Pacific Grove Golf Links — Attraction in Pacific Grove

Legends of the Autobahn Auto Event-Pacific Grove Golf Course:

This annual event is held at and on the Pacific Grove Golf Course, rented by the show sponsors from the golf course. I'm sure that this is a sensitive relationship to maintain, in that cars leave a very different mark behind that a golf ball does...! What a privilege to have such an iconic location! I arrived at the auto show at 6:45 am and was already about 12th in line. Well organized, friendly staff to guide the cars and drivers to their appointed location for the event. It was the usual low marine layer/fog, which burned off about 10:00 am into a blazingly beautiful day!

I say again about the staff, because the next day, I took the car to the Quail Lodge Auto show, and while it was interesting to view the cars and listen to the marketing of these high end automobiles, the access is a REAL pain in the you know what. AND the staff with some exceptions of the contractors who were setting up the evening before, were not very friendly or engaging. Exception: the events location where one picks up the goodies bag of items. My wife who has a disability that is not visible was castigated for walking what she thought would be an OK short cut and was rudely pushed into some wood chips and brush. I watched another encounter with other guests, who were treated the same abrupt way. I found the staff generally either short or indifferent, and "mailing in" their time at what is supposed to be one of the premier events of the Monterey Auto Week high-end event calendar. Credit goes to a California Highway Patrolman who strode up, and after listening, was kind enough to help us. I would NEVER attend this event again. For the cost of attending, they should be falling all over themselves for the guests. Too bad.

Back to the Autobahn event - great people, more informal, great owners who are only too happy to talk about their cars and experiences with them - good and bad. The owners next to us had driven their 1972 2002 tii from Maine to attend. Wow! All in all, worth the drive down, and surprise, surprise, the car actually won an award. Nice going car...!!

For first time attendees, the instructions on how to get there and what not to do (it is in a nice neighborhood) could have been clearer. And there is no-one to call to get additional information about logistics. A small detail, but for us important. Overall, great job BMWCC. And if you are someone who yearns after one of these iconic BMW cars, there are enough to drool over there, just mop up...

I just recently started playing golf 6/2020. I just fell in love with the game. I don't even know what golf is like w/o covid restriction. I've been visiting every golf course I can in the bay area. So far I have played: Los Lagos, DelaVeaga, Spring hills, Spring Valley, Sunnyvale Muni, San Jose Muni, Gilroy GC, Gavlin College GC, Ridgemark, BlackBerry, DeepCliff, Sunken Gardens, Pruneridge, Dublin Ranch, Mission HIlls, Fremont GC, Santa Teresa, Boulder Creek GC, Halfmoon Bay (Ocean Course).

I didn't even know Pacific Grove existed until it was mentioned in a review while researching Del Monte GC. After reading a few reviews I knew I had to play here and boy was I glad I did.

It's a bit of a shorter course around 5700yds, but my friends and I had a freaking blast.

The staff was amazing, we arrived over an hour early. Whenever I play at a new course I like to go early to warm up and absorb in the atmosphere. They have a driving range, but the max dist. is a tad over 175yds, and there are signs that recommends irons only.

The conditions of the greens were really good, I'm no expert but if Halfmoon Bay is a 10, then I'd rate Pacific Grove 7.5.

Halfmoon Bay is my favorite place I had played so far, but it's a place I only play on special occasions. For the price of HMB I can played twice at Pacific Grove and the atmosphere at Pacific Grove is a lot more laxed, being a newb to golf when I played at HMB I was always concerned I wasn't playing fast enough so I felt a little pressure (even though we never got marshalled and there was nobody ever waiting behind us) I just felt a bit of anxiety because we were playing at a more upscale course.

Do yourself a favor and book a Tee time at Pacific Grove or not cause I want more tee time availability for myself. LOL.

The front 9 is inland, but you do get a little view of the waters around hole 5, but once you get to the back 9 is when it really opens up. The front 9 is the appetizer, and the back 9 is the main course. I've never played any of the course at Pebble Beach before, but playing here I definitely felt like I was. I've heard people refer to Pacific Grove as the Poor man's Pebble Beach. I can't wait...

Pacific Grove is the poor man’s Pebble Beach—and yet, it is richer in sorrow, and in poetry. They call it “the poor man’s Pebble” as if that is a dismissal. But poverty is honest. At Pacific Grove, the spirit of the game lingers in tattered clothes, battered clubs, and a quiet dignity that Pebble, with its gold-plated tee markers and $600 green fees, cannot understand.

The front nine winds through the town like a forgotten tale—tight, tree-lined, municipal in every way. There is no grandeur here, only struggle. You are greeted not by applause or caddies, but by the barking of a distant dog and the indifference of locals who have played this course every Sunday since the Reagan administration.

Then, without warning, you are thrown upon the back nine. The ocean appears like a fever dream. It crashes against the rocks with a violence that cannot be tamed, only endured. The Point Pinos Lighthouse towers over the dunes, holding a watchful gaze over the meandering fairways, shining into the depths of your impermanence. You are no longer in a budget course—you are in a Herzogian hallucination. Fog drifts across the fairways like memory itself, blurring the edges of your purpose.

At the 12th, a par-5 framed by ragged coastline, sand dunes and flocks of seabirds, you realize: this is not a golf hole. It is an existential riddle. How does one aim when one cannot see? How does one swing when one’s hands are numb with the cold of introspection? How does one play a course on the tip of the Monterey peninsula which beckons the character of Bandon Dunes, perhaps Scotland, for a mere $65?

There is no clubhouse of grandeur here, no valet parking or leather-bound whiskey menus. There is a snack bar. A cart with beer. And this, in its purity, is more noble than any marble statue or velvet rope.

Pacific Grove Golf Links is not where legends go to finish their stories. It is where ordinary men and women confront the absurd, hole by hole, swing by swing, until they have nothing left to give but a crooked scorecard and a sigh toward the sea.

5 Stars (for dignity in the face...