Pebble Beach Golf Links - California, U.S.A.

Pebble Beach is to American golf what St. Andrews is to the game in Scotland. This greatest of all American seaside courses leapfrogs across the "Cliffs of Doom" above the cobalt water of the Pacific where the sea lions make their home. Surprisingly, the course was designed in the 1920s by two relative unknowns, California amateur champions Jack Neville and Douglas Grant. They were given the job by Samuel Morse, the grandnephew and namesake of the inventor of the telegraph, whose inspired vision resulted in the environmentally sensitive and exceptionally attractive development of the Monterey Peninsula. Pebble Beach is a favorite of the USGA and has hosted four U.S. Opens, including the particularly memorable 2000 event when Tiger Woods destroyed the field, winning by an astounding 15-stroke margin. Pebble annually hosts the PGA Tour's AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, the event formerly known as the Bing Crosby, and one of the game's great and colorful institutions. The Lodge at Pebble Beach, which overlooks the famous 18th fairway, is one of the world's legendary golf hotels.

Cypress Point Club - California, U.S.A.

The private Cypress Point Club, on California's Monterey Peninsula, is the ravishingly beautiful creation of Alister MacKenzie, the Scottish-born surgeon turned golf course architect. The 231-yard 16th hole, with its daredevil carry to a promontory of green perched above the frothy cauldron of surf below, is the most famous par three in the world. The concept for the hole, however, came not from MacKenzie but from Marion Hollins, the outstanding woman golfer who had won the U.S. Amateur in 1921. Hollins, who had been entrusted with developing the Cypress Point property in 1923, was directly responsible for hiring MacKenzie, and the two became close collaborators. The fairways fringed with ice plant gambol above the sea cliffs and through the groves of wind-warped cypress from which the course takes its name. MacKenzie wrote of the unique Monterey cypress: "It has an elbowed gnarled appearance and is twisted into such fantastic shapes as to be almost frightening. It is even beautiful when dead and the elbowed limbs give the impression of huge white gaunt skeletons of giant men. If one first visits Cypress Point in foggy weather, these weird white skeletons looming out of the mist are so terrifying that they are apt to create a depressing effect which is only dispelled when the sun breaks through the mist and brings to view a wonderful variety of color unsurpassed on any golf course."