled how the social nature of

Opposite: Cypress Point membership certificate No. 1, belonging to Mrs. Helene Irwin Crocker

The first set of rules for use of the clubhouse and course at Cypress Point, issued upon the clubhouse’s opening in September 1930

the club was influenced for decades by people like founding members Harry and Jane Hunt. Harry Hunt (president, 1955–1962) was a prominent polo player and Jane was a leading social figure and also an accomplished equestrian, having been a fixture of the Pebble Beach scene for years.

“If Mrs. Hunt liked something one way, that was the way my mother went,” said Leslie, of her mother Frances de Bretteville, who was involved with Cypress Point’s House Committee for many years. “Mrs. Hunt had all the taste in the world and was friends with Coco Chanel. It was a wonderful era. Everything was attractive and understated. The food was out of this world from Chef Roger [Gascoin, 1958–1976] and Mrs. Hunt played a large role in that. The only people who could call when we were having dinner were Mrs. Hunt and my grandmother. My father would get right up from the dinner table when Mrs. Hunt would call. My parents wouldn’t do anything without her.”

Though the club’s full membership was limited from the beginning to 250 at any one time, it remained below that level for years. Hand in hand with the stabilization of the club’s finances and retirement of indebtedness to the Del Monte Properties Company in the post-war years (p. 93–99), the membership grew gradually from less than fifty at the low point of the war to more comfortable levels. By 1956, the club had achieved a new record of 135 active members.

Throughout the 1950s and ’60s, though well within the limits established in the by-laws, the club imposed an internal limit of 150 total members, with self-defined quotas of no more than sixty members to come from Monterey County, fifty-five other California members from outside the Monterey Peninsula, and thirty-five from outside of California. These quotas were regularly adjusted in the coming decades to reflect new demographic realities in California and Board priorities. It was necessary, according to Roger Lapham, to restrict the number of local and California members “or the conditions that have made the club so attractive to its members and their guests would deteriorate.”

Distinctions between members were later eliminated and merged together, then changed yet again by subsequent Boards, all in pursuit of achieving an ideal balance between local, California, and out-of-state members in an effort to preserve, in the words of Lapham, the “informal and intimate

nature of the club.” In November 1962, a membership study commissioned by the Board sought to renew the original concept of the club as envisioned by the founders. “It was apparent that the early members were brought into the Club on a basis of their desirable personal attributes rather than their golfing prowess.” The Board agreed future members should be considered on that basis.

Proving that every argument has a counter position, however, in 1963 a discussion of the Board lamented the distinct lack of golf-playing members. It was suggested by then-President Allen Griffin (1962–1965) that the directors bring in the names of a few golfers who would make for “desirable” members. These changing membership themes and an internal limit of 150 or so ostensibly “desirable” members in effect in the early 1960s was perhaps what led to Bob Hope’s famous line about Cypress Point’s periodic “member drives” being organized to drive members out.

It was in 1965 that the club’s secretary was authorized to prepare 250 membership certificates, as the supply was down to the final few. New certificates had been designed around 1950, following the post-war reorganization of the club, indicating it had taken the last fifteen years to reach 250 certificate-holding proprietary members in aggregate, let alone at one time. The limitations on the size of the membership were gradually increased, and by the early 1970s it was suggested that Cypress Point may need to raise the then-current maximum of 220 proprietary members to an even larger number to meet the rising costs of running the club. This limit was again expanded to 240 members in 1980 before finally being set at the full membership roster first envisioned by the founders in the mid-1990s, seventy years after the club’s founding.

From a time before recorded memory, the club developed a tradition of allowing spouses of deceased members to retain an affiliation with the club. The Board formalized this tradition in December 1976 through a revision to the by-laws that such spouses, “shall be known as Annual Members.”

While at its heart Cypress Point is a haven for its members, from the beginning the Board has attempted to strike a balance between member privacy and sharing one of the great wonders of the golfing world with friends. In perhaps the earliest, unveiled attempt to promote club membership

The original Cypress Point golf register, begun by Glenna Collett’s course record 76 in June 1929, featuring signatures of 1929 U.S. Amateur notables Cyril Tolley, Francis Ouimet, Bobby Jones, and Grantland Rice, among others and sustain itself financially, during the 1929 U.S. Amateur at Pebble Beach, the club sought to welcome the world — and potential future members — to Cypress Point, in particular golf celebrities and dignitaries like Bobby Jones, Francis Ouimet, Prescott Bush, and Grantland Rice, who became the first to sign the club’s new bespoke golf register (above), which lasted until 1945.

Inspired by a letter from Roger Lapham in 1956, the Board confirmed its position that “Cypress Point Club was fulfilling the ambition of its founders by its golf course becoming a mecca for golfers, by opening the golf course for the use of greens fee paying guests every morning of the week.”

Through the years, various Boards contemplated many requests for outings, numerous contributions to charitable efforts and commercial activities associated with the club or its celebrated golf course. Generally, though not always, the choice has been for the club to prefer privacy over exposure.

Notable exceptions did occur, as when the club featured briefly on film in a 1947 Bob Hope comedy called My Favorite Brunette, where Hope encountered several eccentric characters. Hope was filmed at the clubhouse, which doubled as the “Seacliff Lodge Sanitarium” for the mentally ill, and played the 15th hole against an inmate using an imaginary golf ball, before being committed himself in a scene filmed below the clubhouse.

More typically, in July 1961, the Board discussed a proposal to host Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf:

After due consideration, the Directors decided not to permit the Cypress Point course to be played for an advertising campaign, confirming its position against exploiting any of the facilities or scenery of Cypress Point Club for advertising purposes.

This attitude was adopted and has been perpetuated by subsequent Boards, despite examples to the contrary from the 1940s and 1950s, or even earlier (left).

There are countless stories of distinguished members and guests who have played golf at Cypress Point or visited the club. A number of these episodes are profiled in the “Stories” chapters of the book (p. 238).

Despite the changing demographics and size of the membership, or views on usage and access to the club, a perception persists a century removed from the club’s founding that things generally are as they were intended from the beginning: a full roster of members who share in the enjoyment of a refined experience on the golf course and in the clubhouse, all supported by a sound financial position. Of course, that is not true, for the health of the club in recent times belies the existential challenges faced in its early years.

Above and right: Despite the club’s traditionally private nature, in the mid-twentieth century various advertisements for American Airlines and Southern Pacific railways featured scenes of Cypress Point. The club has generally, but not always, preferred privacy over commercial exposure.

Barbara &

Mrs. & Mr. Bill Hutton, Frances de Bretteville, Bobby & Doris Magowan, Charles de Bretteville; Wheeler Farish, Charles de Bretteville, Gen. Robert McClure, Stuart Heatley; Horace Guittard; Jack Westland & Elaine Murray (left); Roger Lapham & Frances de Bretteville; Ferdinand Stent & Totten Heffelfinger (center)

cypress point has been a social club that exists as the focal point in its members’ lives as much as it has been a celebrated golf course. In the post-war years of the 1950s, members developed the tradition of creating shared menus for dinner parties and staging elaborate gatherings at holidays (above). The club’s picnic area (opposite), used during tournaments since at least the 1960s, has served as an informal contrast to the refined clubhouse atmosphere. Shared meals and buffets in traditional attire are a hallmark of the Cypress Point dining experience. A la carte menus are offered during breakfast and lunch service in the Morse Room for casual attire.

Roger D. Lapham

ROGER D. LAPHAM proudly claimed possession of membership certificate No. 3 at the Cypress Point Club.

“As between the Garden of Eden and the golf courses of the Monterey Peninsula,” wrote his grandson Lewis H. Lapham, “my father and grandfather didn’t make any meaningful distinctions.”

Beginning in 1925, as chairman of the committees that developed the club and course, Lapham was central to supporting Marion Hollins’s organizational efforts. He became the club’s second president in 1928, the year the course opened for play, and held that position for portions of sixteen years, longer than any president who followed.

Lapham led Cypress Point from its bright launch in the late 1920s through the economic turmoil of the Depression in the 1930s, and buoyed up the membership during the darkest days of World War II. The only thing that prevented him from continuing his official duties at Cypress Point was being elected mayor of San Francisco in 1943.

Labeled “San Francisco’s Brahmin of golf” by Game & Gossip in September 1926, Lapham served as vice president of the United States Golf Association and was responsible for bringing the 1929 U.S. Amateur to Pebble Beach, the first time any USGA championship traveled to the West Coast. He joined the USGA Executive Committee

3, 1928

in 1921 as member of the San Francisco Golf Club, representing the California Golf Association of which he was also president several times.

Prior to hosting the 1929 U.S. Amateur at Pebble Beach Golf Links, Lapham led a three-man committee that included golf architects Chandler Egan and Robert Hunter (p. 199) who made significant changes to the course. Under the codirection of Egan and Hunter, they added dramatic sand dunes and other distinctive features that helped establish the Monterey Peninsula as a new mecca for American golf.

Born in Manhattan on December 6, 1883, Roger Dearborn Lapham came from a family whose sons went to sea to seek their fortune. His uncle, George Dearborn,

Opposite: Roger D. Lapham, portrayed in a sketch by A. D. Mills that appeared in Game & Gossip magazine, August 1928

founded the American-Hawaiian Steamship Company and gave a teenage Roger a ride out to Hawaii on one of the line’s new freighters. Captivated by the possibility of the West, after graduating from Harvard, Roger began serving various roles in the American-Hawaiian, becoming its president in 1925.

During World War I, Lapham volunteered as an infantry captain in France, noted by the Los Angeles Times as being “one of the first local golfers to join the colors.” In 1918 he suffered a mustard gas attack that caused temporary blindness. During the attack, he left the relative security of his trench to pick up a fallen infantryman under his command, carrying him back to safety under enemy fire. His service to his country didn’t end there.

Lewis Lapham later wrote of his grandfather’s political achievements, “Then in his early ’60s, his round, red face and shock of snow white hair known to every bartender in Chinatown, became mayor of San Francisco.”

socks, plum-colored silk brocade pants and a tent-like Chinese silk wrapper.”

Those who did know him, like his grandson Lewis, said that, “During even the worst years of the Great Depression no two weeks went by without his hopeful presence on the first tee at Cypress Point, a vivid and exuberant figure, usually dressed in at least four colors of the rainbow… willing to play for whatever sum anybody cared to name.” The Laphams owned a house on the ridge overlooking the practice area and first green.

According to a July 15, 1946 cover story in Time magazine, Lapham was described even by those who didn’t know him as a “zestful extrovert,” with the author of the profile observing, “On Sundays in his big brick house on fashionable Pacific Heights, Lapham pads around in striped golf

Speaking of bets, shortly after Marion Hollins secured the option on the Cypress Point property in February 1925, one of her first acts was writing a letter on March 9 to Lapham, as chairman of the club’s Organizing Committee. She closed her note with a mysterious postscript:

P.S. Will see Van at dinner. I am staying there. I imagine his $500 bet has looked pretty bad to him this past week.

With Marion a frequent guest of William and Edith Van Antwerp during her visits to Pebble Beach in the early 1920s, perhaps “Van” didn’t believe Marion’s initial enthusiasm for the project would deliver the promise of organizing Cypress Point Club and he decided to make a friendly wager? The answer may be lost to history but it surely was not lost on Roger

Lapham as, according to his grandson, “gambling was his passion, on a golf course and at the bridge table, where he deemed it unsporting to look at his cards before announcing a bid.”

The first formal, written account of the early history of the Cypress Point Club dates to a memorandum from March 25, 1925, which read, “Early this month Miss Marion Hollins met Mr. W. C. Van Antwerp and Mr. R. D. Lapham to discuss the organization of a golf club at Cypress Point.”

From Cypress Point’s beginnings Roger Lapham was responsible for identifying a significant portion of early members.

“I am not certain whether a scheme such as this would go through or not,” Lapham wrote in a March 16, 1925, letter to John S. Cravens of Pasadena, “but if it was put over with the idea that it was to be the best equipped and best run golf club on the Coast, it might succeed, particularly if we can get most of the men who have cottages at Pebble Beach behind it.”

prospective names became eventual members of the club’s first Executive Committee and Lapham’s list identified twenty-one of the first hundred or so original members as of 1928.

Furthering the Lapham connection with Cypress Point, during construction of the course, in which Roger was the club’s “Director in Charge of Construction,” Lapham’s eighteen-yearold son Lewis assisted Dr. Alister MacKenzie in determining carry distances of the tees, a story recounted in detail in his afterword to a facsimile publication of Golf Architecture in 1987 (p. 174).

On March 18, Roger wrote with typical enthusiasm and flair to Marion, enclosing a list of names and addresses of sixty-seven members of the San Francisco Golf & Country Club as it was known at the time, fifteen members of the Burlingame County Club, and three members of the Pacific-Union Club. Five of the

When, in December 1943, Roger resigned as president of the club on account of having been elected the thirty-second mayor of San Francisco, the Board resolved unanimously:

That Roger D. Lapham’s long years of service as President of Cypress Point Club have proved of great benefit to the Club and a joy to its entire membership and that the Board of Directors in accepting his resignation as President of the Club do so with very genuine regret and a sincere feeling of deep indebtedness to him.

After his death in 1966, at the age of eighty-two, Roger’s ashes were buried in a grove of trees to the right side of the first fairway at Cypress Point, a pitch shot away from the green, entrusted to the care of a silver cocktail shaker rather than an urn.

CENTRAL TO THE MYSTIQUE of the Cypress Point Club is the perception, as we have recounted, that all is as it was intended to be from the beginning. That perception was most certainly not the reality throughout the club’s early years.

Owing to the intensifying effects of the Great Depression begun in October 1929, by August 1933 President Roger Lapham and Director William Orrick were appointed as a committee of two to address a worrying increase in resignations. To stem the panic, the Board decided it would not accept any further resignations and let open resignations “lie on the table,” an extraordinary action taken less than five years after the course opened.

For context, the club lost 10 percent of its initial membership roster over just a few months in the course of 1933. At that August’s Board meeting, the resignation of five members was reported, among them Hollywood star Douglas Fairbanks. By the next Board meeting, five more members would submit resignations, including the founding President William C. Van Antwerp. Even early member Robert Hunter, the “millionaire socialist” and codesigner with Dr. Alister MacKenzie of the Cypress Point course, resigned his membership by January 1935. (See profile p. 199–203)

Beyond the ongoing threat of member resignations in the early years of Cypress Point, on November 28, 1933, “The Secretary called attention to the large number of members who were in arrears to the Club, both on account of dues and charges.” One profligate member who remains unnamed — a playboy infamous nationwide for marrying rich widows — racked up unpaid debts on his account of $1,188. His membership was canceled.

After beginning with 103 members in 1928, the 1933 roster was down to seventy-seven paying members, with nine listed as “Doubtful” and seventeen “non-golfing” members, plus those in arrears.

Opposite: Only twelve of the original one hundred certificate holders still belonged to Cypress Point as of September 1, 1944.

Within its first decade of operation, half of the early members of the club resigned or died. Soon the club was nearing the dangerous threshhold of having fewer than fifty active members, a number that threatened to nullify the option and purchase agreement with the Del Monte Properties Company. Losses had to be covered, and new members were so slow to join that an auxiliary junior category was created, which lasted up until World War II when it was abandoned.

This tumultuous stretch came to an inflection point in December 1939 when Sam Morse wrote to Roger Lapham regarding the operating losses Del Monte had been subsidizing. “The Company is willing to take another whack at the proposition as it now stands,” said Morse. “But I want to be very frank in stating at this time that, if the efforts are not successful and if the losses continue in 1940, one year from now we will have to make a radical change in the setup along one of the lines I discussed at the Directors’ Meeting.”

Throughout 1940, the club’s operating deficits persisted, even increasing into 1941, and the prospect of repaying any of its debt was decidedly dim. Yet, despite his ultimatum, Morse remained patient through the year, likely because he had no better option.

America’s entry into World War II in December 1941 further exacerbated the club’s economic peril. By early 1942, war-time resignations officially reduced the active list to less than the fifty members required, which gave the Company the right to terminate the agreement with the club and reclaim the course. While losing Cypress Point as the crown jewel of Morse’s vision for Del Monte would have been worse than any temporary inconvenience to the Company, it was also clear that Morse was not willing to continue funding the club’s losses indefinitely. An extraordinary measure had to be taken to preserve Cypress Point Club.

At the April 7, 1942, Board meeting, Morse, as vice president, read a resolution that passed unanimously: “That the Club House and golf links be closed as of October first of this year and that it remain closed until such time as, in the opinion of the Directors, it is feasible to reopen.” The club executed an agreement with Del Monte for member use of the Pebble Beach golf course while

The Del Monte Properties Company

THE CYPRESS POINT CLUB and Del Monte Properties Company always had their fates intermingled. At least that’s how Sam Morse envisioned it.

Initially, Morse sought to develop a subdivision of homes on the bluff above the sixth, seventh, and eighth holes. Though that never came to pass, lots were surveyed and some were sold. In addition to offering roughly 150 acres of land for the course at a deeply discounted price, the company also financed the sale of the land in 1927 and advanced full construction costs for the clubhouse, which opened in 1930. The founding members paid only for construction of the golf course and an initial down payment on the parcels. The company eventually waived interest on the loans and underwrote the club’s operating losses during the Depression, taking over management of the club during the World War II closure of the course and clubhouse.

continually adjusted over time. The company also arranged tournaments, such as The Swallows, to be played.

Eventually, as the membership at Cypress Point grew to reach its full allotment of 250, unaccompanied play from The Lodge diminished as members gained control of club finances and gradually reduced access to the course.

After Sam Morse’s death in 1969 and the sale of Del Monte Properties Company to a series of third-party owners in the 1970s and 1980s, relations with the new Pebble Beach Company in its various forms became understandably less close than they were when Morse served as the Cypress Point Club’s vice president for twenty-eight years.

To ensure oversight of its investment, the company provided full bookkeeping on all transactions of the Cypress Point Club from its formation period in 1925 through the satisfaction of its indebtedness in 1966. Through the years, the company arranged for access to Cypress Point’s golf course for residents of The Lodge and other unaccompanied guests, with such polices being

In 1999, Cypress Point member Peter Ueberroth led a group of partners that included Clint Eastwood, Dick Ferris, Arnold Palmer, and Bill Perocchi to purchase the Pebble Beach Company, returning it to American ownership. This group, the Lone Cypress Partners, began a restoration of the original relationship with Cypress Point Club as envisioned by Sam Morse. Given the overlap of their common interests, the club and Pebble Beach have supported one another for the last quarter of a century as the next generation of leaders, Cypress Point member Heidi Ueberroth and Brian Ferris, now carry forward those same principles of stewardship.

believe that the Club ... is worth while preserving.”

Cypress Point was closed. Dues were reduced to ten dollars a month, and all revenue accruing to the club was paid as compensation for use of the Pebble Beach golf course and care of club properties.

Not until the restrictions imposed during the 2020 pandemic would the clubhouse be closed again to members for an uncertain period. Morse assured the club that every effort would be made to employ Cypress Point staff and to make members feel The Lodge was, in fact, their clubhouse during the ongoing emergency. A year later, on October 27, 1943, President Roger Lapham circulated a letter to the fewer than fifty active members describing just how imperiled the future of Cypress Point Club had become (opposite). These were dark days indeed for Cypress Point, as the members could not use the golf course or clubhouse and were unclear when they would be able to do so again. Lapham’s phrases, “We believe that the Club is worth while preserving,” and that “none of us, I feel sure, would wish to see it pass,” demonstrate just how close things came to not continuing.

Unexpectedly, however, by May 1944, revenues increased such that committees began to be reorganized and the Board could notify members that the “facilities of the Club in all of its departments are now available to members with only such changes from prewar standards as are made necessary by the war effort.” The golf course was deemed to be in excellent condition, and Henry Puget resumed his position as club professional, having been furloughed as a machinist at a defense factory in Oakland while the club was closed.

While these developments suggested that some level of normalcy and optimism had returned, the true extent of the club’s difficulties and its reliance on the Del Monte Properties Company was not likely appreciated widely, as Morse speculated in a personal remembrance some fifteen years later.

This is entirely a personal memorandum and will probably never see the light of day except in this office, but I have enough pride in the matter to want to make a record of how the thing was done. During the Depression the club got into a lot of trouble financially. Membership went down at one time to less than 50. In order to save the club the Del Monte Properties Company had to waive all the charges on the roads, waived completely the interest charges for the purchase of the property and the money we loaned

for the construction of the club house. And the Company had to underwrite all losses in operation. I doubt if there are any members of the club alive who know that this meant a loss to the Company of not far from $300,000. The club, however, survived and has been tremendously important to the final development of this region. In years to come, these figures could be of interest.

S. F. B. MORSE, PERSONAL MEMORANDUM, 1959

The actions described in Morse’s memorandum, however, do not reveal the full extent to which he supported the club. As early as 1933, a land swap of roughly ten acres for $9,000 of debt reduction was proposed by Sam Morse and Francis McComas, which lowered the original propertyrelated indebtedness of $125,000 ($150,000 purchase price, less $25,000 cash from the members) to $116,000. While this swap had only reduced the debt level slightly, it is important to note that the maneuver established a precedent for the future.

In 1944, the Cypress Point directors, tapping into this model, proposed selling back an additional twenty-seven acres to Del Monte and canceling the remaining property debt of $116,000. The completion of this more substantial land swap left only the $67,200 owed on the clubhouse. The original interest charges of 6 percent, suspended in 1933, were restarted at a reduced interest rate of 3 percent.

These transactions were not, however, the last assistance that the club would receive. As the club emerged from the immediate post-war years, it sought to reverse some of the earlier land swaps — once again, at favorable values to the club. In 1955 the club reacquired lots 2, 3 and 7, totaling approximately 17.4 acres, for $36,895, a price of $2,121 per acre compared to the nearly $4,300 per acre value received in 1944 for the 27 acres in the $116,000 land swap. These three lots encompassed:

Lot 2 — 2.660 acres above the 15th green (Cypress Grove below Golf Shop)

Lot 3 — 2.336 acres between 14 green, Hole No. 1 and 17- Mile Drive (Caddie Parking Area)

Lot 7 — 12.397 acres between Hole Nos. 4, 5, and 11 (Maintenance Area)

Thanks to the generosity of the swap arrangement and the reduction in interest rate, the club was finally able to begin paying down the last piece of the Del Monte debt, though full

repayment would take a decade. As of the June 1957 Annual Meeting, Sam Morse reported that the club was at last in a sound financial position and had eliminated a final portion of its debt entirely. In June 1958, the President’s Report noted that the club had bought back from the Del Monte Properties Co. an additional 2.336 acres, which “practically completed the re-purchase of all the land sold in former years.”

Finally, the Treasurer’s Report from March 1966 noted, “Upon request from Del Monte Properties Co., payment was made to them on March 18th of $5,000, completing the Club’s purchase of its property.” Later that year, the President’s Letter observed that the club had been required to absorb increases in various administrative costs due to the company no longer providing accounting support and financial oversight of the club. With the debts fully satisfied, gone was some of the administrative support that had been provided — or more likely had been insisted upon — from 1927 to 1966 as a way for Sam Morse to keep an eye on club finances while the loan to his company was outstanding.

Confirming that title to the property had been received at last, nearly forty years after it was first agreed to, Charles de Bretteville wrote in his 1966 President’s Report:

Another matter of interest that has been consummated by the Board of Directors is the final payment to the Del Monte Properties Co. for clear title to the Club’s 152.855 acres and improvements… This completed the contract of sale purchase dated November 10, 1927.

the clubhouse

simplicity & elegance

FOR MANY PEOPLE — members, guests, and enthusiasts of California architecture alike — George Washington Smith’s modest clubhouse design at Cypress Point is often celebrated more for what it is not than the spectacular setting upon which it sits. Adjectives like understated, elegant, simple, restrained, and refined are far more likely to be applied to Smith’s tribute to the old Monterey colonial style than words like grand, ostentatious, dominant, or extravagant. That is not, however, how the clubhouse was once intended to be, at least before the reality of construction set in.

The dramatic position the building enjoys overlooking Cypress Point itself and the vast Pacific Ocean beyond is practically an invitation for architectural overstatement, if not grandiosity. After Marion Hollins secured the funding needed to incorporate the club in 1927, Santa Barbarabased architect George Washington Smith (p. 108–111) was engaged as the architect of record. By the spring of 1928, he had submitted a variety of design options for the new clubhouse.

Above and opposite: The clubhouse opened September 20, 1930

Following pages: The clubhouse

According to photographs and descriptions in the club’s original prospectus, the site considered for the clubhouse was to be “on a raise that overlooks the forest on one side, Fan Shell Beach and Cypress Point on the other.”

“It is proposed that a very attractive club house be constructed, which will have many comfortable bedrooms, dining room, sitting rooms, etc.,” the prospectus suggested to potential members — with “many” being the operative word. “While the principal object of the club is the development of a golf links, the club will have an attractive home, which will offer all the accommodations and attractions of a country club. There will also be facilities for tennis, bathing, and other outdoor sports.”

Though such country club amenities never came to be, either in concept or reality, the anticipated cost to build these ambitious facilities, in 1927 terms, was to be equal to the cost of the golf course with both given a starting budget of $150,000. For comparison, nearly every home available through the Sears catalog at the time cost less than $3,000 to purchase.

Prior to the final design being presented by George Washington Smith in September 1929, at least three comprehensively different layouts were proposed at various points, each far more grand in scope than the ultimate, understated product.

The first “preliminary” plans provided by Smith envisioned a sprawling compound of four interconnected units set on the edge of the slope, comprising some 31,100 square feet, roughly three times larger than the final design’s 11,300 square feet. The footprint of the four proposed units spanned greater than the length of a football field, some 376 feet of ocean-facing frontage, significantly more than the modest 120 feet the final sections of the main building came to occupy when the clubhouse opened in 1930.

In addition to a comfortable library, living and dining rooms, which were present in every iteration, a total of nineteen guest bedrooms and suites were initially proposed, along with an eight-bedroom dormitory on the second floor, all of which was to be supported by ten permanent staff bedrooms. This elaborate series of structures with radiating wings was connected by Smith’s

George Washington Smith

like other characters in the story of Cypress Point, George Washington Smith was an American architect from the East who found his calling in the style of the West.

Born on Washington’s birthday in the year of the American centennial — February 22, 1876 — Smith only practiced architecture for the final twelve years of his life, a period from 1918 to 1930 when Sam Morse was assembling all the major components of his vision for Del Monte and Pebble Beach.

Raised in Philadelphia, Smith began his education as an architecture student at Harvard, but never completed his studies. He spent his early working years as a bond salesman, amassing enough of a fortune to abandon that career to become an artist, soon traveling with his wife throughout Mediterranean Europe, and settling in Paris in the pre-World War I years. Smith’s exposure to the Spanish architecture of Castile, in particular, remained with him as he traveled to California in 1915 for the Pan-Pacific Exhibitions. He subsequently established a base as an artist in Santa Barbara in 1917 to avoid returning to the ongoing conflict in Europe.

Revival studio and workshop for himself. Those buildings, even more so than his own art, were so well received by local artist friends that he was commissioned to build

Spanish Colonial Revival buildings for them and others in their social group. Thus, in 1919, he was inspired to return full circle to his early architectural training by launching a small firm that would occupy his working life until his untimely death in 1930 at the age of fifty-four. Initially working with just one associate, Lutah Maria Riggs, Smith’s office designed some 116 projects in the next dozen years, of which eighty-six were constructed — prolific output for a modest outfit. At the outset of Smith’s practice, Spanish architecture was little appreciated in California, having been associated primarily with the historical Missions. A predominating style of the period had been the Victorian ornament of painted-lady row houses evident in San Francisco and Pacific Grove.

At the beginning of his new artistic career in coastal California, Smith designed a modest Spanish Colonial

In the early 1920s, an emerging new era of post-World War I glamour took hold. An affinity for Spanish ColonialRevival architecture developed in fashionable enclaves like Santa Barbara and Montecito and further up the coast, where Sam Morse was intent on attracting wealthy

denizens of Hollywood to build grand houses in Pebble Beach. Smith was the architect of choice for a number of leading families including original Cypress Point members like Helene Irwin Crocker who secured Membership Certificate No. 1 (p. 77).

A 1922 profile of Smith’s work suggested, “In architecture (as in conduct), genuine consideration for others is conditioned on scrupulous self-respect.” In 1930, Smith’s style was described as having a “distinguished simplicity.”

By matching California’s temperate coastal climate with elegant, enclosed patios and cool, covered courtyards, he identified a perfect marriage of old and new in a land where having a George Washington Smith house soon became “as distinctive in its way as a Christopher Wren church.”

Smith’s preferred style promoted opentimbered ceilings and wraparound balconies or loggias overlooking life, features that supported roofs of both clay tiles and cedar shakes.

He himself once stated his hobby was, “Eliminating all useless ornament from a design,” which describes the understated forms and high standards of craftsmanship present in the Cypress

Point clubhouse — Smith’s lasting interpretation of an old Monterey dwelling.

George Washington Smith’s greatest contribution to the California aesthetic of Spanish Colonial Revival is an architectural style that seems to have been tailor-made for such a Mediterranean climate, but until he invented it, nobody thought to bring it all together.

trademark terraces, open-air loggias, and tumbling staircases that led down to a separate lodging structure perched above the cliffs overlooking the 16th tee and consisting of nine bedrooms and a sitting room with its own outdoor patio.

Perhaps the most notable feature of Smith’s “preliminary” plans, beyond their ambitious scope, was the positioning of the 18th green directly under the clubhouse itself. This appears to be at a variance from the original Raynor and MacKenzie routings from 1925 and 1926, both of which had the green set lower and more to the golfer’s right of the present green. Both golf architects also anticipated an island 18th tee on a rock outcropping reached by a suspension bridge (p. 231), which was never built. When the 18th green was finally constructed in late 1927, it was done so in its current location closer to the top of the hill and to the south of the clubhouse, rather than facing to the west.

Using Smith’s own price-per-foot estimates from another 1929 letter to Francis McComas in the archives — McComas being the club’s director who oversaw the building and furnishing of the clubhouse — construction costs alone to build the ambitious four-unit design could have been as much as $165,000, well in excess of the total $150,000 clubhouse budget before any thought of furnishing such a vast structure was considered. After that plan was abandoned, several new, still-extravagant-but-slightly-more-restrained options emerged.

Starting in April 1928, Smith presented the first of three new iterations of the clubhouse plan. Rather than radiating out in wings spread along the hillside, the new designs at first centered on a series of internal garden courtyards in the Spanish style favored by Smith. Instead of some thirty-seven beds for guests and staff, there were six guest bedrooms and four rooms for servants, plus a steward’s apartment. That design quickly evolved and grew into a larger, second iteration that included even more enclosed courtyards to connect to a “caddy house” near the first tee. Neither design progressed any further.

By September 1928, with the golf course open for play and the location of the 18th green firmly established, a new plan emerged. It was a kind of halfway point between the original

“The

club house site is on a raise that overlooks the forest on one side, Fan Shell Beach and Cypress Point on the other.”

— CLUB PROSPECTUS, 1926

The clubhouse, 1942

Clubhouse details

preliminary design and the final product. The clubhouse proper became a more restrained 12,800 square feet, but several new elements were introduced: a pair of standalone cottages, two and four bedrooms each, set on the bluffs overlooking the 16th tee and in the grove of cypress trees on the point between 15 green and 16 tee; also featured in this new plan was a standalone “Caddy House” near the first tee (p 123).

The “Caddy House” was the first structure to be built at Cypress Point, as it served the immediate needs of the golf course, which had opened in August. This was confirmed by Sam Morse in his memoirs from 1959, writing, “I do not recall the exact time that the course was first played. We built the caddy house and started the first year or two without any club house at all.”

Correspondence between the architect and construction foreman, obtained from the G. W. Smith archive at UC Santa Barbara, indicates that by late October 1928 the Caddy House was nearly completed. Still, construction on the clubhouse itself would not begin for another year.

On August 10, 1929, just a few weeks before Pebble Beach was due to host the U.S. Amateur, Smith wrote to McComas saying, “I am sending you blue prints of the first and second floor plans of the new scheme at Cypress Point Club. You will note this is very much cut down.”

This was to be the fourth and final major iteration of Smith’s design.

There was still an ongoing question as to how much the building would cost, with McComas responding to Smith in late December (p. 109) stating that $50,000 was to be the price of the building, not closer to $60,000 as Smith suggested. McComas confirmed that the total budget for the furnished clubhouse had been adjusted to $75,000 and concluded his post-Christmas letter by writing to Smith, on a personal note, “I am sorry you are still out… I hope you could eat your share of turkey even on your back.”

Smith never lived to see the completed clubhouse. He died after a lengthy illness on March 16, 1930, at age fifty-four, leaving the clubhouse to be completed by his junior associate from Santa Barbara, William H. Horning.

Francis McComas

“If California had more painters like Mr. McComas we would not only have art… we would also have an art — an art at once Californian and universal.”

— PORTER GARNETT, ART IN CALIFORNIA,

1916

FRANCIS MCCOMAS was a plein air artist known for his modernist watercolors and oils of the Monterey Peninsula in the early twentieth century. He was also an early member of the Cypress Point Club who, from 1929–1930, helped oversee the development of the clubhouse and served as the secretary of the club during the 1930s.

McComas (1874–1938), was born in Tasmania and arrived in San Francisco in 1898. He soon joined a colony of artists in Monterey who were entranced by the mystical beauty of the Monterey cypress trees native only to Cypress Point and Point Lobos.

Two of his many paintings are reproduced in the club’s Board Room, represent ing colorful expressions of the artistic vision he discovered in the surrounding area.

Cypress, Monterey is from the collection of the Monterey Museum of Art, and his original mural of Point Lobos (opposite, above) is in the lobby of the former Hotel Del Monte, now the Naval Postgraduate School. There is also an original McComas drawing of a cypress tree in the club’s Dining Room.

Over the years, it was generally known by longtime employees and club members that McComas’s ashes had been scattered near a granite marker on a headland opposite Cypress Point. In 2019, Robert Pierce, curator of a McComas exhibition at the Monterey Museum of Art, was seeking to discover the rumored marker. Upon touring the likely site tucked away in a grove of cypress between the 15th green and 16th tee, Pierce was asked by then-club President Dick Barrett what they were looking for. “A big granite rock,” replied Pierce, adding, “If only there was a sign or something to indicate that this was the spot.” Barrett was standing over the very rock, looking down at it, as the ‘etching’ on the rock became clear to him. He said to Pierce, “A sign, like maybe Francis McComas’s name etched in the rock?”

McComas’s burial spot was acknowledged obliquely in the club’s 1939 minutes but had been forgotten in the recent decades that followed. Forgotten, that is, until Dick Barrett and Robert Pierce discovered it again, all in pursuit of an upcoming exhibition.

It was McComas who originally described Point Lobos as “the greatest meeting of land and water in the world.” Though that sentiment has been attributed to other authors and other locales around the Monterey Peninsula, it is to Francis McComas alone that the first quote belongs.

At the January 1939 meeting of the club’s Board of Directors, a unanimous resolution was approved upon the news of McComas’s recent passing:

Resolved, that we the members of the Board of Directors of the CYPRESS POINT CLUB record, with great sorrow the death of our friend FRANCIS McCOMAS.

We deeply appreciated his untiring devotion to the Club and remember well how he watched its development as if it were a child of his own, how he spared neither time nor energy to give us a perfect clubhouse and keep it perfect.

While we recognize his great ability as an artist, he will be better remembered by those who knew him, for his human qualities, his keen sense of humor, and above all, his interest in life. We are glad that his ashes rest among the trees and near the ocean he loved so well.

“Mr. McComas saw Cypress Point as a very small and elegant club, with perfect food and service, in which all members could be great and good friends — hence no more than a hundred members,” reported a 1940 story in Fortune magazine on Sam Morse’s development of Pebble Beach.

“The place,” the story said, “was McComas’s hobby,”

Above: Point Lobos, by Francis McComas, 1926 Francis McComas at his easel, 1926

Letter to members on October 1, 1930, announcing the opening of the clubhouse (See Rule 7 on p. 78)

“The Club House opened up last night on time,” McComas wrote to Horning on September 20 of that year. “I see it as a very fine result. Everybody seemed very happy — I know I was. Therefore I am not feeling so gay this morning.”

To give a sense of how the new clubhouse at Cypress Point was first received, a 1931 clipping from the archives of the Monterey Public Library described the building thusly: “The responsibility of putting the late George Washington Smith’s ideas into concrete form was accepted as a sacred trust by William Horning, who carried out the design of his former associate, with the result that the completed clubhouse forms one of the most perfect examples of its type.”

In the years since, the building has been studied by architectural critics and profiled in books about both George Washington Smith and the interior designer, Frances Elkins, for it was not just the envelope of the building that mattered.

Elkins, a fixture in the Pebble Beach social scene, had been responsible for designing the interiors for numerous friends who commissioned grand Pebble Beach homes. Her popular interior design practice in Monterey, called The Casa Blanca, was housed in the former home of author Robert Louis Stevenson. For the Cypress Point clubhouse, Elkins chose a French Provincial style, favoring neutral shades and comfortable furniture in the public spaces, reserving more color for the private bedrooms.

The aforementioned 1931 architectural review offered a comprehensive take on Elkins’s work:

The supreme triumph of the interior decorator’s art, however, is achieved in the living room.

The unrestrained outburst of pleasure and admiration on the part of members and guests who had the privilege of attending the opening event testified to this fact. Recessed windows overlooking the ocean on one side and green fairways on the other are framed in yellow hangings that enhance the beauty of both to the observer within, while luxuriously upholstered chairs are a constant invitation to remain and enjoy the combined offerings of nature and man. A huge provincial table, graceful despite its vast proportions, occupies the center of the room.

Following pages: The Living Room

Frances Elkins

GEORGE WASHINGTON SMITH may have been the architect of Cypress Point’s clubhouse, but the timeless style of the club’s interiors can be attributed to the original interior designer, Frances Elkins.

Born Francis Adler in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1888, she married Felton Elkins and moved to Monterey in 1918, purchasing and renovating a dilapidated 1830s adobe called Casa Amesti as a showpiece for her new interior design business. Elkins lived in the house for thirty-five years, until her death in 1953, and in the process became one of most influential interior designers on the West Coast.

“A stunning achievement in interior decoration,” noted Monterey County Historical Society, “Casa Amesti is one of the best examples of Monterey Colonial architecture.” The celebrated building eventually became the home of the Old Capitol Club.

Cypress Point, “For the club’s living room, she used quiet tones of beige, yellow and melon, and furniture such as overstuffed sofas and French provincial pieces, including a large antique table, which seventy years later is still the primary focus of the room.”

In one particular note from the club to Elkins on September 2, 1930, Assistant Secretary H. F. Howland, explained how members themselves supported the club’s early development.

Elkins’s business, The Casa Blanca, operated out of the Robert Louis Stevenson House on Houston Street.

Archives from the Elkins Collection are housed at Monterey Peninsula College and a selection of relevant records are currently displayed in a leather binder for perusal in the club’s living room, which remains much as it was when Elkins completed her design in 1930. In 1999, Architectural Digest named Elkins a “Design Legend” and wrote of her work at

“You probably know,” Howland wrote, “that some members have promised to pay for the furnishing of certain rooms, and I expect to bill them in due course; therefore it will help a lot if items like this one are divided between the rooms.”

A letter from November 21 of that same year (p. 141) shows that furnishings for Rooms 1–4, along with the Ladies Room and Lobby were underwritten by six female members. Elkins herself became a member of the club, which she maintained until her passing at the age of sixty-four.

Frances and her frequent design collaborator, brother David Adler, contributed significantly to what would become known as the cosmopolitan American style, marked by an eclectic mix of modern and traditional that still prevails as a hallmark of sophisticated decor.

Opposite: The Dining Room, as pictured in Fortune, January 1940, with Frances Elkins in the center

The main dining room just beyond the private dining room, elevated a few steps from the rest of the building, is in a color scheme of green and white, varied only by the rich deep brown tint of the mammoth sideboard, also old French provincial, which fills most of one side of the room.

Four bedrooms, with dressing rooms and baths, occupy the entire second floor, reached by an outdoor stairway and opening upon both balconies. Each suite is distinguished by its own color motif, one having a dominant blue note, another yellow and green, a third red and ecru, and the fourth a rich plum color. Pleasing effects have been attained by variations of tones and use of contrasting colors. In the bedrooms, as elsewhere throughout the house, the effect is that of a discriminating private residence, rather than usual ‘clubhouse’ or hotel atmosphere.

While today the four clubhouse bedrooms are known only by their number, originally each of the rooms was associated with the name of one of the founding members, each of whom, according to archival records is believed to have sponsored the costs of furnishing each room.

Further underscoring the longstanding role female members have played at Cypress Point throughout the club’s history, Room 1 was assigned to Mrs. Edith Chesebrough Van Antwerp, wife of Bill, the club’s founding president — who herself was California amateur golf champion numerous times and served on the club’s Organizing Committee with Marion Hollins. Room 2 was sponsored by Mrs. Celia Tobin Clark, heir to the Hibernia Bank fortune — who was listed in the first roster as the proprietary member, rather than her husband Charles. Room 3 was attached to Mrs. Huanna Hoyt Noyes of Napa, wife of lumber merchant Frank G. Noyes, the club’s founding treasurer and a major philanthropist in her own right. Room 4 was attributed to Mrs. Helen Abbot Lapham, wife of Roger, founding director and the longest-serving president of Cypress Point — she was a lively personality and author of the book Roving with Roger, about their time when he was mayor of San Francisco.

In addition to the four bedrooms, Miss Marion Hollins, who by that point had struck oil at Kettleman Hills, was responsible for contributing to the costs of numerous furnishings decorating the original Lobby, to the left as one enters the building today.

Dining Room and

Given the pressures on the club to remain solvent during the 1930s and 1940s, little was done in the way of clubhouse improvements during that time. Not until 1957 did the first notice appear in the Board minutes of a discussion about enlarging the Dining Room due to increases in the membership and the emerging tradition of private parties. The idea was even floated that perhaps the brick terrace behind the Dining Room could be glassed in. A new dining room, now known as the Board Room, was added in 1958, along with a modified brick terrace. The distinctive yellow chinaware that features in the Board Room cabinet and on the tables was commissioned by Col. Allen Griffin in 1976. Eventually, the expanded brick terrace was fully enclosed and converted into the Terrace Dining Room in 1984 with occasional refinements and updates in the years since.

In 2001, a new, casual dining experience was introduced in what became known as the Sam Morse Room. Adjacent to the putting green and parking lot, the Morse Room offered luncheons

to members in casual or golf attire. As this was a departure from the tradition of wearing more formal dress to dine in the clubhouse a reasonable amount of debate ensued before ultimately being endorsed by a large majority of the members.

In 2013, the administrative offices near the 18th green — which were originally used as the Ladies Locker Room — were converted into the MacKenzie Library to provide additional social space and acknowledge the contributions of the course’s architect, Dr. Alister MacKenzie. This undertaking was led during the presidency of Tony Ridder (2010–2014) and every effort was made to incorporate the new library with its beautiful glass breakfront display into the interior design style established by Francis Elkins in 1930 (p. 136-137).

Every few decades or so, the four bedrooms upstairs have been updated in both decor and bathroom facilities so as to remain current with the preferred tastes of the membership, while maintaining the same understated elegance present in the original rooms. The furnishings today certainly appear more comfortable than those present in the earliest photographs.

The most significant updates to the clubhouse since its original construction in 1930 took place from 2018 to 2022. Over the course of these several years, the buildings were structurally reinforced to address deterioration, as nearly every room in the clubhouse and both locker rooms were renovated to prepare the club for its next century of member enjoyment, while retaining the original style.

This included rebuilding and expanding the kitchen and office wings, Terrace Room and Board Room, all of which allowed for the creation of a wholly new Morse Room and Hollins Terrace, overlooking the 16th hole and Cypress Point. Planning and execution of this work was overseen by President Dick Barrett (2018–2022), which provides a historical note of amusing coincidence.

In the 1990s, Cypress Point member Frank Smith proposed the creation of a “Sea Watch Patio” at the club. Combining two point-and-shoot photographs into a single panoramic image, Dr. Smith noted in his hand-typed proposal, “During World War II the promontory just west of our clubhouse (opposite) was judged by the United States Government to be the best place to watch for

any Japanese submarines that might threaten the mid-California coast. A tower was built for that purpose and the concrete foundations are still there.” Smith asked rhetorically, “How could we have overlooked this since then as one of our greatest scenic assets? The area lends itself to becoming a Sea Watch Patio, or by any other name, for lunches, receptions, or barbecues, quite apart from the mainstream of other club activities. It is a hidden asset for meeting the demands of members’ activities in the twenty-first century, to which our Cypress Point Club must be responsive.”

Despite the appeal of Dr. Smith’s suggestion, no known action was taken or considered. As early as 2014, however, members surreptitiously began collecting chairs in that very area to enjoy cigars and libations. Eventually, an ad hoc terrace was constructed under the direction of thenPresident Peter Barker, creating an instantly popular after-golf gathering spot.

During the pandemic of 2020, the need to add open-air options to the club’s facilities became evident. A plan was conceived to restore outdoor dining, eliminated in 1984 with the Terrace Dining Room enclosure, by relocating the Morse Room and constructing an adjoining terrace – unknowingly in the same space as the “Sea Watch Patio.” While recognizing one of the club’s “greatest scenic assets” was perhaps no coincidence, what was coincidental is that Dick Barrett — who in 2003 purchased the home along the 18th fairway built by Frank Smith in 1970 — also developed the new terrace design, thus fulfilling Dr. Smith’s forgotten vision several decades after the fact.

The timing of the Cypress Point Board’s decision to name the terrace in honor of Marion Hollins was also coincidental. The decision came a few months after the announcement in midApril 2020 of her election to the World Golf Hall of Fame. At that precise moment, unbeknownst to the club, the Hollins family decided to replace Marion’s simple headstone with a new memorial. The original marker had been commissioned by Sam Morse for the Cementario El Encinal in Monterey after Marion’s untimely passing in 1944. As Morse’s donated headstone was no longer needed, the family offered it to Cypress Point — the offer coming just one day after the decision to name the terrace. The club enthusiastically accepted the family’s offer and decided to incorporate

the headstone into the foundation walls of the new Hollins Terrace, along with a descriptive plaque, leaving Marion’s marker to overlook her greatest creation: the 16th hole, for which she was given full credit by Dr. Mackenzie (p. 216).

Perhaps the highest compliment that could be given to George Washington Smith’s tribute to the old Monterey colonial design style is the way the building has come to exemplify the values of Cypress Point Club itself: an elegant, understated structure that reinterprets old-world style in a new-world setting. Despite the architect’s original concepts for a sprawling campus of buildings, the restrained nature of the final product remains what contemporary critics first said about the building: It has the quality of being at one with its surroundings.

How different might the culture of Cypress Point Club have become had another more extravagant clubhouse been built?

“Here amid the fantastic age-old trees and against a background of glistening white sand and the deep blue of the Pacific has been recreated a charming bit of old Monterey. White walls reflecting the warm California sunshine and green shutters suggesting cool and restful rooms within repeat the dominant note of the setting and make the new Cypress Point clubhouse one with its surroundings.”

the golf course

discovering the course

“We shall play over inlets of the sea, turn into the pine woods, and then into high dunes and back again to a club looking into the endless expanse of a great ocean.

Five holes skirting the sea or flirting with its waves, five holes in the pine woods and eight greens in the dunes.

Where else shall we find all this?”

DR. ALISTER MacKENZIE, MARCH 1927

CAN A GOLF COURSE be as enjoyable to walk without clubs as it is to walk with them? In the case of Cypress Point, the answer is unequivocally “yes,” as throughout the world of golf it is regarded as one of the most beautiful walks in the game. What ingredients combine to shape the soul of the course? Is the setting so dramatic as to be evocative no matter how the designers approached it? Or, by carefully choreographing how the land is revealed, did they elevate Cypress Point to an altogether higher plane by routing the holes to build in anticipation, offering introductions to scenes of sea, sand, and forest before delivering a climactic experience along the crashing surf of Cypress Point itself?

Opposite: Robert Hunter and Alister MacKenzie at the 15th hole, January 1928

Previous pages: Remnant of The Loop on Cypress Point, 1942

The founders intended to have a clubhouse that reflected the name of the club, situated, according to the original prospectus, “on a raise that overlooks the forest on one side, Fan Shell Beach and Cypress Point on another.” Therefore the course needed to start and finish close to a suitable building site on a bluff that looked, in Dr. Alister MacKenzie’s words, “into the endless expanse of a great ocean.” Given the position of the clubhouse, there are only two ways for a golfer to navigate the ocean frontage of Cypress Point: clockwise to begin the course or counter-clockwise to complete it.

Dating to the 1880s when 17-Mile Drive was established, most historic photographs of Cypress Point were taken from the headland looking out toward the point, for this is the most inherently dramatic view. From the first published reports of Marion Hollins’s design efforts with Seth Raynor in 1925 — and later confirmed when MacKenzie accepted the design commission following Raynor’s unexpected passing in January 1926 — it was decided the course would be played counter-clockwise to finish around Cypress Point.

“From the forest lane the links will lead down to the water’s edge along mountains of that glorious white sand which particularly belongs to that district — as do the cypress trees.”

SCOTT CHISHOLM, LOS ANGELES EVENING EXPRESS, SEPTEMBER 24, 1925

Given the L-shaped plot of land offered by Sam Morse and the Del Monte Properties Company, the only other holes predetermined by the site were an opener leading away from the clubhouse to Fan Shell Beach and another hole connecting the course back to Cypress Point, holes which became Nos. 1 and 14. The majority of the course beyond Fan Shell Beach, which led up the ancient drainage ravine, skirting the dunes and into the forest, was entirely up for debate.

To discover the soul of the course, one begins at the brick terrace behind the first tee, which forms an amphitheater of sorts. Intersecting with the simple golf shop and locker rooms, a putting green, the caddie yard, and the traditional four green canvas director’s chairs situated behind the tee, the terrace exhibits a bustle that the tranquil setting of the clubhouse, by comparison, does not

feature, being well removed from the commotion of golf. From the outset, protection and exposure emerge as alternating themes of the golf course.

At the time the club was formed, the clearing of land from the clubhouse site looking down to Fan Shell Beach was devoid of all but a few individual trees. The vista was broad and open, as it was nothing but one vast, tumbling fairway. There were no clusters of cypress to the right or left, protecting the practice areas or golfers on the 14th fairway. Those came in the 1960s and beyond.

Over time, a few low posts were installed on the edges of 17-Mile Drive to keep cars in their lane and off the course. There was no hedge directly in front of the first tee, required to protect unsuspecting passersby. That came in the mid-1980s.

Though the area around the first tee evolved to become more cocooned than in earlier decades, once the golfer crosses 17-Mile Drive and begins to walk down the par-4 first hole, everything opens up, just as it did from the beginning. The unexpected width of the fairway is a welcome gesture given

the gravity of the moment — for many golfers it may be their only visit. This is where you start to hear the roar of the ocean for the first time, often able to taste its salty spray. Curiously, about a hundred yards short of the first green, the golfer senses he or she might somehow be below the level of the ocean just a few steps away.

As a pacific welcome, the initial impression of the course is peaceful and inviting. From the opening moment, the course introduces each of three ingredients central to Cypress Point: sea, sand, and forest. All are visible on the first hole, and every subsequent hole is defined by some combination of these elements. Though a first-time golfer might be unsure where to go next, all is soon revealed. From the rise of the first green a perspective presents itself, leading up into the forest, towered over by encroaching dunes. The secluded cove at Fan Shell Beach may not first spring to mind when people envision the more famous clifftop holes along Cypress Point, but it embodies the spirit of the club itself. There’s a pleasing, understated rhythm here that the chaotic waves of the point don’t possess.

You feel the ocean on a smaller scale as the gentle, rolling surf rises to meet you. Fan Shell Beach offers a merciful opening reprieve in contrast to Cypress Point’s starker sense of final judgment.

Perched atop Fan Shell Dune, the second tee serves as an exclamation point to the welcome. The golfer gains an uninterrupted vista where the cobalt blue of a deep ocean meets aquamarine breakers below, contrasted with sun-bleached dunes looming above, all framed by the deep green of the valley ahead. It is a hinge moment, leaving behind a final comforting view of the clubhouse before heading off into the unknown forest. Seeing the 13th green set down below the second tee implies an eventual return to this spot, though the inexperienced golfer may not yet know how.

Like any self-assured magician, MacKenzie’s intent was to hide his work in plain sight.

His object in setting the first green and second tee into Fan Shell Dune was to fulfill his overarching desire as a golf architect that, “It would take an artist to be able to tell where nature ended and the artificiality of man began.”

The rugged surrounds help maintain the illusion that the course’s architect merely nestled the greens and tees into the slopes of existing dunes and other features. In actuality, a great deal of shaping work was required to make it all appear so natural.

“At Cypress Point,” MacKenzie wrote in November 1928, just months after the course was opened, “it is difficult to realize that most of the greens and fairways have been artificially contoured.”

Opposite: Fan Shell Dune, where Holes No. 1, 2, 13, and 14 meet

Dr. Alister MacKenzie

“Cypress Point has interested me more than any land I have ever had to deal with. For the sake of my reputation, I should like to make you the best golf links in existence.”

DR. ALISTER MACKENZIE, CYPRESS POINT CLUB PROSPECTUS, 1926

WHEN DR. ALISTER M ac KENZIE first set foot on the land for a proposed golf course at Cypress Point in early February 1926, he had been preparing for the opportunity for more than two decades.

Born in England in 1870 with the given name of Alexander, Alister MacKenzie was a man of contradiction and paradox. “He hailed from Leeds, England, but was a Scotsman through and through,” according to his biographers Haddock, Scott, and Doak. “He always proudly used the title of ‘Doctor,’ but his practice as a physician was small and unfulfilling.” MacKenzie’s interest in the study of camouflage developed during his time as a British Army surgeon in the Boer War at the turn of the century led to him becoming a published expert in the field.

After returning home from war, he abandoned his medical practice to pursue the design of golf courses, adopting the deceptive landscape construction techniques he studied on the battlefield. MacKenzie started his design career with his home club at Alwoodley in 1907 and gained renown by winning an ideal hole design contest in Country Life magazine in 1914, along with the publication of his book Golf Architecture in 1920, one of the earliest specialist volumes

on the subject. By 1926, the fifty-five-year-old MacKenzie had designed several dozen courses in his native England and Scotland — if not the many hundreds that his blustery promotional quotes suggested — but he was yet to construct a golf course in America.

The purpose of his inaugural visit to California in the winter of 1926 was to advise on a variety of courses throughout the state. As fate would have it, Dr. MacKenzie departed England on the SS Homeric on January 13, 1926, bound for New York. From there, he proceeded directly on a cross-country train journey en route to San Francisco, arriving on January 29, 1926 — just six days after Seth Raynor’s death — to meet his eventual U.S. design and business partner, Robert Hunter.

After the initial flush of excitement at Cypress Point, by early 1926 Marion Hollins’s efforts to develop membership interest had not advanced far enough to fund course construction. With Raynor’s unexpected passing, apart from a proposed routing plan, she had no architect to design or build this proclaimed “wonder” course. The commission of a lifetime presented itself to MacKenzie at precisely the moment of his arrival on the West Coast.

While Sam Morse and others gave credit to the well-traveled Marion Hollins for providing the introduction to Dr. MacKenzie, it should be noted that Robert Hunter was already a Pebble Beach resident who was well known in California golf. His own book on golf course architecture, The Links, was published in early 1926. The club’s original prospectus describes the transition matter-of-factly, “The land was first laid out for a golf links by Mr. Seth Raynor, Associate Golf Architect with Mr. Charles B. Macdonald. After Mr. Raynor’s death, Miss Hollins was fortunate in securing the services of Dr. Alister MacKenzie of England to complete the plan of the links.”

No known record exists of the invitation Marion Hollins made to MacKenzie or Hunter in the winter of 1926, but whatever the circumstances resulting in the hiring of MacKenzie, it is the fortuitous timing of his arrival, in combination with everything he professed to believe about the importance of naturalism in golf course design, that makes his engagement feel slightly more providential than coincidental. MacKenzie wrote in his posthumously published book, The Spirit of St. Andrews,

“The chief object of every golf architect or greenkeeper worth his salt is to imitate the beauties of nature so closely as to make his work indistinguishable from Nature herself.” At Cypress Point, Dr. MacKenzie would have an ideal laboratory to test his theory.

As MacKenzie began his work at Cypress Point, he inherited from Raynor a preliminary 18-hole routing plan dating from the prior February (p. 60–61). In the span of just a few days from February 2 to 9 — among visits to other courses in the area — MacKenzie and Hunter made significant modifications to Raynor’s routing. They abandoned a number of Raynor’s early concepts and added a topographical routing that better incorporated Cypress Point’s distinctive dune landscapes into the playing experience (p. 182–183). Their new routing focused on bringing a greater concentration of holes intersecting multiple times with a central land feature — in this case a dune that became home to the seventh, eighth and ninth holes (p. 194–195) — a routing strategy found on subsequent MacKenzie and Hunter courses like The Valley Club. Next came the sophisticated design of the holes themselves, clearly detailed in MacKenzie’s own hand (p. 200–201).

Above: Alister MacKenzie inscribed a copy of his book Golf Architecture as a gift to the Cypress Point Club on the occasion of the opening of the clubhouse, September 20, 1930.

That undated draft plan is believed to have followed the 1926 visit, because it features intricate shapes for greens, bunkers, and fairway contours that were reproduced in an aerial map dated 1926, published in the club’s original prospectus (p. 164). “This aeroplane [sic] view of the proposed course was drawn by Albert Barrows,” a caption in the prospectus explained, “from the sketches and plans prepared by Dr. MacKenzie.” The 1926 date on the Barrows map means this early drawing had to have been completed prior to MacKenzie’s second visit — which was not until February 1927, following his famous tour of Australia — when he and Hunter met again to plan the construction of the course slated to begin later that year.

MacKenzie was photographed by Julian Graham playing the completed course (p. 204–205). Within a few months of that visit, MacKenzie had relocated to California to undertake the building of Pasatiempo, which opened in September 1929. The press reported that Cypress Point Club had made him an honorary member.

By the time of MacKenzie’s third visit to Cypress Point in January 1928, construction had been ongoing since October 1927 under the direction of Robert Hunter and his team (see profile p. 199–203), with all 18 greens shaped and ready for seeding. A year later, during his fourth recorded visit to the Monterey Peninsula,

MacKenzie attended the opening of the Cypress Point clubhouse on September 20, 1930, at which he presented a signed copy of his book Golf Architecture (opposite), inscribed, “With best wishes from the Author, Sept 1930, Cypress Point Club, Pebble Beach, California.” In the years leading up to his death in Santa Cruz on January 6, 1934, as noted in the club’s daily registers, he would visit the club regularly.

Nearly a century after his death, increasing numbers of publications chronicle the life, works, and writings of Dr. Alister MacKenzie. He is justifiably celebrated for his pinnacle achievements at Cypress Point, Royal Melbourne, and Augusta National, among dozens of other leading courses in Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, and

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North and South America. His courses on four continents are memorialized by the Alister MacKenzie Society, even though he never saw a number of them completed. He died in relative financial distress, unable to collect fees on several prominent commissions due to the Great Depression.

In the mid-1970s, Lewis Lapham, son of Cypress Point cofounder Roger Lapham and himself a member, developed an interest in recalling memories from when he was a young man, having met Dr. MacKenzie during construction. He wrote to leading architects and figures throughout golf, like Clifford Roberts and Robert Trent Jones, to begin preparing an early history of Cypress Point. This history was later assembled in part by his brother, Roger Lapham Jr., and published by the club in 1996. Along the way, Lewis assisted Herbert Warren Wind with an article published in The New Yorker around the 1981 Walker Cup. Lapham also supplied his research files to the USGA for a

profile of MacKenzie that was featured on the cover of Golf Journal in April 1977.

At the time, as Lapham discovered, information on MacKenzie was scant. “I have been interested in MacKenzie ever since I met him in 1928 or ’29,” Lapham wrote to a fellow member in April 1980. “I would make you a small bet right now that at least half the members don’t know who laid out the course.”

At that time, course designers from the so-called “Golden Age” of the 1920s had become unfashionable when compared with contemporary architects. Lapham claimed in a 1972 letter to British golf journalist Henry Longhurst that he was only able to name three courses in America associated with MacKenzie. Later, when writing to P. J. Boatwright, former executive director of the USGA, Lapham mentioned Frank Hannigan’s 1974 Golf Journal profile of A. W. Tillinghast — now credited with starting a revival of interest in that period of architecture — hoping Hannigan “might have run across the MacKenzie trail.”

Following the 1981 Walker Cup, appreciation for MacKenzie’s work at Cypress Point and elsewhere revived.

The Classics of Golf, a publishing house created by Robert MacDonald with editor Herb Wind, reprinted a facsimile of MacKenzie’s Golf Architecture in 1986, with a memorable afterword by Lapham. In his recollections, Lapham described how he worked with MacKenzie to determine distances for various tees following construction. “Sometime during the summer of 1929,” Lapham had written to a friend in 1978,

Alister and Hilda MacKenzie first stayed in the Cypress Point clubhouse on October 18, 1930. They occupied Room 3.

“after the greens and fairways were planted, the traps dug, etc., MacKenzie had still not finally decided on his tee sites at these holes. Anyway, he got me out every morning for a week or so in that summer of 1929 to hit trial balloons for him.”

The creation of the Alister MacKenzie Society in 1987 was soon enhanced by the discovery and 1995 publication of MacKenzie’s lost manuscript, The Spirit of St. Andrews. Then came volumes by Geoff Shackelford (2000) titled Alister MacKenzie’s Cypress Point Club and a 2001 biography by Tom Doak, Dr. James Scott, and Raymond Haddock called The Life and Work of Dr. Alister MacKenzie. In 2020, Josh Pettit published an anthology called The MacKenzie Reader, and in 2024 Australian historian Neil Crafter published an illustrated anthology called The Good Doctor’s Prescriptions, with other volumes proposed to follow.

A century after Alister MacKenzie designed Cypress Point with Robert Hunter, surely every member now knows who the architect of their course is, with historic photographs of the architect and his creation present throughout the clubhouse and locker rooms. The publications chronicling MacKenzie’s ideas, writings, and contributions, along with meetings of the MacKenzie Society at Cypress Point in 2007 and 2024, have encouraged an ongoing appreciation for what MacKenzie himself said of Cypress Point upon its completion.

“Not only is it the best golfing terrain I’ve ever had to deal with,” MacKenzie wrote for The Fairway, a Californiabased golf magazine in November 1928, “but it is the only course I’ve ever been associated with which has given

me complete satisfaction in regard to the details of the construction work.”

“For years,” as MacKenzie concluded in that same article, “I have been contending that in our generation no other golf course could possibly compete with the strategic problems, the thrills, excitement, variety, and lasting and increasing interest of the Old Course, but the completion of Cypress Point has made me change my mind.”

At the time of MacKenzie’s passing in January 1934, Herb Graffis wrote in Golfdom magazine, “You’re taking a long chance when you say a man was the ‘greatest’ artist in any line, but there are plenty who would hang ‘greatest’ on Alister Mackenzie [sic] as a golf architect and hold up their end of any ensuing argument.”

Dr. Alister MacKenzie was elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2005. Marion Hollins joined him when she became a member of the Class of 2021, in large part due to her creative partnership with Dr. MacKenzie.

Originally separated, the teeing grounds on Holes No. 2 and 14 were flattened and combined in the mid-1960s to create more tee space and be more easily maintained. The native dune surrounds MacKenzie sought to highlight at this opening junction of four holes were restored under the direction of consulting golf architects Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw in 2024, which re-established MacKenzie’s precedent for blending half-maintained bunkers into the edges of dunes. This theme occurs on nearly half the holes, for wherever a feature touches a dune it is meant to be connected by a naturally contoured bunker.

Each of the course’s interior moods — the pacific welcome of the Fan Shell Dune, going into the woods with the forest holes, the brilliant dunescape — remains to be experienced multiple times from a variety of perspectives, as opposed to the finishing holes along Cypress Point itself that the golfer only experiences once. This is the magic of the routing that Alister MacKenzie and Robert Hunter mastered — and which Seth Raynor did not, at least according to his initial February 1925 routing, where he chose to go merely “along” the mountains of sand rather than incorporating them.

Another element of the playing experience distinctive to MacKenzie was his belief in offering the challenge of a heroic carry from the tee whenever possible. This theme is introduced dramatically when driving across the ravine on the par-5 second hole and is repeated throughout the course.

Survey maps from the 1860s (p. 8) emphasized the primeval feature of the ravine that dominates the central portion of the property.

Raynor’s preliminary routing began with the second hole at the start of the current fairway, foregoing the carry that MacKenzie preferred. The exposed sandy ridge on the second became a feature that influenced lines of sight visible from the tee shots on Holes No. 8 and 12, as well, an example of MacKenzie’s interest in camouflage technique.

The question MacKenzie sought to ask the golfer again and again from the tee at Cypress Point was: Do you wish to pay the price now and gain an easier subsequent shot, or do you want to err on the side of caution and make your next shot that much harder?

This is the essence of strategic architecture. To have success, the golfer must take on the challenge eventually; when he or she chooses to do so is entirely up to the individual, as stated by the eighth of MacKenzie’s famous thirteen principles:

There should be a sufficient number of heroic carries from the tee, but the course should be arranged so that the weaker player with the loss of a stroke or portion of a stroke shall always have an alternative route open to him.

DR. ALISTER MACKENZIE, GOLF ARCHITECTURE, 1920

Of the fourteen holes beyond 17-Mile Drive from the clubhouse, all employ a common feature: playing to a green set near a dune, or from a tee set on a dune. The lone exception is the forested fifth hole at the far end of the property, as every other hole plays to or from the opening Fan Shell Dune or the Central Dune that crests above the ninth green.

When walking along the second or third holes, the golfer is introduced to the full scope of the dunescape looming to the north across the valley. Taking in the breadth of the feature and seeing a ribbon of green fairway on the eighth hole from the third tee may lead the observant player to wonder, “How am I going to make my way up there? Or, “Is that as wild as it looks from down here?”

The par-3 third hole provides the first transition point to a new environment, leading the golfer fully into the woods, though not before being introduced to the Central Dune looming behind the green. The course becomes quieter at this point. From the tee, you often don’t feel the prevailing wind coming up the ravine that pushes tee shots into the bunkers right of the third green, nor do you hear the ocean so clearly as you did on the second tee. Here, the golfer enjoys the last meaningful glimpse of the sea until the seventh tee, emphasizing a shift into a new landscape.

Going into the forest, the attentive golfer begins to pay greater notice to MacKenzie’s intricate bunkering schemes. The Monterey cypress trees surrounding the third green take on shapes not unlike the bunkers — irregularly formed with extending fingers; silhouettes of steely gray-white

seth raynor’s proposed routing 1925

The original routing of Cypress Point proposed by Seth Raynor in 1925 has remained in the club’s archives. History may only presume how different the course’s features might have been under Raynor’s direction, but the two architects adopted differing approaches to routing the inland holes at Cypress Point.

MacKenzie placed four holes (1, 2, 13, 14) on Fan Shell Dune to begin, whereas Raynor’s “first nine holes will lead into the virgin forest.”

MacKenzie used the Central Dune that crests above the ninth green to affect play on nine individual holes. Details of property lines shifted prior to construction, but Raynor elected to route more holes deeper into the forest in a distinctive “W,” largely avoiding the Central Dune, only engaging with it on two holes — Nos. 9 and 10.

Both MacKenzie and Raynor chose to route the ocean holes counterclockwise around Cypress Point to finish, mirroring the natural locations of the 14th through the 18th holes.

Raynor’s 1925 routing (right) is overlaid in yellow upon an aerial photo of MacKenzie’s completed course.

tale of the tape

In March 1927, before construction on Cypress Point began later that October, Alister MacKenzie described the key design features he found in his “golf ideal.”

Seth Raynor’s proposed routing from February 1925 chose to go “along mountains of that glorious white sand” rather than over them.

skirting the sea

MacKenzie: Five Holes

14, 15, 16, 17, 18

Raynor: Five Holes 14, 15, 16, 17, 18

the pine woods

MacKenzie: Five Holes 4, 5, 6, 10, 11

Raynor: Ten Holes

2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

greens in dunes

MacKenzie: Eight Holes 1, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13

Raynor: Three Holes 9, 12, 13

surrounded by a green fringe. Cypress Point’s most artistic bunkers occur in the forest, not in the dunes or by the sea. The possible exception to this comes at two of the most photographed holes, the 13th and the 15th, so frequently documented perhaps because they display both beautiful bunkering and a striking seaside setting.

“We removed about fifteen acres more of trees than were necessary from a golfing point of view,” MacKenzie wrote in 1928, “for the purpose of opening out fresh vistas to the ocean and sand dunes, and increasing the beauties of the place.”

Despite being fully enclosed in the forest, the golfer sees nothing but sand from the fourth and fifth tees — with little fairway to suggest the way. Yet standing on the green of each hole and looking back, as members frequently point out to guests, one can see nothing but fairway — with no bunkers

in the woods, a place where the temperature always seems warmer than on the ocean holes, where wildlife appears more prevalent. Instead of the coastal cypress hunkered low against the elements, the slender, vertical Monterey pine dominates. There’s a freshness of the pine needles that the sea air masks when closer to the water. This may seem like familiar golf that can be found elsewhere, yet the artistry of the bunkers and contouring of the greens reminds golfers they are in an unusual place.

Three of the par 5s come early, from the second through the sixth holes. However, in MacKenzie’s and Hunter’s initial routing, they did not intend to have consecutive par 5s. Their original sixth hole was meant to be a par 3, according to the prospectus, where, “From the sixth tee the player drives directly into the face of one of these magnificent white mountains of sand.” This changed during construction when Hunter and MacKenzie realized the property lines allowed them to position the seventh green even further up into the dunescape than once thought, which allowed for

Following pages: The sixth and seventh holes

the addition of a sharply angled carry on the tee shot of the short par-4 eighth, transforming the hole and adding greatly to its strategic challenge. The consequence was that the sixth hole now stretched down to meet the Central Dune, creating a new green site at its base, thus altering it from a one-shot hole to a second consecutive three-shot hole.

Like the third, the par-5 sixth provides a transition moment, leaving the forest and establishing the first real introduction to the Central Dune as a fulcrum point around which half the holes pivot. Though there was an initial taste of this dune on the third hole, it now looms front and center, with its wall of sand behind the green leading to the true dunescape that begins at the par-3 seventh.

A glimpse toward the ocean through the saddle of the dune at the back of the seventh tee reveals the shared fairways of the short par-4 eighth and ninth holes, and a preview of how you are meant to navigate the dunes you first saw from the second fairway. This is also how you will make your return to the sea at the 13th. Here you are introduced to the novel smell of the dunes, with their aromatic decay fed by new species of plants and shrubs like juniper. There’s a peculiar scent that distinguishes this area from the forest. The sea air returns for the first time since you last sensed it on third green, mixing with the continual decomposition of flora unique to the dunes.

A veteran caddie once said the greatest golf shot he ever saw at Cypress Point came after Jim Langley, the golf professional from 1971 to 2005, hit an uncommonly bad tee shot on the par-3 seventh that somehow ended up in the fairway bunker short of the sixth green. The poor tee shot stemmed from the fact that Langley was forced to play golf with only one functioning arm as a result of his car accident in 1987 (p. 252–253). Langley then played his second shot out of the sixth bunker up to the seventh green, leaving the ball stone dead to secure his par. As a one-armed golfer, he hit one of the worst shots and one of the best shots one could hit, both coming in rapid succession.

Unexpected crescendos are constantly occurring in MacKenzie’s routing. Everything builds. At first a feature appears from afar. Then you encounter it. Then you have to tackle it before departing, perhaps to return.

The routing introduces and reintroduces you to the golf course multiple times, all of which is in preparation for the point to come.

On the eighth tee, the golfer is only two greens removed from the forested fifth, yet feels transported to a comprehensively different environment. The smells are different, the views are different. Prior to this moment the golfer has seen the dunes, and subsequently tasted and smelled the dunes, but now is left with no choice but to take on the dunes. The distant ridge on the par-5 second hole provides perspective for the forced carry of the tee shot. There is composed layering and camouflage at work. Unlike the more framed surrounds of the forest, the land from up here appears to be moving in many different directions.

The rustic qualities of the course’s features (right) complement MacKenzie’s natural design motifs. Intricate branches become fences and railings. Stumps are repurposed as retaining walls. Half-sawn tree trunks are transformed into benches. Rather than relying on manufactured elements, the illusion of naturalism continues beyond the design of the course. Just as MacKenzie sought to shape the land so the hand of man remains indistinguishable from nature, by presenting the built environment as plausibly natural his ideal is perpetuated.

The left side of the eighth green is one of the few areas of putting green on the course that has minimal contour or slope. This is because it was originally built as the ninth tee (above, middle) , before that particular tee was relocated down and to the right in 1958 to offer greater protection from incoming shots to the eighth, with that section then incorporated into the eighth green. The back right lobe of the green, lost over time, was restored at the urging of Sandy Tatum in the mid-1980s.

The celebrated dune holes provide an exhilarating and largely foreign environment unlike anything in American parkland golf. Most exhilarating of all would be the four aces known to have occurred on the par-4 ninth by Pete Bostwick, Darius Keaton, Chris Wagenseller, and Joe Piccini.

Only two of Raynor’s proposed holes played to or from the Central Dune. By comparison,

MacKenzie’s final routing identified nine holes, fully half the course, that in some way engage the Central Dune as a feature. This dune creates a kind of Maginot line, running vertically north-south from the third green through to the seventh green. Everything east of this line plays as forest; everything west plays as dune.

A close analysis of the design of Cypress Point begs the question whether the course is ultimately about the dramatic, truly original holes along the point or whether there is some mystery to discover among the more conventional inland holes that have a kind of hidden genius to them. The objective answer is that Cypress Point really is about the dramatic holes yet to come — the holes that could exist nowhere else. But the more familiar holes, and especially the dune holes, have a role to play in preparing the dramatic holes to shine.

Following pages: The dune holes of eight and nine, with the ninth green in the foreground

mackenzie’s central dune

THE NINTH HOLE is not only one of the world’s great short par 4s, it is the site of a design element central to Alister MacKenzie’s and Robert Hunter’s inspired routing of the inland holes at Cypress Point. Nine holes, fully half the course, in some way play to, from, or across this natural dune feature. From the 10th tee (right) at the top of the dune, the eagle-eyed golfer can spot portions of all fourteen holes on the inland side of 17-Mile Drive. The round’s midway point presents both panoramic views and a moment to reflect on how MacKenzie’s routing and construction techniques allowed Cypress Point’s golf holes to merge seamlessly with their setting, making it indistinguishable where the hand of man began.

features that engage the central dune

Half the holes at Cypress Point play to, from, or across the Central Dune that crests at the marked spot above the ninth green in the illustration to the right.

third green

The golfer’s introduction to the dune looms large behind the green.

fourth tee

From the base of the dune, the golfer departs for the forest.

sixth green

Here the golfer appreciates the full span of the dune’s width.

seventh tee & green

The first of three tees sited atop the dune ridge.

eighth tee & fairway

Ambitious golfers must carry the long ridge of the dune.

ninth green

The climax of the dune’s routing is to a naturally sited green.

tenth tee

From the most elevated tee, broad views frame a dramatic shot.

eleventh green

A final encounter, playing into the face of the towering dune.

twelfth tee

From the dune’s southern edge, the golfer returns to the sea.

The 12th tee, 1929

MacKenzie’s and Hunter’s original routing of the course proposed both Holes No. 2 and 12 as par 5s, chewing up the maximum amount of land on arguably the least interesting portion of the property. Those holes were changed by Robert Hunter during construction as a result of the rerouting of 17-Mile Drive around the 14th green; the knock-on effect was that the 13th hole evolved from a par 3 to a par 4, and the 12th became a two-shot hole with a green positioned further up into the dunes.

Upon returning to Fan Shell Beach at the 13th hole, the golfer’s senses have become attuned to having passed through constantly shifting environments. There’s a familiarity in being reacquainted with the smells and sights and sounds first encountered on the opening hole. However, the mellow intensity of these sensations in the shelter of Fan Shell Cove is often blown away by the strong breezes of Cypress Point itself.

Robert Hunter

“In the design and construction of Cypress Point, I was fortunate in being associated with Mr. Robert Hunter, the author of The Links, which is by far the best book on golf architecture ever written.”

— DR. ALISTER MACKENZIE

THE BRIEF COLLABORATION between Robert Hunter and Alister MacKenzie lasted from 1926 to 1930 and produced Cypress Point, Meadow Club, and The Valley Club of Montecito, among other California projects built by their American Golf Course Construction Company.

Hunter and MacKenzie had met by at least May 1923 when Hunter traveled to tour Britain’s best courses and play in amateur events, including the Amateur Championship. MacKenzie then provided photographs for Hunter’s 1926 book on golf design, The Links, published the same year Hunter first welcomed MacKenzie to California, where they eventually formed a business building golf courses.

and a report on soil requiring nutrition and the treatment of soil under trees.” This was a new scientific advance that soon applied to the development of courses throughout America. It also saved the budget thousands.

“Robert Hunter’s role in the creation of Cypress Point has long been undervalued,” wrote Geoff Shackelford in his 2000 book on the course, “as is often the case with everyone but the ‘name’ golf architect on a project of this magnitude.”

As a Pebble Beach resident starting in 1922, it was Hunter who provided daily project supervision while MacKenzie was traveling the world. At Cypress Point, Hunter, “drew up ten pages of typewritten memoranda in regard to methods of carrying out our work,” according to MacKenzie. Through connections with UC Berkeley scientists and professors, Hunter was able to “develop a soil map of the property; a study of grasses and weeds; a map of necessary drainage;

Inspired by the British Golf Course Construction Company, MacKenzie and his brother Charles founded several years earlier, Hunter imported many of MacKenzie’s best crew members to build Cypress Point. As business partners, Hunter and his son Robert Hunter Jr. led construction overseen by Jack Fleming, Dan Gormley, key bunker shaper Paddy Cole, and Michael McDonagh, all from Ireland, who at times managed as many as one hundred laborers.

Born in 1874 in Terre Haute, Indiana, Hunter was four years younger than MacKenzie and fifty-one years old when they first visited Cypress Point. After declining to enter his family’s carriage manufacturing business around the 189

turn of the century, Hunter became a social worker in the slums of Chicago and New York, participating in a variety of pioneering movements that led to publishing his best-selling book Poverty (above) in 1904. Hunter’s ideas were later adopted through New Deal programs and other social policy. Marrying the wealthy Caroline Phelps Stokes in 1903, daughter of a New York City banker who built the largest private home in America at the time, contributed to Hunter being dubbed a “Millionaire Socialist,” a nickname coined by his frequent golf companion Finley Peter Dunne. Hunter had turned to golf for recreation as he labored to complete Poverty. Enthralled by the game, he traveled from Palm Beach to Pinehurst and Long Island playing in tournaments and ventured

to Britain in 1912 to explore its famous links. The observations gleaned from his six-month journey inspired Hunter to produce The Links in 1926. After moving to California in 1917, he taught at UC Berkeley from 1918–1922 and became involved with the green committee at Berkeley Country Club, rebuilding much of the course. When his Berkeley home was destroyed by fire in 1923, Hunter moved to Pebble Beach, building a home above the second green at Pebble Beach Golf Links.

Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw have served as a consulting architects at Cypress Point since 2010 and have guided the club to make, in the words of former Green Chairman Jim Hoak, “one hundred small changes that added up to one big difference.” Coore said of Hunter’s book The Links, “it became a cornerstone in my personal golf architecture education and bond in my design partnership with Ben Crenshaw.”

of the new, lower tee on the 15th in the 1950s. However, a close inspection of the original MacKenzie plan indicates a tee closer to the cliff’s edge.

Perhaps Hunter’s biggest impact on the course came during an early crisis in construction necessitated by the plan to reroute 17-Mile Drive. The road was originally intended to hug the cliffs more closely on the 15th hole, creating an even sharper turn almost fully encircling the 14th green that would have added considerable expense, endangered passersby and was strongly objected to by Sam Morse.

During construction of Cypress Point, Hunter was involved in a number of changes to the original MacKenzie plan, including moving the seventh up into the dunes and converting the sixth hole to a par 5. The only notable changes to their original design have been the addition of a new tee at the ninth hole in the 1950s, placing golfers further from the eighth green; the removal of a fairway bunker on the 14th in the 1960s; and the creation

In a letter from October 26, 1927, (opposite) Hunter explained to Sam Morse that the relocation of the road would influence holes 12 through 15. After moving the 14th green to its current location, requiring significant fill and shortening the hole, Hunter converted the 13th from a par 3 to a par 4, and shortened the 12th from proposed par 5 to a par 4, all of which ultimately influenced the siting of the upper tee on 15. The clear language Hunter uses in the letter, in which he shares equal billing on the letterhead, reveals the extent to which he was intimately involved in key design decisions.

Though Cypress Point was unquestionably the vision of Alister MacKenzie, based on the hand-drawn design details of the routing map from 1926 (p. 200–201) that are unmistakably from Dr. MacKenzie’s hand, it was Hunter and his team who executed that vision.

julian graham’s october foursome, 1928

Around the time Dr. Alister MacKenzie checked into The Lodge at Pebble Beach on October 4, 1928, for a stay of several days, MacKenzie and three companions played a famous round at Cypress Point, documented hole-by-hole by official Del Monte photographer Julian P. Graham (left). Accompanying MacKenzie were his design partner, Robert Hunter (pictured opposite, driving at the 13th hole), along with two Englishmen: G. C. Cassels and F. H. “Frank” Bickerton. A photograph of the foursome walking up the 18th fairway appeared in the November 1928 issue of The Fairway magazine (p. 232). Cassels, manager of the Bank of Montreal in London, was in Pebble Beach accompanying Lady Mabel Coke, daughter of the Dowager Countess of Leicester, the kind of glamorous clientele Sam Morse hoped to attract

to Del Monte. Bickerton, a pioneering Antarctic explorer and early member of the Royal Air Force in World War I, became MacKenzie’s design associate at Pasatiempo. Beginning in the 1990s and continuing to the present, Graham’s numerous detailed images of each hole from that day influenced restoration of the golf course, among his many other visits to Cypress Point displayed in the locker rooms and Morse Room. As the official photographer of Del Monte Properties Company from 1924 to 1963, Graham’s first-hand record of the development of Pebble Beach through more than forty thousand photographs forms a lasting impression of Sam Morse’s vision and captured people who came from around the world, like those in MacKenzie’s October foursome. Graham’s legacy lives on through the active archive of his photography at Loon Hill Studios, which kindly provided permission for the historic Graham photographs appearing in this book.

Original sentinel cypress trees on Fan Shell Beach overlook, with horse-drawn carriage (indicated), circa 1890s

As the cypress forest tightens near the approach to the 14th green just for a moment a new theme is introduced — one of the refuge experienced when passing though what has become a narrow canopy of ancient trees that lend their name to this point of land. Even veteran members gape in astonishment at the sprawling tendrils of the Octopus tree, or pause to admire the strength of the sentinel cypresses overlooking Fan Shell Beach, trees from before recorded memory, long predating the course itself. Far narrower now than what was envisioned when MacKenzie laid out the fairway through just two dominant trees, this theme of refuge amid the trees is repeated on the walk to the 15th tee, the even-longer walk to the 16th hole, and the longest path of refuge of all, returning through an arboretum of specimens on the 18th hole below the clubhouse (p. 233).

Yet despite the modern refuge present in the fairway, MacKenzie and Hunter intended the 14th green to be exposed to the ocean on all sides, as growth over time has obscured the view. For a golf course with an opening tee shot that carries over cars and buses on 17-Mile Drive, there’s a

surprisingly secure feeling one has within the course. The challenge faced by MacKenzie, Hunter, and Morse a century ago remains the same today: only on the 14th hole does one feel so exposed to the steady stream of public access in a way that no other hole does due to its proximity to the sharp curves of the road and the popularity of the parking area overlooking Fan Shell Beach. The 14th hole features one of the few original MacKenzie bunkers that has not been restored, a central feature with a forced carry that affects primarily shorter hitters, which was removed in the mid-1960s.

On the inland side of 17-Mile Drive, everything seems to be quieter, warmer.

The eye is drawn to artistic bunkers, undulating greens, and ribbon fairways. You tend to see docile animals at leisure, wandering through an enchanted forest with golf holes like those you think you know, but are somehow quite different. Once you cross the road from the 14th to the 15th hole and turn the corner out by the ocean, every bit of stimulation that preceded suddenly falls away as the dial is turned up to maximum sensory overload.

“Cypress Point is a dream — spectacular, perfectly designed and set about white sand dunes and a cobalt sea, and studded with the Monterey Cypress so bewilderingly picturesque that it seems to have been the crystalization of the dreams of an artist who has been drinking gin and sobering up on absinthe.”

O. B. KEELER

Rounding the corner to the lower tee, you catch your first full glimpse of the grandeur of Cypress Point in the distance before your eyes turn to the intimacy of the 15th green nestled in the foreground. The temperature drops as the warmth of the forest subsides and the chill of the sea air pervades. The deep blue that was once in the distance now surrounds you. The waves become louder and bigger, the wind blows harder. You strain to raise your voice so your companions can hear you.

The life of the forest is replaced by the life of the ocean. Bobbing seals, barking sea lions, floating pelicans and black oyster catchers. Ice plant. Cypress. Granite cliffs. The smell of kelp. The taste of iodine. Everything heightens. Somehow, despite every effort to the contrary, anticipation has been building, rising to match the waves. Is there anything that can fully prepare you for what you experience when you cross the road?

This moment is one of the many forced pauses on a golf course that provides the opportunity to reflect, if interested, on what you’ve just experienced and what you are about to encounter. Not only are you arriving upon a famous scene. This is a pivotal moment in the round, in a match, in a first-timer’s experience. It comes far enough into the round to allow the golfing nerves to have settled, but not so close to the end that you miss the opportunity to savor it all. Cypress Point has a reputation for being a well-routed course in the sense that each tee is as close to the previous green as is reasonable. In some instances, the tees are immediately adjacent, like on Fan Shell Dune or in the forest. In some instances, there’s a transition from one feature to another, allowing the golfer to climb a ridge to gain a view or enter a new environment.

When such transitions occur, a moment of pause prepares you for what you’re about to experience. They’re such different stories, each hole, each mood.

Approaching the lower tee on the 15th, the first cue that you’ve arrived is the sight of a rustic wood railing. Though made of natural parts, it was assembled by man. Defining the cliff’s edge may be a safety issue, but it is done with sympathy to its surrounds. So many other choices could have been made for a railing, but every other approach would seem to be wrong, marring the landscape and distracting from the thrill of the setting. Despite the presence the 16th hole in the distance, the 15th is really the only hole where you can’t see any other hole being played. It exudes intimacy.

For all the justifiable praise the short 15th receives for its beauty, an overlooked aspect is that the tee shot many golfers play into the green is not one Alister MacKenzie ever knew. The original tee on the upper portion of the cliff plays as more of a drop-shot pitch than the longer, flatter shot from the 1950s-era tee. Equally, it’s a different sensory experience. Instead of walking around the corner from Fan Shell Beach and seeing Cypress Point in the distance, the original experience approached the 15th tee from the cliff above, introducing the golfer to the cove of the 15th green and only then to the distant point beyond.

It’s quieter on the upper tee. More refined, more arranged. The lower tee is raw, more exposed.

The upper tee feels like a golf hole that was composed. The lower tee feels like playing from the edge of the earth. It’s a subtle difference, but a different experience, and a different emphasis because of the sequence of what is revealed.

The 15th hole being so much shorter than the 16th makes the same basic shot — a carry across the precipice of a great ocean — less daunting. This invites the golfer to summon courage with a short iron in hand rather than be overwhelmed by the immense challenge of doing so with a longer club.

From the forested quiet to the roaring surf, the decibel levels of the different environments change dramatically as you move through the property. Part of the necessity of having experienced Fan Shell Dune, going into the woods, and then traipsing across the dunescape, is to prepare you for an environment where mere words can’t capture the anticipation you’ve been feeling since you began.

Following pages: Details of flora and fauna on the 15th hole; Historic photograph of 17-Mile Drive running through the future site of the green, 1926

Many golfers who walk along the path to the 16th tee for the first time are silent.

There’s a sense of apprehension, as you really can’t understand the scale of what you’re about to witness, even though you’ve had hints of it. You may have seen countless pictures or videos, but then you come around the corner and see the immense challenge and beauty of the moment, the confluence of ambitions, man-made and natural. There’s nothing like it. When the waves are climbing the cliff walls, or the pelicans are circling, or the sea lions are barking, it only gets better.

The 16th is the opposite of the 15th in so many ways. There is nothing intimate about it. It is the essence of grandeur. If you hit the shot the way you want to, and hit it well, it creates the most beautiful tracer to follow. What could be more thrilling than to see the line of the ball as it chases toward a target across the water?

This is such a photographed place because there are so many elements present. The depth and layering of rock as you approach the green. When big waves are rolling in, it appears as though the green is surrounded by whitewater. The sea arch to the left causes water to shoot up. There’s usually wildlife floating everywhere, and amongst the turmoil you see otters or seals playing like schoolchildren. It’s one of those few places where you don’t have to know what you’re doing to take a good photograph. There’s so much to look at. Your eye can’t possibly take it all in, so you rely on the camera to do the work for you. The goal of a great photograph is to overwhelm the senses and create awe — “Can you believe this exists?” — the image presses us to ask.

Though the setting could never be created by a human, it is a testament to the idea that when people do their best to partner with the land, it can inspire others to want to experience that place — and to ensure that such a rare setting remains intact. So many circumstances had to line up, so many historical contingencies had to click into place for a century’s worth of golfers to be able to stand in that one place and hit a shot out across and over the edge of the ocean — it’s staggering to contemplate the unlikelihood of it.

Yet a few golfers, at a key moment in time, understood how good it could be.

To give honor where it is due, I must say that, except for the minor details in construction, I was in no way responsible for the 16th hole.

It was largely due to the vision of Miss Marion Hollins.

It was suggested to her by the late Seth Raynor that it was a pity the carry over the ocean was too long to enable a hole to be designed on this particular site.

Miss Hollins said she did not think it was an impossible carry.

She then teed up a ball and drove to the middle of the site for the suggested green.

The scale of the space is so much bigger than we are, both of the golf course and of nature itself, that the only understandable feeling, the only relatable feeling, is one of being grateful to be here. We today have the good fortune that those few people came before us and did what they did at a time when they could, because it’s likely they could not do so again. They had a window of opportunity and seized it before it closed. The best thing about many of our favorite places — in golf as in life — is that they could never be recreated again today.

So much emphasis is placed on the 16th tee shot but being on the 16th green may actually be the most underratedly wonderful place on the course. After all, what’s more implausible? That you get to hit a shot from the 16th tee to the 16th green, or that you can actually stand in the middle of the ocean playing golf? At this moment, you haven’t yet hit the tee shot on the 17th, so you don’t have to leave the point. You’ve managed to negotiate the great fear of the tee shot. You’re just on the point, surrounded by nothing but the sea, trying to get the ball into the hole.

How implausible is that?

PURPORTED TO BE THE MOST

The 16th Hole

PHOTOGRAPHED hole in golf, the 16th at Cypress Point has a more interesting array of backstories than its dramatic setting might suggest.

From the moment Marion Hollins first persuaded Seth Raynor and Alister MacKenzie that the hole could indeed be a par 3, thousands of golfers have approached the tee uncertain whether they too might clear the ocean with a single shot of 225 yards.

It took nearly two decades to achieve the seemingly impossible — a heroic holein-one — but Ross Smith did so in 1945, followed two years later by Bing Crosby. For the first forty-four years of the club’s history, these were the only two golfers to pull off the remarkable feat (opposite).

Three more aces finally came in the 1970s with two in the 1980s, including Jerry Pate’s famous orange ball during the 1982 Crosby. The year 1997 saw a hat-trick in close succession, including the first ace by a woman — Stanford golfer Mhairi McKay — as many in one year as in all of the 1970s, and more than in the four decades prior to 1971. With seven holes-in-one during the 1990s, half the total to that time came at the end of the century.

The first decade of the new millennium continued the trend with six more aces. Two in 2010 offered a hot start to a new decade. And then, for nearly ten years, not a single ace came — until the twenty-third arrived in 2020. Then, in 2022, the proverbial lid came off. On April 6, Sean Miller added to the list. What followed was a thirty-day stretch to break all records: October 18, Liam Roecklein; November 2, Christian Clark, playing with Reuben Richards; November 16, Jim Butz, with Reuben again. Four aces in one year — the most ever — and more in one month than the 1930s, ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, ’80s, or 2010s.

Proving again the old assertion that history rhymes, in April 2021, a gray whale known affectionately as “Miss Stinky,” beached in the cove the behind the 16th. Per NOAA guidelines, the whale was towed thirty-five miles out to sea and released to its final resting place. Members and staff remarked upon this “new” experience, however, careful reading of the minutes suggests otherwise. On May 25, 1963, “The first order of business was to discuss the whale on the 16th green. A large sperm whale had come ashore below the trap on the south side of the 16th green, rolled over, and

died. It was thirty-two feet long, six feet high and weighed 34,000 pounds. President Allen Griffin promptly ordered its removal.” The details that followed regarding the removal of said whale would not seem to indicate NOAA guidelines were yet in place in 1963.

In a 1936 article written by Bobby Jones for National Golf Review titled “A Course No Money Could Buy,” Jones explained his rationale for selecting “the best 18-hole course I could arrange out of those existent I have played... one affording the maximum pleasure to the experienced player.” Cypress Point’s 16th hole not only featured in Jones’s list but a picture of the famed ocean hole headlined the article.

A decade before Marion Hollins and Seth Raynor sketched the 16th in 1925, another noted golf architect named William Langford published a small booklet in 1915 called “Golf Course Architecture in The Chicago District.”

On page 12 Langford sketched an imaginary hole he labeled “An Exacting Hazard,” (above left) which bears a remarkable likeness to Cypress Point’s actual 16th.

Pioneering golfers traveled to Biarritz, France, in the 1880s to play the famous “Chasm Hole,” where they could launch a tee shot from one dramatic precipice of the ocean to the other. Captured in an 1887 painting by Charles J. Collin (above), sadly that “Chasm Hole” no longer exists.

The elemental thrill of hitting a shot across the corner of a great ocean never tires. As the number 6 handicap hole, however, frequent players must often decide in a match or tournament whether to go for the green or lay up and secure a four-for-three score to the delight of their partner.

The commonly adopted “Schultz Rule” on 16 was named after former Cypress Point member George Schultz, U.S. secretary of state in the 1980s.

Simply put, a first-time guest, no matter his or her skill as a golfer, was welcome to try to make the carry from the tee. Once. After that, the more adventuresome route would be at the golfer’s own risk.

From the 1960s to the 1990s, the constant battering from the sea on the tee and green and loss of portions of the cliff’s edge resulted in a series of major efforts to rebuild the protective sea wall. Each new iteration became more sophisticated — and expensive — all ensuring the integrity of the hole. The land bridge out to The Loop remained intact until a storm in the 1980s broke through, cutting off the famous feature on 17-Mile Drive that first brought so many picnickers and artists to Cypress Point a century before.

commissioned before all tees were completed. Looking at the yardages it is clear not all of MacKenzie’s tees were built.

Both routings by Seth Raynor in 1925 (p. 60–61) and Dr. Alister MacKenzie in 1926 (p. 200–201) portrayed the 16th as a two-shot hole. The question of how it was settled by Marion Hollins has entered lore (p. 216) and the variations of the story lead one to believe Marion pulled off the trick of hitting a ball to the proposed site of the green on more than one occasion.

MacKenzie, for his part, was not enamored with the existence of water hazards on a golf course. “Being a Scotsman,” MacKenzie wrote, “I am naturally opposed to water in its undiluted state. I am also opposed to a hazard involving the risk of a lost ball.”

At an early moment in the hole’s history, it was not yet confirmed whether the 16th would be a par 4 from the championship tees, as indicated in the scorecard (above)

However, he could not deny the timeless appeal of the natural challenge, whether from Biarritz in the late-1800s or Langford’s Exacting Water Hazard from 1915. “I recently crossed over from England with an American,” MacKenzie wrote, “who told me that the 16th at Cypress Point had cost him a fortune in golf balls, as he would always play for the long carry to the green across the ocean, but the joy of seeing his ball land on the green and the feeling of something achieved when it did so was worth all the balls he put into the ocean in his attempts to drive the hazard.”

Standing on the 17th tee elevates grandeur into spectacle. The dramatic coastline of Big Sur looming to the south, the pelicans, the marine life, the yelps of sea-born mammals, the avian smells, the utter remoteness of it all is neither intimate nor grand — it is a breathtaking spectacle the greatest artists could never create. After all this, how could you not be emotionally spent?

Beginning the course with the elements of sea and sand, the senses are invigorated. Venturing deep into a forest, you encounter some of the most beautiful bunkering and green contours one could ever see, even if there’s no ocean. Then you are thrust into a lunar dunescape that makes you wonder how someone could ever fashion a golf course upon it. A final taste of the forest, a final taste of the dunes, a final encounter with the sheltered cove, and then exposure to the point. At first, an intimate experience, followed by an expression of grandeur you’ve long anticipated, and then the sheer spectacle of playing the 17th hole.

From the earliest days of the idea for the club, the final punctuation mark on the golf course was intended to be a tee shot unlike any in the world. Coming first with the preliminary routing by Seth Raynor in February 1925, then subsequently endorsed by Dr. Alister MacKenzie in February 1926, both architects wanted their 18th hole to begin on a rocky outcropping some fifty yards off shore, in the middle of the ocean cliffs. Such an audacious idea was only possible at the irrationally exuberant height of the Roaring Twenties.

The first photo of a proposed tee appeared in The American Golfer issue of December 1925 (opposite), with a caption that read, “A golf architect has just erected a little marker. It looks like a stick at the top of a stony cliff at the right, and it denotes the location of the eighteenth tee of the new Cypress Club course. Here’s happiness for the golfer who loves a seething sea and a rock-bound coast.” Two bridge designs to access such a tee were proposed as late as October 1931 — a suspension bridge and a pier bridge (right) — though due to the financial challenges of the club at the time, nothing was ever built. Nor is it certain, had it been built, that it would have survived the frequent winter coastal storms.

a bridge too far

“I also recall before the links were finally laid out, spending a whole day with Chan Egan, Mackenzie and Bob Hunter, trying to figure out how the last four holes should be laid out. We had Chan driving to and fro in all directions; decided the 16th hole couldn’t be improved upon, the 17th was good and if the 18th was a bit weak, what the hell. We even thought of building a bridge 50 yards beyond the present 18th tee to lengthen that hole.”

What makes for a fitting conclusion to the golf course that is worthy of the name of the Cypress Point Club? It would seem require as the key feature the presence of Cupressus macrocarpa, the species of tree that occurs in its greatest native density on this piece of land. Bringing the golfer home is a return into the woods, into the refuge of the forest and the confines of the clubhouse itself.

The sculptural beauty of the trees on the 18th hole may prove maddening on occasion for golfers, but these inspirational works of Gothic natural art also make for an underappreciated and strategic finishing hole. After the heightened thrills of the point, it would be easy to fall asleep at the last hole. Precision and patience, not stimulation, are what is required to secure a match.

Many dramatic points of land jut out into an ocean. However, only one, for more than 250 years, has been known worldwide as Cypress Point. What gives that point of land its distinctive name is the grove of Monterey cypress, a forest of refuge the golfer returns to once again on the final hole.

Can a golf course be as enjoyable to walk without golf clubs as it is to walk with them? If you are a member or a guest of the Cypress Point Club you already know the answer is yes.

the “caddy house”

Before the opening of the clubhouse in September 1930, the first building constructed at Cypress Point was the Locker Room and Golf Shop, originally called the “Caddy House.” Designed by George Washington Smith it has been updated numerous times to expand the Locker Rooms and facilities for both men and women, particularly to reflect growing interest in golf among women at the club. Along with the extension of the Golf Shop and storage facilities, the building’s main room was renamed the “Hook & Eye Room” in 2018. That simple room, with its fireplace and comfortable chairs overlooking the compact, brick terrace behind the first tee and putting green, remains essentially as it was in 1929, when it welcomed new members to begin their rounds at the Cypress Point Club.

golf shop

Usually the first stop in everyone’s visit to Cypress Point, the Golf Shop is unexpectedly cozy and intimate, overflowing with piles of shirts and sweaters that can’t seem to keep themselves folded. This casual atmosphere is no accident. A sincere smile and a “welcome home” await all who enter thanks to Henry Puget, Jim Langley (above, 2008), and Casey Reamer, each of whom have nurtured a spirit for the place that once experienced is never forgotten.

The Hook & Eye Club

THE 1929 U.S. AMATEUR at Pebble Beach marked golf’s debutante ball on the Pacific Coast.

jim langley

Among the firsts achieved at the inaugural USGA national championship held in the West, it was a coming-out party for Sam Morse’s vision for Del Monte as golf’s new mecca and the introduction for leading golfers to the exciting new course at Cypress Point, which opened the year before — though the club didn’t yet have a clubhouse.

Roger D. Lapham was vice president of the USGA, president of the California Golf Association, and the president of the Cypress Point Club. As the de facto chairman of the Del Monte host committee, Lapham had his hands full welcoming the golfing world to the Monterey Peninsula.

Prohibition remained the law of the land until 1933, so rather than asking “Who Can I Get A Drink For?” or “Who Can I Get A Drink From?”the password for hosts and guests was simply “Hook & Eye.”

Letter from Roger Lapham to Dean Witter, December 5, 1929, discussing what to do with excess Hook & Eye Club funds

With Cypress Point needing members, Lapham organized a “Pebble Beach Entertainment Fund” subscribed for by sixty-six of his friends, most of whom were from Cypress Point, who donated more than enough money to provide ample assets — “liquid and frozen” — for the hospitality of tournament guests.

Edwin M. Eddy, president of the Northern California Golf Association at the time, inscribed in a handwritten note to 1929 U.S. Amateur Champion Jimmy Johnston on the back of a photo of the hospitality scene from that week (opposite), whose exact location remains unconfirmed but was possibly in the old Hathaway House behind the 18th green.

“This 19th hole was a hard one to beat. Hook and Eye Club, Del Monte, California, September 2–7, 1929.”

No records exist to suggest how much each member of the Hook & Eye Club contributed or consumed, but at the end of it all, Lapham had a surplus of some $6,500 in the “Pebble Beach Entertainment Fund.” On December 5, 1929, Lapham wrote to Dean Witter to “decide what to do with the Hook and Eye Club funds.”(Above)

As captured in the Lapham family archives, a detailed correspondence ensued — “We could have a most congenial party,” wrote Dean Witter in response — resulting in the inaugural meeting of the “Hook & Eye Club” in 1931 at Cypress Point for a two-day tournament, with dinners and a Calcutta pool. The gathering was such a success it continued annually until World War II brought an end to it.

The Hook & Eye was revived in 1968 as a replacement for The Swallows (p. 261) and thrives as one of the highlights of the club’s annual calendar: a member-guest where everyone

is invited by the president of Cypress Point Club. Festivities begin with an optional Thursday dinner for early arrivals that has been held at some spectacular venues, a Friday practice round and opening dinner at the clubhouse with wonderful food and wines on display, followed by rounds of better-ball golf on Saturday-Sunday, and a concluding picnic lunch.

The makeup of participants has evolved to maintain the spirit of a gathering of friends from the world of golf, along with other fields of interest including business, sports and culture, all inspired by the first gathering in 1929.

leaders & characters

AREMARKABLE SETTING has a way of attracting remarkable people. An overriding challenge of chronicling this history of Cypress Point Club is cataloging the many people and stories of note that have passed this way in the first century of the club, either as members or guests.

No roll call would be complete without identifying some of the club’s leaders and characters beyond the main Dramatis Personae who shaped its founding. Such characters included Jack Neville, a salesman for Del Monte and an accomplished amateur golfer who codesigned the original Pebble Beach Golf Links in 1918; Harrison Godwin, another key salesman for the company and Cypress Point member who signed up the necessary final members to fund construction of the golf course in 1927; and Bing Crosby, a Cypress Point member who was perhaps the first global superstar of the

twentieth century and namesake host (p. 266), all joined by Sam Morse in a 1948 photograph taken at the overlooking the 16th hole (below) to mark the first Swallows tournament

Other characters that often spring to mind in the memories of members are people like Hank Ketcham, the Monterey County cartoonist who created the character Dennis the Menace in 1950 and shared his many artistic talents with his fellow members, as he did when he contributed a humorous sketch (opposite) to a Cypress Point brochure in the early 1980s that considered the idea of enclosing the club’s terrace as a dining room, which had previously been open to the elements.

Sandy Tatum (with Downey Orrick, c. 1960s) labeled Cypress Point “The Sistine Chapel of Golf”

Right: Francis H. I. Brown, George Coleman, two unidentified individuals, and Bing Crosby (right) in the director’s chairs behind the first tee in the 1950s, a tradition dating back to the Raincheck tournaments of the 1930.

Many Cypress Point members have been prominent in their business or social lives, but regardless of one’s position in the world, the unifying nature of the club in each generation has been to place an emphasis on inviting new members to join for their “good company” and shared interests.

“Crocker, Magee, Mack, and Haldorn galleried the first tee.

I had to put four chairs there. Every Saturday they would sit there.

JOEY SOLIS, CADDIEMASTER,

1947–1980

Though a member of Cypress Point and also an accomplished amateur golfer, prior to the 1972 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, Frank D. “Sandy” Tatum Jr. wasn’t a national figure in golf. Years before serving as president of the USGA in 1978–1979, he became famous for his 1974 U.S. Open quote as USGA Championship Committee chairman about “not seeking to embarrass the best players in the world but to identify them.” Tatum’s equally enduring quote about Cypress Point being the “Sistine Chapel of Golf” came about when sportswriter Dave Anderson cited Tatum for a January 25, 1976,

New York Times article about that year’s Crosby Pro-Am tournament and a forthcoming book about the Pebble Beach area. Because of its appearance in The Times’s syndication service, the quote was transmitted to numerous other newspapers around the country that same day. The phrase subsequently surfaced in Golf Digest several more times, first in 1979 when Cypress Point was elevated to the Top 10 in its rankings. (It may be worth noting that prior to 1979, the course had been ranked in the top 50, 30, or 20 but never top 10, though it has risen steadily ever since, remaining in the top five since 1985.)

Despite the extensive documents displayed throughout the pages of this book, many of the club’s earliest records are missing, with Board minutes dating only to August 1933 instead of the founding date of July 1927. According to a 1963 letter from Sam Morse to Roger Lapham regarding early club history (right), Cypress Point Secretary Francis McComas (p. 130–131) held many of those records. Morse indicated he would ask McComas’s wife Gene if she could “find any of the early stuff or not.” In a handwritten postscript, Morse noted, “Gene laughed and said Frank never let her see anything!,”

President Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected an Honorary Member of Cypress Point Club in 1956

suggesting that the early minutes and other records may sadly be lost to history.

An exhaustive list of the many dignitaries who have visited Cypress Point, let alone have become members, would neither be in keeping with the club’s ethos nor make for particularly interesting reading, though two such stories became part of club lore.

Around the time of the August 1956 Republican National Convention in San Francisco, President Dwight Eisenhower was invited by Cypress Point President Harry Hunt to stay in the clubhouse and enjoy the facilities as a guest of the club. Following the visit, Eisenhower wrote a letter of thanks (left) sharing both his appreciation for the hospitality and gratitude upon being elected an Honorary Life Member. In earlier years, Marion Hollins and Alister MacKenzie, among others, were granted this distinction, but in the modern era after World War II there have been only two honorary members: President Eisenhower and Golf Professional Jim Langley (p. 252–253).

Eisenhower’s successor in the Oval Office, John F. Kennedy, visited Cypress Point on several occasions. “What happened with Kennedy,” recalled caddiemaster Joey Solis, “He was there with a guy named Red Fay. Fay wasn’t a member, but he was a member of the San Francisco Golf Club.”

During a visit to the club in the late 1950s with wife Jackie and friends Paul “Red” Fay and his wife, Anita, the Kennedys were filmed in family archival footage (screenshot, opposite) playing golf and sitting on the terrace in what appeared to be shorts and a collarless golf shirt, contrary to the

dress code of the club. “Lawrence Mignano, who managed the clubhouse,” continued Solis, “it was his job to tell Kennedy he had on the wrong clothes. But he told Sam to go over and tell the guy instead. Sam went over there and said, ‘I’m sorry Senator, you can’t get in unless you have a coat and tie on.’ Herb Caen, the columnist, found out about it and put an article in the paper saying Sam kicked him out of there. Of course, the Republicans loved that.”

Before the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, Kennedy again played at Cypress Point with his World War II PT boat comrade Red Fay, who later served as Undersecretary of the Navy under President Kennedy. Fully aware of the public backlash suffered by Eisenhower as a golfer, Kennedy sought to avoid being photographed in the press with a golf club. While Kennedy and Fay were playing the 15th hole that day, Kennedy’s tee shot headed straight for the flagstick.

“I was yelling, ‘Go in! Go in!’,” recalled Red Fay for a book on presidential golfers. Kennedy was struck with terror. The ball stopped inches short of the hole.

According to Fay’s recollection, “Kennedy exhaled and said, ‘You’re yelling for that damn ball to go in the hole, and I’m watching a promising political career coming to an end. If that ball had gone into the hole, in less than a hour the word would be out to the nation that another golfer was trying to get into the White House.”

With respect to presidents of Cypress Point, the club has traditionally been governed by a strongpresident model, with support from the Board and committees, but without a general manager. Different presidents naturally have differing styles, but over the last few decades the term has been consistently limited to four years. Prior to that, terms varied from as many as fifteen years in the case of Roger Lapham (1928–1943) to just three years for Allen Griffin (1962–1965), former longtime publisher of the Monterey Herald.

Until the end of Charles de Bretteville’s eight-year presidency (1965–1973), Cypress Point had been led by only a handful of presidents over its first half century. Throughout this time, the club maintained strong and historic connections with the San Francisco Golf Club, Burlingame Country Club, and The Los Angeles Country Club, sharing both club leaders and members.

PRESIDENTS

William C . Van Antwerp — 1927–1928

Roger D. Lapham — 1928–1943

William H. Orrick — 1943–1955

Harry C. Hunt — 1955–1962

R. Allen Griffin — 1962–1965

Charles de Bretteville — 1965–1973

Christian de Guigne — 1973–1977

Harold Anderson — 1977–1979

William F. Borland — 1979–1985

H. Pierson Plummer — 1985–1991

John L. Love — 1991–1997

Brayton Wilbur — 1997–1999

William C. Edwards — 1999–2003

Charles B. Johnson — 2003–2006

Stephen R. Miller — 2006–2010

P. Anthony Ridder — 2010–2014

Peter K. Barker — 2014–2018

Richard J. Barrett — 2018–2022

George R. Still Jr. — 2022–2026

Because of their prominence associated with the annual Crosby tournament, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope are among the more publicly known members of Cypress Point. Though Crosby joined the club as a younger man in the late 1930s (p. 266), it was not until later that Hope became a member, before ultimately resigning at age eighty-eight in 1991.

In a letter to Sam Morse in March 1967 (below), Hope confessed that he would “most certainly want to become a member of Cypress even though I don’t get up that way very often... Dolores was very thrilled, when I asked her how she felt about becoming members, because she loves the area and everybody connected with it. So, if it works, we’d be delighted to join. As far as sponsors are concerned, any of my friends up there can do it, including yourself. And I’d certainly appreciate it.”

Though these thoughts were expressed by one of the twentieth century’s most recognizable people and one of the world’s most famous entertainers, its a sentiment that practically every other member of Cypress Point before or since would admit to feeling at one time or another during the membership process. Of course not every member had the backing of Hope’s friend Bing Crosby, who soon found out that Bob was in the membership pipeline and commented in a letter on display in the MacKenzie Library.

“Dear Sam,” Crosby wrote to Morse on March 6, 1967, around the time of Hope’s letter, “I’m delighted to learn that Bob Hope, it appears, will soon become a member of Cypress Point. This fella is a great American,

Letter from Bob Hope to Sam Morse, March 20, 1967 regarding Hope’s potential membership at Cypress Point

keen golfer, and damn good company. Thank you so much for giving me the good news. I do hope to see you ’ere long. Always your friend, Bing.”

As a club, Cypress Point has sought to maintain a culture that is avowedly opposed to memorial plaques or the like adorning the golf course. The exception to the rule is a marker that appears next to the 17th tee reflecting the sentiment often expressed by longtime member Clarke “Boney” Bearden, as an invitation to all golfers to take a moment to reflect on the good fortune they have had to enjoy the privilege of “walking along these magnificent shores.” The plaque followed an illustration presented to Bearden by Hank Ketcham dating from March 1997 (above, right). Another sketch by Ketcham of a greatly relieved deer finding comfort at the halfway house near the 11th tee (above, left) adorned the men’s restroom for years until one day it went missing. Ketcham’s son Scott was able

to recreate the exact sketch from his father’s files and was happy to add an equally amusing sketch for the ladies restroom on the opposite wall. Of note, the halfway house was rebuilt in 2025.

With the 1999 purchase of the Pebble Beach Company by Lone Cypress Partners led by Peter Ueberroth, Dick Ferris, Clint Eastwood, and Arnold Palmer — eventually all Cypress Point members — the historic relationship between Cypress Point and Pebble Beach was once again as envisioned by Sam Morse. As leaders in sports and business, Ueberroth and Ferris were announced as lifetime achievement award winners by the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2021. As a testament to the relationship, at the October 2021 Invitational Cypress Point President Dick Barrett playfully brought up the topic of royalties due to the club following the purported adoption of Cynthia the sea lion as a new logo for the redesigned short course, “The Hay.”

Cypress Point’s clubhouse was used as a background for Cynthia during a 1937 photo shoot (right).

Bill Perocchi, CEO of the Pebble Beach Company from 1999–2021 and a Cypress Point member, responded with equal enthusiasm and wit, hastening to point out the generosity bestowed on the club by the company during the challenging years of war and depression.

It was agreed to not let bygones tarnish this mutually beneficial relationship.

In these stories and countless other ways, Cypress Point’s leaders and characters through the years have sought to perpetuate the good-natured and familial tone of the club in their daily interactions, all represented by its close-knit membership.

Cynthia the Sea Lion’s associates Alice and Muriel, not pictured, became the inspiration for the new logo for The Hay (inset) after a 1937 photo shoot.

caretakers & caddies

FAMILY IS OFTEN THE WORD used to describe the role occupied by Cypress Point staff as caretakers who have served the club’s members, generation after generation, many of whom go by one name, like Frank, Lola, or Mark, and Gregorio or Manuel.

Mrs. Johanna Guthrie, the first manager upon the clubhouse’s opening in 1930 (p. 132) was hired in her role because she was “known to many original members from San Francisco as having been a very discreet and successful bootlegger in that city.” She was succeeded in 1935 by Miss Frances Baker, who remained in her position until 1943, when the club closed during World War II.

Clubhouse operations were overseen after the war by Lawrence Mignano as the steward. Mignano joined the staff as a waiter the day the clubhouse opened on September 20, 1930. He remained in charge until his retirement in 1968. “Lawrence played no favorites and all followed his rules,” the previous club history recalled. “He will be well remembered for making certain one was at the table for lunch by 2:00 and at the table for dinner by 8:00.” In the early 1970s the club briefly hired a general manager, Captain E. M. Fagan, described in the history as, “A retired British officer who was expected to emulate the club secretary at British golf clubs. He didn’t, so the management of the Clubhouse, after a short interlude, went to Sam Solis.”

Sam was a member of a Spanish family from Seville that came to Monterey in 1920 after the first World War. He began as a caddie when the club opened and later became caddiemaster for a time in 1937, after working in Monterey canneries for six years. With the exception of the war years, Sam worked under Lawrence Mignano and then largely as steward until his retirement in 1976. A man of many talents, Salvator “Sam” Solis’s everlasting gift to club lore is the famous “Sam’s Special,” once described as “a delicious concoction of rum that has soothed many a weary golfer.”

Opposite: Henry Puget, on the 16th hole circa 1971, was Cypress Point’s golf professional from 1931 to 1971.

sam’s special

The original “Sam’s Special,” created in the late 1960s by longtime Club Steward Sam Solis, is a “delicious concoction” of two dark rums, sweet and sour mix, and powdered sugar, blended with ice. Though a “Sam’s Special” can be made anywhere – if one knows the recipe – the missing ingredient will always be the experience of enjoying this drink on one of the club’s terraces overlooking Cypress Point with the Pacific Ocean beyond.

Following Sam Solis and Lawrence Mignano would have been difficult for anyone, and after a small handful of stewards had brief stays over the next decade, in 1987 Allan Morrison was elevated to the role of clubhouse manager, having joined the dining room staff several years before. In recent years Allan has been supported in the role by his son, Assistant Manager Chris Morrison.

After World War II, the duties of steward and assistant secretary became two positions. Mary Piercy served as the club’s assistant secretary until 1966, succeeded by Phyllis Krystal and then Barbara Glasco in 1984. Since 2000, Heidi Jamison has assumed the role of club administrator, later joined by Controller Brittney Dexel.

When Cypress Point opened, Marion Hollins installed her favorite caddie, Adrian Wilson, as the “general golf factotum” in charge of the golf shop, maintenance of the course, and collection of green fees. Shortly thereafter, Jack Morris occupied a brief term as golf professional until 1930, but in 1931, Henry Puget was hired. During Henry’s first week as the golf professional, it was reported that not a single person played the course. An accomplished golfer who once set the course record, Henry was

described as being “extraordinarily well suited to the position.” Puget held the role until retiring in 1971 after forty years in his post.

“Henry worked by himself,” recalled Joey Solis in an oral history interview. Joey was the brother of Sam and caddiemaster from 1947 to 1980. “Miss Baker would work in the office on Mondays when Henry had his day off. The only tournament in those days was the Saturday Raincheck. Henry wasn’t making any money, so he decided to work at a defense plant during the war for nine months. After the war, Harry Hunt and Sam Morse said, ‘Henry, you can have the job back.’ But there was still no play, and they couldn’t get any greenkeepers, so not only did he work in the pro shop, but he had to cut greens.”

“Henry was brought up the old-fashioned way,” Joey Solis continued. “You had to be a pro, and you got there at seven in the morning, and you didn’t leave until seven at night. Nobody wanted to work for him. I threatened to quit. Henry would never let you go home. Henry was afraid for his job.

Those days there were not any jobs in Monterey.”

Jim Langley (p. 252–253) succeeded Puget in 1971, serving until his retirement in 2005. Since 2006, Langley’s former assistant Casey Reamer has been just the third golf professional in the position at Cypress Point since 1931. In addition to assuming his mentor’s amiable qualities and warm spirit, Reamer joined Ben Hogan (p. 271) and Jim Langley, among others, as the course record holders with a spectacular round of 63 in August 2006, matching Langley’s own effort in 1978.

Jim Langley

“WELCOME HOME” was the phrase Jim Langley used in greeting nearly everyone he met at Cypress Point.

jim langley

Given his warmth and genuine interest in the thousands of people who crossed the threshold of his shop as the golf professional from 1971 to 2005, there’s a reason nearly everyone has a Jim Langley story.

As an embodiment of the club’s values — unexpectedly approachable and accommodating to the nervous newcomer, friendly and familial, all with a quiet dignity and strong respect for the club’s rules — Jim Langley more than any single individual after the founders, shaped the experience so many members and guests have had at Cypress Point in recent memory.

“Cypress is traditional, conservative, small,” Langley said in 1995 to Jim Nantz, who later became a member.

“It’s like a small family. The staff feels that way. Every club is unique, but Cypress has that energy. Maybe exclusive to some degree, but very casual and informal for the members.”

Langley’s attempts as a touring golfer lasted from 1965 to 1970, when he read in a local newspaper about an opening to replace Henry Puget in 1971. At the time, Jim was working in the lettuce fields of his native Salinas.

He seemed to have it all: the lean, tall build of a 1959 national champion basketball player at UC Berkeley; the good looks and charm of a guy who married a cheerleader, his beloved wife Lou; a golf game good enough to have tried to make it on tour for a few years and still shoot the course record 63 at Cypress Point in 1978; the easy manner and generous smile of a man deeply secure in his personal faith.

All of which came before the accident on November 5, 1987. That evening, Langley and club President Bill Borland were driving to play in a match at the San Francisco Golf Club when their borrowed car ran out of gas near the Bernal Road exit on Highway 101.

As they were pushing the car along the side of the road, Langley was struck by a motorist and thrown out of sight, undis -

covered until some time later, suffering permanent damage to his right arm and right leg, and a collapsed lung. “I have two birthdays,” Jim Langley said. “My birth date, and then November 5th. My second chance.”

During his recovery, the club remained faithful throughout the eight intensive surgeries required to regain enough use of his arm and leg to play golf and teach lessons again,

even if it was only with one arm. His spirit never failed. Of the innumerable lessons he gave through the years, Langley made the decision never to charge members for his services, which often makes up a significant portion of many professionals’ salaries. This transformed a business relationship into a personal one, though he never called members by their first names, despite many being close friends.

“I feel very privileged to have walked this way,” Jim said when asked what occupied his thoughts on daily course walks (p. 254), or when he placed a golf ball in remembrance on the post at the 15th hole, his favorite spot on the property (p. 212). Some 241 members attended his retirement.

In spite of being the head professional for thirty-four years with an office just yards away, and later elected an Honorary Member of the club upon his retirement, Jim could count on one hand the number of times he set foot inside the clubhouse, though he was invited to do so on countless occasions by members. “It’s their club,” he always said. Perhaps the greatest legacy beyond Jim’s personal touch was his devotion to the restoration of Dr. MacKenzie’s original design at Cypress Point. The process of rediscovering Julian Graham’s historic photographs began with Jim in the mid-1990s, and he personally supported the ongoing efforts as a consulting member of the club’s Green Committee.

The first greenkeeper, Joe Benoit, managed the golf course from its opening, staying in his role until 1936 with a salary ranging from $175 to $200 a month. He was succeeded by F. A. “Tony” Layton, a local resident from Pacific Grove. Layton joined the staff in 1928 and was the superintendent after Benoit until 1974.

“Tony was a good mechanic,” said Joey Solis, “and so was Manuel Cardoza. Manuel could take that motor apart and put it back together. But Tony could get a book, read it, and tell anybody what to do. He was really smart. I’ll never forget when Tony came out of the service and came to the pro shop. I was caddying at the time. Tony wanted the job, and Mr. Harry Hunt said, ‘Are you the greenskeeper who was here before the war?’ Tony said yes. Mr. Hunt said, ‘You got the job. You start tomorrow.’ Tony said, ‘Let me get my things. I just got out of the army.’ ”

Manuel Cardoza followed Tony Layton in 1974, working until his retirement in 1992. “Manuel Cardoza was the smartest man I ever knew,” said Jim Langley in his 2008 oral history interview for the club. “He served Cypress Point for thirty-five years, and Manuel and I still have a close friendship.”

In the mid-1990s a series of coincidences came together to restore Cypress Point’s golf course to what it is today: a faithful tribute to the original design by Dr. Alister MacKenzie. Jeff Markow was hired as the new superintendent in 1993 and MacKenzie’s lost manuscript, The Spirit of St. Andrews, was published in 1995, leading to a renewal of interest in his work and philosophies. Throughout the 1990s and beyond, major projects related to the rebuilding of seawalls on holes 15 through 17 were

overseen by Markow and Green Committees led from the mid-1990s to 2022 by Fred Vogel, Mickey Poole, Fred Gruber, and Jim Hoak, each of whom contributed to replacing irrigation and drainage systems and rebuilding Cypress Point’s intricate bunkers (below) to reflect the architectural details captured in Julian Graham’s historic photos. The sensitive restoration of each bunker was done entirely in house by Markow’s experienced team of greenkeepers and shapers.

“Jim Langley was the backstop for all decisions,” said Jeff Markow. “We started calling Jim ‘Dr. MacKenzie,’ because he kept bringing up all the doctor’s perceptions and prescriptions.” The creation of “Then and Now” photo albums by club Secretary Jim Vorhes in the 1990s, along with the publication in 2000 of Geoff Shackelford’s book featuring Graham’s glass-plate negatives discovered in the U. C. Berkeley library, all served to increase member appreciation for what could be gained by restoring the course, a commitment to stewardship that continues to this day.

Cypress Point’s caddies are an institution unto themselves, overseen for decades by the Solis brothers. “Joey and Sam Solis were legends at Cypress Point,” said Jim Langley. “Joey was the power behind-the-scenes, the ‘king maker’ in so many ways. The Solis Brothers had a lot to do with how the club was run.” Working from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. six days a week as caddiemaster from 1947 to 1980, Joey Solis soon became identified with the soul of the club. He continued overseeing the caddie corps part time until his retirement in 1986. Jim Langley and Joey Solis collaborated to shape the family atmosphere that still exists at Cypress Point to this day.

“Before World War II, it would be nothing to have two or three or four days without anybody playing golf,” said Solis. Cypress Point caddies developed a reputation that made them beloved by members and asked for by guests. Not only were they often good players who knew every blade of grass, they tended to know their players better than the player’s fellow members,

“When we had the first Crosby,” said Solis, “that’s when I hired Johnny Rosa, Bob Villanes, Bart, and Turk. Them days Cypress Point wasn’t well known.” Bob “Flamingo” Villanes and Frank “Turk” Archdeacon, often better known by their nicknames, became famous caddies who would get called up to loop at Pasatiempo during matches when there weren’t enough caddies in Santa Cruz. “They made so many loops,” said Solis, “they got tired and came back to Cypress Point saying, ‘We want a day off!’ ” The old-time caddie ranks included “Trixie” Balesteiri, Jimmy Tyree, “Black Bart” Romano, the Buckley brothers, and Frank Shea (opposite). In recent years, Vince Lucido and Stacy Richards led “The List” of caddie seniority, as it is known within the golf shop. Other familiar caddie names recalled from the past included “Coop” and “Merlin,” or Johnny and Matt Roman, the latter of whom started when he was only ten years old and made money carrying around a player’s camera instead of a golf bag. As of the 2025 Walker Cup, Ray Sterbick held the No. 1 position, having caddied in the 1981 Walker Cup and been profiled in The Golfer’s Journal as “The Last Camper” (above).

For several months in 1982, Ray Sterbick occupied a camp by the 16th tee.

The record of known holes-in-one on the 16th is just that: known instances. Given the generous access to the course caddies have enjoyed, more than one ace is rumored to have been made by caddies. “Every once in a while, the caddies would get restless, and they would go down to the 16th and try to go for the green,” said Joey Solis. “When Bob Villanes went down there and made a hole-inone, there wasn’t any doubt that he did. He was with someone else, but they kept it quiet. They didn’t want Henry Puget to know that they crept on the golf course.” Caddie Laurent Ruffie actually made it on the Men’s Locker Room board in 2007 after recording the nineteenth known ace.

As a traditional walking club, Cypress Point requires golfers to employ a caddie. This supports a roster of approximately thirty regular caddies who form part of the club’s extended family.

traditions & events

ALTERNATING BETWEEN SLEEPY AND LIVELY, the daily rhythms in the life of the club are often governed by Cypress Point’s robust calendar of social events and tournaments, each of which have their own continually evolving traditions.

Occurring between the high points of the tournament season, which begins in the spring and peaks in the fall, a given day at Cypress Point could involve a handful of rounds, a few lunches on the Hollins Terrace in good weather, and the presence of a plate of freshly baked chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin cookies in the Morse Room, temptingly positioned between understated championship trophies for men and women. The day concludes with a sunset view accompanied by cocktails for anyone playing later in the afternoon — or perhaps those who wanted still more golf on the six-hole “Whisky Loop” that begins on the first and finishes on holes 14 through 18.

While the early days of club tournaments featured only Saturday “Raincheck” mix-ups, with groups made by Henry Puget, that tradition has been revived with Saturday Matches and a Clambake series of events designed to allow members to enjoy the club regularly without having to bring a game with them.

Historical tournaments like the Heffelfinger or Fall Guys have been replaced by the growing importance of a number of invitational tournaments in a variety of formats, encouraging members to share the club with friends in the best of the temperamental seaside weather. These three-day events generally feature an opening practice round, two days of fourball matches — with at least one clubhouse dinner and lunch in traditional attire — followed by an informal, concluding gathering at the Picnic Grounds. The formats for the invitationals, often held in the prime months of April, May, and October, exist for both men and women, along with mixed gatherings that promote a social atmosphere with an inviting competitive environment designed to provide enjoyment for all.

For many multi-generation members, an annual highlight has been August’s Father-Son foursomes weekend, the club’s largest and most popular event with more than 150 participants. It subsequently grew under Tony Ridder’s presidency to include a Mother-Daughter tournament envisioned by Connie Ridder.

An outgrowth of the Father-Son tournament, held concurrently with the club’s Annual Meeting in early August, is the unique trophy of the Montrachet Cup (opposite), begun in 2018 and contested by sons of members on the Friday afternoon. This new event inspired the popular and complementary Tequila Cup for daughters. Another newly formed tournament pairs Parent-Child teams consisting of opposite sexes against one another in a fun and friendly event.

While Cypress Point does have club championships for men, women, and seniors — and winning the competition is highly valued among those who participate — it is not a club inclined to display many honor boards or prominent lists of achievements on its walls. Discreetly positioned trophies and plaques exist in the locker rooms, but are not a general feature in the club’s social spaces. The club championships occur during the annual October Members Weekend, a popular new tradition begun in the early 2000s under Sam Reeves’s chairmanship of the Golf & Tournament Committee. An additional Members Weekend was later added in May to meet increasing demand.

Late June is marked by the Hook & Eye the week after the U.S. Open, an invitational for members and guests of the club with an unusual name that began in the early 1930s (p.126–127). Though discontinued during World War II, the Hook & Eye was revived again in 1968 as a replacement for The Swallows, which began in 1948 as an invention of Sam Morse that brought together members of a variety of clubs through the Del Monte Golf & Country Club. As an

Cypress Point Club

THE CLUB’S VISUAL IDENTITY has gone through a variety of iterations over the last century. The initial corporate seal was nothing more than a circle with the club’s name and incorporation date of July 26, 1927.

Early club letterhead consisted of plain block typography, often in Copperplate font, which inspired the style of this book. The 1951 creation of a new run of membership certificates brought about the distinctively stylized, mid-century font that is still used (above, header).

The earliest iterations of a logo featured primarily as blazer patches, either with a shield bearing an impressionistic cypress tree as worn in photos of Sam Morse, or a more casually illustrated version of the 16th green from the 1960s (above, right).

The formal and traditional “CPC” seal with crossed clubs, either with or without an ornate oak leaf border (right), was a creation of the 1980s. The modified version without the border has been used as the frontispiece of membership rosters for decades, through the current day.

Logoed merchandise became a phenomenon during the Jim Langley era and club lore dictates that the logo featuring an illustrated tree with script font underneath (below right), dates to the 1980s when Langley observed a similar image on, of all things, a local maintenance service truck passing by and began a new tradition. An updated version of that logo appears as a singular image on items reserved for member use, such as club blazers, but with the script font added for guests.

outside group, The Swallows stopped playing at Cypress Point for several years in the early 1970s following Sam Morse’s death, but the relationship was eventually revived and continues to this day, along with other longstanding events like an invitational for the U.S. Seniors, which began in 1970.

Though recent decades have seen fewer outside events as a result of external decisions governing the use of private clubs in California, in its first few decades Cypress Point participated in hosting rounds for various state amateurs and other competitions. The club has sought to continue its support for amateur golf through select collegiate events and the Walker Cup Matches being held at the club in 1981 and 2025 (See p. 274–290).

Most importantly, Cypress Point was always intended as a place for its members to enjoy with each other and share with friends. An example of this is the traditional New Year’s Day Brown Bag Tournament, which began casually among a few members who brought their own forms of entertainment and sustenance to have a scramble with a picnic on the terrace, so as to relieve the burden on staff members during the holiday. The informal success of the event made it an official fixture on the club’s calendar beginning in 1993. Around 1980, the Great Pumpkin Tournament, held annually near Halloween, was begun by Jane “Punkie” Dart in honor of her affection for Charlie Brown. The Dart family, through Jane Dart Tucker, has continued to provide prizes for the tournament.

The aforementioned Heffelfinger Tournament was a major event in the club’s social season from its beginnings in 1937 through 1980, and ended up having two trophies for an unknown reason. Hailing from Minneapolis, Frank Heffelfinger and his sons George and Totten were an annual presence in Pebble Beach in the early days and supporters of the club during hard times. Tot Heffelfinger (p. 85) went on to become president of the USGA in the early 1950s, one of a number of USGA presidents through the years who have been members of the club. “Those Heffelfingers played nearly every morning at Cypress Point,” recalled caddiemaster Joey Solis.“We had a slogan back then, ‘Never let it be said that Heffelfinger quits in the rain.’” Continuing the USGA connection, on special occasions during U.S. Opens at Pebble Beach for both men and women, Cypress Point has hosted gatherings of past champions, as during the 2019 U.S. Open and 2023 U.S. Women’s Open.

In 2007 and again in 2024, Cypress Point took its turn as host of the annual gathering of the Alister MacKenzie Society, welcoming participants from other MacKenzie-designed courses around the world. A tournament and several social occasions have included a dinner that stretched across every room of the clubhouse. As part of the traditional historian’s presentation given by the host club, the 2024 edition prepared by the club’s archivist and historian, David Normoyle, addressed publicly for the first time the question of Seth Raynor’s initial proposed routing map from 1925 and what exactly MacKenzie and Hunter contributed at Cypress Point. That presentation formed the basis of this book’s analysis of the design (p. 60–61), comparisons of the two routings (p. 182–183), and MacKenzie’s Central Dune feature that defines the middle of the course (p. 194–196).

Recent years have seen a number of innovations beyond the traditional gatherings at the Picnic Ground. At the 2024 Hook & Eye Tournament, for the first time a spectacular dinner took place on the 16th fairway under lights stretching out to reach the cypress tree. In April 2025, more than one hundred Cypress Point women came together for an event called “The Happening,” staged to honor a century since Marion Hollins secured the option to the land at Cypress Point in February 1925. With a tournament, full slate of lectures, and social events for golfers and non-golfers alike, one of the many highlights was a Sakura Blossom Lunch staged along the walkway to the 16th hole through the cypress grove (left).

The ladies of Cypress Point have had their own golf association called the Otters for posting of handicaps and organizing events, going back to its founding in the 1990s by Sandy Laughlin, when she was golf captain. As prizes for their events, a wonderful collection of glass trophies in a variety of marine animal shapes dating to the 1970s is on display in the MacKenzie Library.

For a club that began with a single “Raincheck” golf tournament on Saturday afternoons in the 1930s, and which evolved to have an extensive calendar of events spanning from the first of January’s “Brown Bag” to the end-of-season Great Pumpkin Tournament and holiday events, Cypress Point has continued to serve the role envisioned by its founders, enhanced by each succeeding generation of members. It is a place where people gather with friends to enjoy the traditions that were present when they joined but, as appropriate, to add new chapters to the story of the club.

AT THE AGE OF THIRTY-SIX, on December 14, 1939, entertainer Bing Crosby was elected a member of Cypress Point Club. After the war years, Crosby relocated his “Clambake” pro-am, played at the Rancho Santa Fe Golf Club near San Diego from 1937–1942, up to Pebble Beach in 1947, in the process forever changing how golf was perceived on the Monterey Peninsula.

Bing Crosby’s name appears in Cypress Point records on multiple occasions in connection with his namesake tournament. In 1967, two years after the adjacent aerial photo was taken, the minutes reported a conversation with then-President Charles de Bretteville, who had instructed Mr. Crosby that, “the Cypress Point Club preferred to have the ocean played as part of the golf course as a regular condition,

Above: “Der Bingel,” Bing Crosby spectating at his namesake tournament

Opposite: Aerial view of The Crosby Tournament at Cypress Point, 1965

including tournaments and specifically during the Crosby Tournament. This preference was reaffirmed by the members of the Board present. Instructions were given to the Rules and Grounds Committee to have the colored stakes, which were installed at the request of the PGA, indicating that the ocean was a water hazard, be removed.” That rule remained in effect until the 2019 changes to the Rules of Golf.

An earlier mention from March 1963 recorded that: “Extensive damage to native shrubs adjacent to the golf course was noted by the directors. Attributed largely to the onslaught of hords [sic] of genus errabundas erraticus attracted to the area by the Crosby Tournament, it was moved and adopted that come Crosby time in 1964, something should be done.” Errabundas erraticus can be loosely described as spectators known for their “wandering wildness.” Sadly, there is no record from 1964 as to what exactly was done to remediate such actions.

“The Crosby had quite a bit of an impact on Cypress Point,” recalled Joey Solis. “A lot of my friends would buy a ticket to see Cypress on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday. During the tournament, it was not too much fun to watch a group here because of the crowds. So the practice

rounds got to be real popular. A lot of my friends found out, ‘Oh, you work here, Joe? What are the chances of playing golf?’ I had a lot more friends after a while.”

By the late 1980s, Cypress Point’s 6,536 yards ranked as the second shortest of the fifty-eight courses then played during the PGA Tour season. However, figures compiled from 1983–1985 ranked it as the fifth-toughest course on Tour. The 16th hole was ranked as the single hardest of 828 ranked holes, with the 14th ranking seventh and Hole No. 8 ranking tenth.

So many of the famous tournament incidents at Cypress Point occurred during what became known as “Crosby Weather,” when winter storms from the south made reaching the 17th hole in two shots, or sometimes three, and playing golf on the exposed oceanside holes around Cypress Point all but impossible. The arrival of snow at Pebble Beach in 1962 caused the postponement of Sunday’s final round, prompting the colorful golfer Jimmy Demaret to comment memorably, “I know I got

loaded last night, but how did I wind up at Squaw Valley?” Ed “Porky” Oliver’s sixteen strokes on the 16th hole in 1954 and Ed Dougherty’s eleven-putt on the 17th hole in 1990 in 40-plus mph winds serve to illustrate the point.

On the opposite side of the scoreboard, Jerry Pate recorded the only hole-in-one on the 16th in tournament history using a 1-iron at the 1982 Crosby. Leroy Neiman’s commemorative painting of the scene with Pate’s ball in flight possessed the artist’s trademark abundance of color, but one thing was missing, an error corrected when Pate told Neiman to change the white dot of paint representing his ball on its way to the hole to orange for his preferred orange golf ball.

Three commemorative objects — the 1-iron, an orange ball signed by Pate, and a print of the painting — are displayed in the Men’s Locker Room.

Cypress Point member Clint Eastwood first played in The Crosby in 1963 and took the helm of the event after Bing’s passing in 1977. He served as chairman of the Monterey Peninsula Foundation, in addition to assuming other local leadership roles that included mayor of Carmel and was one of the original Lone Cypress Partners involved in the 1999 purchase of Pebble Beach, led by Peter Ueberroth and other current and future Cypress Point members. Numerous other members of Cypress Point have served on charitable boards, tournament committees, and volunteered to raise significant resources for local charities in the forty-four years Cypress Point Club participated in the tournament.

Those relationships continued to endure with members like Bill Borland, J. B. McIntosh, and Doug MacKenzie serving in leading roles of the Monterey Peninsula Foundation. Many Cypress Point members have participated in the tournament and its successor, the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

The Match

FOR MANY YEARS, the details were known only by those who were there. A big money match at Cypress Point between two star amateurs and two veteran professionals during the week of the 1956 Crosby showcased some of the best golf ever played. The story of Eddie Lowery and George Coleman’s bet, arranged over a dinner on Monday and played on Tuesday January 10, 1956, received a larger-than-life treatment when it was profiled in a bestselling book from 2009 by author Mark Frost called, The Match.

Lowery and Coleman, both Cypress Point members, set the stakes and terms for the contest. Famed for being Francis Ouimet’s ten-year-old caddie at Brookline in 1913, Lowery backed amateurs Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward. Coleman, Cypress Point’s Green Committee Chairman in the 1950s, backed professional golfers Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson, winners of fourteen major titles between them.

“I told Mark Frost the truth that I had never seen that many people at Cypress Point,” remembered Joey Solis, longtime caddiemaster. “Hogan said, ‘We don’t want to explode the thing.’ Coleman was winking at me, making sure that everybody knew about it. It grew as the match went along. Must have been about four thousand people.”

Hogan set a course record of 63. The players registered twenty-seven birdies and an eagle by Hogan on the 10th, which proved decisive. Hogan and Venturi both birdied the last, halving the hole and securing for the professionals a 1-up victory in which their side shot a 14-under-par 58 to the 13-under-par score of 59 for the amateurs.

Above: Professionals Byron Nelson & Ben Hogan, both age forty-three

Center: Reproduction of scorecard from The Match, January 10, 1956

Below: Amateurs Ken Venturi, twenty-four & Harvie Ward, thirty

Promotional poster from 1990 by Hank Ketcham and Charles Schulz, the final year of “The Crosby” at Cypress Point

The club’s final year in the three-course rotation for The Crosby, along with Pebble Beach and Spyglass Hill, was 1990. The circumstances of the club’s departure from the rota were described as follows in the club’s 1996 history:

1990 marked the last year the tournament was played at Cypress Point. The Club, as usual, offered the exclusive use of the course to the Monterey Peninsula Golf Foundation for one week to enable the tournament to be held there over three days. The Foundation, in its negotiations with the Professional Golfers Association [PGA TOUR], was advised that the supposedly restrictive standards of the Club would not permit the PGA [Tour] to play there, an interesting position considering that those restrictions simply are that there shall not be more than 250 members, that one must be of a certain age to be a member, and that one must be duly proposed and seconded by existing members who have been members for at least two years. The PGA [Tour], however, desired a public acknowledgment of a significant change in membership policy, possibly accompanied by an immediate gesture in this direction. The Club declined to do so.

Today, the membership at Cypress Point has evolved naturally through the friendships of its members, forming a diverse group that reflects golf and modern society. While no longer a direct participant in the tournament, the club continues to look for ways to support the amateur game (p. 274).

For a celebrity pro-am that was at times described as a weeklong cocktail party with golf played in between, there are no shortage of anecdotes that have filled the pages of newspapers, magazines, tournament programs, and even a few commemorative books. The story that most often springs to mind is Jack Lemmon’s “Human Chain” from 1987. Lemmon, a beloved actor and long-suffering tournament participant, failed to make the full carry with his tee shot on the 16th hole. He decided to play the next shot from the cliff’s edge, despite the peril it invited. Secured at his belt by Clint Eastwood, Peter Jacobsen, and Greg Norman, Lemmon’s successful recovery shot entered Crosby lore.

the walker cups

1981

JAY SIGEL AND PETER MCEVOY, two of the most accomplished amateurs from their respective countries, headlined the 1981 Walker Cup Match at Cypress Point. They were front of mind in the lead-up to the 50th Match, given their recent passings in the spring of 2025.

The 1981 American team, featuring future major champions Hal Sutton and Corey Pavin, was captained by Jim Gabrielsen. His opposite for Great Britain and Ireland, Rodney Foster, leaned on upstarts Phil Walton and seventeen-year old Ronan Rafferty, the youngest-ever GB&I player at the time, to knock out the favored pair of Sigel and Sutton in the opening match. Future Walker Cup Captains Bob Lewis Jr. and Jim Holtgrieve claimed wins on the first

Opposite: An unidentified match on the 16th hole, below the clubhouse, at the 1981 Walker Cup

day, spurring the USA to earn an 8-to-4 lead over GB&I, controlling both the morning foursomes and afternoon singles.

Sutton and Sigel again lost the opening foursome on day two, this time to Roger Chapman and Paul Way. The GB&I staged a rally, winning the morning session 3 to 1 to go into the final eight matches down by just two points. The strength of the Americans was too much in the singles, however, winning the afternoon session by a margin of 6 to 2, for an overall victory of 15 to 9.

In addition to the sterling weather and a friendly atmosphere for spectators, a highlight of the competition was honoring beloved Cypress Point member Jack Westland as the “Honorary” Captain

of the USA Team, just a few months before his passing. Westland was a successful amateur dating to the 1920s, playing in three Walker Cups and serving as USA Captain in 1961. After being the U.S. Amateur runner-up to Francis Ouimet in 1931, he became the oldest champion ever at age fortyseven when he won in 1952, the same year he was elected to Congress, where he served six terms.

Though familiar to television viewers from the Crosby Clambake, the 1981 Walker Cup broadcast offered a glimpse of Cypress Point nationally on ABC Sports. The USA’s leading scorer with three undefeated points was Jodie Mudd, who won both his singles. Corey Pavin also went undefeated with two wins on the first day and a half in the anchor match after the competition had been decided. Roger Chapman was the leading light for GB&I, earning three points from four matches and claiming victims in Bob Lewis and Jay Sigel while besting Hal Sutton twice on the final day.

2025

Before a shot was ever struck in competition at the 50th Walker Cup Match, it felt like something transformational occurred at Cypress Point Club. As familiar and famous as Cypress Point has been since the golf course was first developed a century before, somehow everyone at the Opening Ceremony sensed they were experiencing a new era yet to come.

For a brief moment, the world of golf turned its attention to what was both a celebration of the amateur game more grand in scale than in 1981, and a long exhale for so many catching their first meaningful glimpses of Cypress Point after years of being kept at arm’s length. As the club warmly welcomed several thousand fortunate guests to its grounds for the first time in more than a generation, the game seemed to embrace Cypress Point right back with even greater fervor, through stories, new-media features, and an intense focus. Encouraged by USGA President Fred Perpall, a newly elected member of the club, those in attendance felt the same sensation of gratitude that comes from standing by the plaque on the 17th tee (p. 246) and contemplating its true meaning and message.

Opposite: The 13th and 14th holes during the Walker Cup

Previous pages: The Opening Ceremony of the 50th Walker Cup Match

The Opening Ceremony took place on the first fairway above Fan Shell Beach. Each speaker shared remarks appropriate to the dignity of their respective organizations: the USGA, R&A, and Cypress Point Club. President George W. Bush (above, left; below, left) entertained the gathered thousands with humorous reflections on his great-grandfather George Herbert Walker, founder of the Match and donor of the Cup itself in 1921. It marked the fourth time the forty-third President has attended a Walker Cup.

Recognition of distinguished guests gathered included past Walker Cup players and the club’s many volunteer committees led by Walker Cup Chairman Peter Barker (above, left), along with his Executive Committee of Dick Barrett, George Still (below, left), and Brad Krey. As a member of the club’s Welcoming Committee, Condoleezza Rice (center, left), offered her voice to a video created by the USGA featuring every hole at Cypress Point.

Credit for the Walker Cup’s return after fortyfour years is shared by many but was authored by Peter Barker, who during his time as president of the club invited the USGA to consider renewing their relationship.

As chairman, Peter deftly managed questions about how the club might once again host a public event by presenting the 50th Walker Cup as a gift to the game of golf.

Over the course of the week, anticipation had built from the opening “Meet The Teams” dinner at the Beach

Above: President George W. Bush and Peter Barker

Middle: The Cypress Point Club Welcoming Committee

Below: President Bush, Dick Barrett, and George Still

Club overlooking Stillwater Cove with an insightful conversation hosted by Jim Nantz and 1981

Walker Cup team members Hal Sutton and two-time USA Captain Jim Holtgrieve, who recalled scoring the clinching point in 1981 and reflections on their amateur careers.

The daily rhythms of the club’s casual atmosphere persisted through practice rounds until Friday when the grounds swarmed with guests savoring their first views of the course and presenting scenes of people wandering the fairways that had not been seen in many decades, if ever.

The first of four foursomes matches began at 8:00 a.m. Saturday while hundreds gathered around the first tee on a steely gray morning. The sunshine began to break through just as a feisty GB&I team won the opening two matches by unexpected margins and claimed the session by a score of 3 to 1, sparking belief among Captain Dean Robertson’s team in a rare away victory. Somehow the bright blue skies, long shadows, and absence of any appreciable breeze in the afternoon inspired

a fight back from the red-trousered Americans. They stormed out of the break to lead all but one of the eight singles matches at some point, a potentially devastating scenario for GB&I, who rallied to notch 2½ points and took three matches to the final hole.

Team USA won the singles session with 5½ points and several dominant performances. A match-winning par by Jase Summy on the final putt of the day (following pages) took place amid a scene ringed by colorfully dressed spectators on the 18th green, including various major champions, not to mention one dramatically frightened doe deer unaccustomed to the commotion of so many people being in her normally quiet grove of trees overlooking Cypress Point. Appearing on television for the first time in thirty-five years, the course sparkled during a picture-perfect Saturday afternoon on screens around the world through the technology of breathtaking aerial drone coverage.

Trailing by a point going into Sunday, GB&I needed to win the foursomes session to have a chance, and with a 1-up lead through 16 holes their opening duo of Tyler Weaver and Connor Graham seemed poised to steal a second point from the USA’s top partnership of No. 1-ranked amateur Jackson Koivun and his six-foot, nine-inch partner Tommy Morrison. But the USA won the final two holes to flip the match, ensuring the session was tied 2-2, retaining an 8½ to 7½ lead.

With a final 10 points coming from singles play, the traditional strength of the Americans was on display Sunday afternoon as Cypress Point introduced players and spectators alike to her many moods. The glorious morning of sunshine gave way mid-afternoon to an encroaching marine layer, and by the time the early matches reached Cypress Point itself, a heavy bank of fog rolled in leaving more than one game waiting on the 16th tee for enough of a clearing to see the land ahead.

Koivun and Morrison were again emphatic off top, each with respective 3 and 2 victories, and when 2025 U.S. Amateur champion Mason Howell halved the third match with fellow eighteen-yearold Connor Graham, it was a question of which American would claim the winning point.

Veteran Stewart Hagestad, playing in his fifth Walker Cup, struck first. His match-ending birdie putt at the 15th secured the USA’s 13th point, ensuring the Americans would retain the Cup.

Opposite: The eighth hole during Saturday singles

Following pages: Jase Summy, prior to his match-winning putt on the 18th green on Saturday afternoon

In the heavy fog on the 17th with a 1-up lead, Preston Stout hit his approach to within tap-in range (above), and when Luke Poulter failed to convert his birdie putt to extend the match for GB&I, victory was official for the USA. Only Gavin Tiernan won a point for the visiting team in Sunday singles, making the final margin of 17 to 9 appear much greater at first glance than the closely contested nature of the three previous sessions felt to spectators whose hopes for victory rose and fell with each match over the first day and a half.

The celebratory images for the USA on Sunday evening in 2025 were therefore very much like the ones in 1981, only with more fog, coastal mist, and darkness clouding the pictures taken following the closing ceremony and lowering of the flags, as Captain Nathan Smith’s team surrounded him.

In the immediate aftermath of the 50th Walker Cup Match, it’s difficult to forecast the legacy of the event at Cypress Point in the years to come, but if the afterglow is anything to go by, it was an outstanding success. In sharing the course with the world of golf for the first time in many years, Cypress Point extended a warm, if slightly cautious, hand only to receive the unexpected depth of an embrace in return that enveloped the club in three days of blissful celebration.

The 2025 Walker Cup was a celebration of so many things: a celebration of a stunning venue; a celebration of the intimacy of knowledgeable spectators savoring amateur competition at the highest levels; and a celebration one hundred years on of what Sam Morse, Marion Hollins, Roger Lapham, and Dr. Alister MacKenzie created as a gift to golf forevermore.

From 1929 through 1945, every golfer who visited Cypress Point signed the club’s golf register. The first page, pictured on page 81, featured Glenna Collett, Francis Ouimet, and Bobby Jones, between them winners of eighteen USGA Championships. The register was retired in 1945 when it ran out of enough pages for more names.

Fortunately, the final half of the final page was just empty enough for the teams and captains from the 50th Walker Cup Match to sign their names and thus formally complete the book, closing a chapter and a story at Cypress Point a century in the making.

USA TEAM

Nathan Smith (Captain), Jackson Koivun, Tommy Morrison, Michael La Sasso, Ethan Fang, Mason Howell, Jacob Modleski, Stewart Hagestad, Preston Stout, Jase Summy, and Ben James

GB&I TEAM

Dean Robertson (Captain), Stuart Grehan, Eliot Baker, Niall Shiels Donegan, Connor Graham, Dominic Clemons, Tyler Weaver, Gavin Tiernan, Charlie Forster, Cameron Adam, and Luke Poulter

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published by

CYPRESS POINT CLUB, 3150 17 MILE DRIVE, PEBBLE BEACH, CA

Copyright © 2025 Cypress Point Club / ISBN: 000-0-000-00000-0

Printed in the United States of America. First Printing, 2025

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher.

Written and designed by David Normoyle

Principal photography and co-design by Martin Miller

Production and co-design by Larry Hasak / Legendary Publishing & Media Group

Edited by Debbie Falcone

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photography credits

P. 42, © Pebble Beach Company P. 182-3, Maxar ©2025

postscript

a letter to future members

WRITING THIS LETTER is a task fraught with as much peril as attempting to land a golf ball on a spit of land 200 yards across an angry sea. The founding generations faced and overcame challenges that were existential threats to the formation and continuance of the Cypress Point Club. Subsequent members made hard choices when they had to. So, too, will those members yet to come.

Rather than strain for effect, or constrain the creativity of accomplished people we have not met, the entirety of this book is presented as a letter to future members. One hundred years in, these pages represent our best efforts to explain to ourselves and to others what we have come to value about our time at Cypress Point. The pages of all the books in the world could not contain what we should like to say about the beauties and stories of this land, so this will have to do.

Cypress Point truly is a club to which nobody deserves to belong. That sentiment has been carried down through generations of members who figuratively and sometimes literally pinch themselves as they make the turn off 17-Mile Drive, through the winding entrance road, past the green signs, and find an unmarked parking space near the first tee, near the clubhouse, or even on the neatly tended turf of the tumbling lawn if circumstances require.

When interacting with fellow members, guests, staff, and friends, the spirit is familial and easy, as was envisioned by our founders and later reinforced so often by our beloved golf professional Jim Langley, who greeted nearly everyone he met by saying, “Welcome home.”

Yes, the Cypress Point Club has a spectacular and celebrated golf course people travel the world to play, but it is not an accident that the word “golf” was removed from the club’s title as one of the first official acts after being incorporated in 1927. Cypress Point was meant and continues to be that most treasured of institutions: a club for intimate friends who gather to enjoy the beauty of the land, the challenge of the game, and the desire to preserve this place touched with wonder.

— THE BOOK COMMITTEE