Peter Williams: A small price to pay for a special spiritual experience

The world of golf has bestowed a status akin to Mecca on just a select few locations. St Andrews, as the game's spiritual home, is one. But every year in the US, thousands make a golfing pilgrimage to the Monterey Peninsula, on the Pacific coast, two hours south of San Francisco.

This past week, I joined the throng to an area whose best known course is Pebble Beach but which boasts seven other layouts, including the world famous Spyglass Hill and Cypress Point. It's where golf was first played in the US west of the Mississippi. The game has been in Monterey since the early years of the 20th century. The Del Monte club was the first but Pebble Beach opened in 1919. Entertainment superstar Bing Crosby made the region famous with his annual televised pro-am.

Pebble Beach has hosted four US Opens. Jack Nicklaus won the first in 1972 and Tiger Woods the most recent in 2000. Tom Watson produced one of the most dramatic shots in golf when he holed out from the rough beside the 17th green en route to beating Nicklaus in 1982.

Circumstances, and some very generous friends, decreed that I shouldn't play Pebble. Instead I was taken to Spyglass Hill, only a few hundred metres away and, I'm told, regarded by many as the best course in the region. I can't compare but if any other layout can offer as complex a variety of golfing challenges as this Robert Trent Jones snr design, then it'll be some place.

Spyglass, named after the famous lookout in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, starts with five holes next to the sea, then moves up into the towering pine trees of the Del Monte forest. The contrasts in the golf course are stunning. There's links land and parkland; straight holes and doglegs.

The brilliance of the design is enhanced by immaculate maintenance with the ryegrass fairways and rough remarkably consistent in texture and length, and greens as smooth as a billiard table, even if a little on the slow side.

I was privileged because playing as the guest of a member, as at most golf courses anywhere in the world, gets you a very good green-fee rate. Spyglass, like Pebble Beach and most of the courses on the Monterey Peninsula, is open to the public but is far from a budget golf activity.

Where I played normally costs more than US$300 for a round, while Pebble Beach is more than US$450. To get a game at Pebble, you normally have to stay a night at The Lodge at Pebble Beach as well, which sets you back about another US$500.

But then what price a spiritual experience?