Facts About Pasatiempo
- Designed by Dr. Alister MacKenzie in 1929 and restored by Tom Doak/Jim Urbina in 2007.
- Annual home of the NCAA’s prestigious Western Intercollegiate championship.
- Ranked 16th nationally on Golf Digest’s Top 100 Public Golf Courses 2018-2019 list.
- Ranked 2nd in California on GolfWeek’s list of the top public courses in each state.
- View Tee Times
First Take on the Golf Course
Pasatiempo is unquestionably one of the finest public-access designs in America. It was the product of a collaboration between its visionary (Marion Hollins) and Dr. Alister MacKenzie—the famed architect of Royal Melbourne, Cypress Point and Augusta National. Not surprisingly, given the strengths of these other world-class designs, Pasatiempo features some of the most intricate green complexes an American public golfer will ever see.
Pasatiempo is not a particularly long golf course, but the player will face an ever-increasing challenge as he closes in on the putting surfaces. Most of the greens are multi-layered with varied hole locations, each of which provides a unique test that makes the course fascinating to play each and every day. The creative player will be able to use the dramatic contours to his advantage, but the wayward golfer will find that these same slopes hyper-complicate the task at hand when the approach is not properly placed.
Observations About the Golf Course
- The severe undulation of the greens requires players at Pasatiempo to control their distance, flight and spin on approach shots into the putting surfaces. Much like Augusta National, the repellant slopes that guard the various sub-sections within many of the greens can compound even the most minute of errors.
- Those same green contours make Pasatiempo one of the most taxing short-game tests in golf. Approach shots left on the short side are likely to yield par saves only to the most expertly played chip or pitch.
- The second nine is beautifully routed around and across a natural barranca that creates an idyllic setting for the inward half of the golf course.
- Players should not be fooled by the relatively short yardage they see on the scorecard. Between the heavy Northern California air and the frequent elevation change found on the property, there are few courses listed at 6500 yards that play longer.
- The course has a lovely collection of diverse one-shot holes that culminates with the eighteenth across the barranca to a greensite set in the valley below the clubhouse.
- Pasatiempo is a thinking man’s golf course and the more imaginative the player the more pleasure they will extract from the experience of battling the course’s artistic green complexes.
- The late afternoon around Pasatiempo is a magical time to play the golf course as the low-hanging sun filters through the beautiful cypress trees that frame the majority of the holes.
Our Favorite Holes
Choosing a crop of favorite holes is no bargain at Pasatiempo as the course presents a plethora of nominees for that list. Nearly all of the par threes are worth mentioning, but our favorite of the group is the shortest of the bunch.
#15
The fifteenth measures just a shade over 140 yards and plays to a lovely greensite framed by towering trees. The putting surface meanders around a crop of menacing front bunkers and works its way from the higher right side to its lower left side. Hole locations on the high side are well defended by those bunkers while the shorter hole locations on the low side bring the barranca into play.
#16
The sixteenth hole has one of the most awe-inspiring greens in America. Depending on how you define a “tier,” the putting surface on this shortish par-four has at least four of them and demands precision from any player who seeks to walk off the hole with a birdie three. Inability to properly gauge the distance on the second shot will result in an incredibly difficult two-putt and missing the green entirely will demand absolute perfection to save par.
#11
The eleventh and twelfth holes run parallel to one another and are beautifully separated by the barranca that features so prominently on so many of the holes on the inward half. Both demand an accurate tee shot to give the player a chance to find the putting surface with his second. The latter of the two requires a careful study of the hole location as the wrong side of the fairway to the wrong hole location can leave a player blocked out by the trees that frame both sides of the hole.
Final Thoughts About Pasatiempo
Pasatiempo is an absolute masterpiece crafted by one of the best artists in golf course design. It is worth every minute of the drive from San Francisco and the traveler who is in the area to play the courses at Pebble Beach will not regret a detour to Santa Cruz to experience this public-access gem.