Even the game's great courses can be improved

An abiding memory of the 1992 US Open at Pebble Beach is of David Feherty, needing a par finish to make the halfway cut, sending his tee-shot on the 18th into the Pacific Ocean to miss out by a stroke.

Since then, a new sea wall, down the left side of the fairway, is among the changes made for this week's centenary staging of the championship.

The changes to this celebrated stretch on the Monterey Peninsula offer compelling proof that even great courses can be improved. And the improvements to Pebble Beach are quite significant.

Back in 1915, Samuel Morse, nephew of the inventor of the Morse Code, bought 7,000 acres of prime land here, including seven miles of Pacific Ocean front, for $1.3 million. And when Pebble Beach golf course was officially opened in 1918, the construction cost was a relatively modest $66,000.

Amid all this dealing, however, one piece of land eluded Morse. It was the strip which would have allowed the short fifth hole to follow the fourth, along the shore. So the fifth became an undistinguished, inland par three.

When the land eventually became available in 1995, it cost the Pebble Beach company a whopping $8 million. But after splitting it into three lots, retaining the seaside one for a new fifth, they sold the other two lots for $3 million each. As they say, business is business.

The new hole, designed by Jack Nicklaus who captured the US Open here in 1972, is perfectly in tune with the rest of the seaside holes. Cleverly bunkered, it measures 188 yards, which is 22 yards longer than its predecessor, though it plays pretty much the same, given that it is now downhill.

"The two holes are similar in difficulty if you hit a good shot," said Nicklaus. "The missed shot is now punished more severely, however, with the ocean on the right." What he neglected to add was the heightened tension promoted by the new location.

But there is a bonus - for the USGA. The old fifth, which cut a swath inland through the trees, created something of a spectator bottleneck. Now there is considerably more room for spectator movement from the front to the back nine and vice versa. The upshot is that the USGA have been able to increase the overall attendance from 25,000 in 1992 to 32,500 this week.

Meanwhile, the second has been transformed from a relatively easy, 507-yard par five into a formidable, 484-yard par four, so reducing the overall par of the course to 71. The main reason for this change was that a large tree guarding the left side of the green was lost to disease, so making the target readily accessible in two.

For most spectators, however, the focus of attention will be the dramatic, 543- yard 18th hole, which lost a major battle with El Nino when that obstreperous youngster visited these shores early in 1997. But as a result of elaborate reconstruction work, one of the game's finest finishing holes has been strengthened.

It involved a six-month, multimillion dollar fortification effort whereby the Granite Construction Company rebuilt a five-foot wide base along with a new sea wall, before placing four huge rocks along the shoreline. These rocks were fashioned and sculptured to match the rock formations which confront the incoming tides and were then painted to match the existing landscape.

In addition to strengthening the shoreline, the 18th tee-box, where Feherty came to grief eight years ago, has been rebuilt and extended by 30 feet into Carmel Bay. One architectural oddity of the tee is a concrete floor built nine feet below the grass surface.

Meanwhile, the green has been enlarged by 83 square yards, largely to the back left and close to the water, where there will be a new pin placement. This is intended to make players think twice before aiming at the pin with their third shots, especially if poor approach play has left them with anything more than a short iron.

A new tee at the spectacular 10th lengthens the hole from 426 to 446 yards. This is an important 20 yards, as the average hitter can no longer carry his drive onto a wider part of the fairway, beyond where the Pacific pinches on the right. Essentially, the cliffs have been brought back into play, and instead of hitting eight or nine-iron approach shots, players will have to hit six or seven- irons.

Finally, those seeking to draw comparisons between performances here in the AT&T tournament and the US Open should note one particularly salient point: the greens this week will be about two feet faster on the Stimpmeter - about 11.0 - than they were in February and very much firmer.

Footnote: For those Irish house-hunters who may be tempted to look in this direction: a local estate agent informs me that the average asking price for a house here is $1.7 million, and that over 500 houses are currently on the market at prices ranging from $650,000 to $27 million. What was that about the Lotto?