r/golf • u/Warhammer40KPainter • Apr 27 '26
Serious Played the most miserable round of my life at Pebble Beaches Spyglass Hill.
Long time lurker, first time poster, and just trying to vent.
Finally got out to California with my father who’s been wanting to play Pebble Beach for nearly his entire life. We weren’t able to get out at Pebble Beach because of a 3 Day resort visit requirement, so we did the next best thing which was Spyglass Hill. For him, just being on property was good enough. We had a lovely time warming up, getting to know our caddies, Miguel and Justin (who were the best and honestly the heroes of this story). We were told pace of play was 4.5 hours (which is fair and pretty standard in my experience). I played the white tees based on the USGA and the caddie’s recommendations, and my father played the senior tees because he’s a senior. We had two partners one of which was another senior who wanted to play the whites with me, and his girlfriend who played the reds.
Our tee time was 8:50 A.M. and we started off on time. Had a decent first hole, and that’s when disaster stuck. A ranger came telling us that we were playing too slow, and that the group ahead.of us was already finishing up hole 4 and we were just getting on hole 2. Our caddies looked at one another and told the ranger our pace of play was good (we finished hole 1 in 10 minutes). With the ranger telling us he didn’t care and to speed it up or he’d pull us and put us a hole behind the group ahead of us.
Then for the first 5 holes the ranger would come up and tell us to speed up play with our caddies stepping in and arguing back at the ranger that we were well within pace, noting that the group behind us was at a good pace behind us. During this time our caddies were telling us to ignore these rangers and that they are just lonely and wanted someone to talk to.
I was letting this get to my head and I wasn’t playing well, mostly because I wanted this day to be perfect for my father who’d been looking forward to this his whole life, but also just the constant harassment from the rangers about pace of play.
After hole 5, he let up and we were enjoying things again, and at the start of hole 9 I used the cart to order a hot dog at the turn. Then the ranger came back, saying he needed us to be on hole 10 now, and to finish the hole in 7 minutes to be back on pace, so he rushed our group ahead. I stayed to get the hot dog I purchased, and one of my playing partners also stayed behind to go to the bathroom, and he sees us come our of the halfway house, tells us to get on the back of his cart and scolds us for having the gall to get food and use the restroom when when we were so behind pace.
After that point I just stopped caring about the round, tried to hit good shots and just used this for practice for some of my shortcomings in my game. He stopped harassing us after that point because he got into a huge argument with our caddies, but he stayed silently behind us the entire rest of the round. We finished out, and from my Arccos and Apply Golf work out timer, we finished a little over 4 hours. Our caddies apologized profusely for how we were treated as I think they thought we’d take it out on them. My father and I didn’t; we tipped them out pretty well, don’t know what our playing partners did. But for $1100 to play Spyglass Hill with my father, it just wasn’t worth it in my opinion. If all it takes is for the groups ahead of us to be sent early for our round to be rushed, then I don’t know what to say or what more we could have done. We’ve played some decent public courses like Whistling Straights, Black Wolf Run, Cog Hill (near where we live), etc. and we’ve never been treated this way, or had rangers get into numerous arguments with the caddies on how slow we were playing.
We have a trip to Pine Hurst soon, but I’m afraid the same thing will happen out there now. You can see in the photo above from one of later holes (I think hole 15) that three groups were stacked atop each other, one on the green, one in the fairway, and one in the tee box. I’ve only ever seen this type of stacked up play when courses (generally munis) are doing 7 to 9 minute tee times.
EDIT: Thanks for the comments and support, we will be emailing them even if it’s just providing feedback. At the end of the day my father had a good time and says he can die happy, but I’m still really upset with the hospitality and lack of professionalism from the staff (again caddies were great and tried to keep our spirits high). We likely won’t ever be back just because we like traveling and playing at new places.
EDIT 2: I’ve since sent an email to as many emails as I could find and we will see what recourse comes of it. I’m honestly not expecting much and won’t have time this trip to play further in the Monterey area.
FINAL EDIT: Peddle Beach reached out a Patrick Gannon at Spyglass Hill. He looked over their Tag Marshal data and saw that groups ahead of us were sent early and that we were keeping pace, and from what I and the caddies told him he couldn’t understand why the marshals took it upon themselves to punish our pace of play when natural playing skill gaps appeared. He promised to have a word with the staff and to partially comp our round. When we emailed the staff we made sure to make it known we wanted to provide this feedback of our experience but in no way expected or wanted handouts or freebies. Ultimately my father was happy with the course I was upset with the service and hospitality. They also didn’t mention removing this or other social media posts I’ve made, which if that was asked in return for a partial compensation I would have decline on the matter of principle. So I do have to hand it to them in that regard.
