The Links at Spanish Bay has never had the pull of its fellow resort courses on 17-Mile Drive.
Pebble Beach Company
The Links at Spanish Bay, in Pebble Beach, was conceived as a Scottish-inspired course, a cap tip to the old country on the California coast.
In keeping with that theme, a bagpiper plays at sunset by the 18th green. It’s a fitting touch. But a second fiddle would make sense, too. Of the three resort courses along 17-mile Drive (Pebble Beach Golf Links and Spyglass are the other two), Spanish Bay is rarely anyone’s first choice.
Pebble Beach Resorts would like that to change. In late 2023, ownership announced its plans to bring Spanish Bay up to snuff with its siblings through a renovation handled by the architects Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner. At the time, the schedule of that work was up in the air. It isn’t any longer. Last week, a timeline was revealed. The course will close on March 18, 2026, and reopen the following spring, ahead of the 2027 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach.
“Partnering with Gil, Jim and their team gives us the utmost confidence that Spanish Bay will be a must play on par with its fellow courses,” David Stivers, CEO of Pebble Beach Company, said in a statement that accompanied the news.
Hanse and Wagner are not strangers to headline projects. In addition to their original work, which includes such GOLF Magazine Top 100 courses as Ohoopee Match Club, in Georgia, and CapRock Ranch, in Nebraska, they’ve become a go-to duo for big-name restorations and renovations. In California alone, they have orchestrated redos at Los Angeles Country Club, the Olympic Club and Lake Merced Golf Club, among others.
At Spanish Bay, they’ve been given a scenic canvas, along a heavily protected coastline. Designed by the trio of Robert Trent Jones Jr., Tom Watson and Sandy Tatum, and first opened for play in 1987, Spanish Bay was built to both recreate and protect native dunes that had been lost over the decades. Its current routing darts through those dunes, then ducks into to the Del Monte forest before returning to the coast toward its close.
Hanse and Wagner’s work will stay within the original development footprint. Beyond that, few details of their plans have been revealed. But in a video posted by Pebble Beach, Hanse described the potential as “staggering” and said he expects the project to be transformative to both the playability and appearance of the course. Pebble Beach Company, for its part, has said that it expects Spanish Bay to morph from a “1980s era, Scottish-inspired course to a modern California masterpiece.”
Even before Hanse and Wagner start turning earth, other work at Spanish Bay will get underway with the reconstruction of public-access footpaths on the property that were damaged in recent storms. That part of the project will begin this spring, with the course work kicking off early next year. Until then, the bagpiper will keep playing every evening as the sun goes down.
