THE 18TH WONDER OF THE WORLD

Only recently has the seawall that lines the famed finishing hole of Pebble Beach been adequately prepared for whatever Mother Nature had in store.

Illustrations by

Doug Stern

Consider Pebble Beach fortunate over its first 80-plus years. For all the inclement weather for which the Monterey Peninsula is known, there hasn't been the one catastrophic storm that took the golf course, or a large chunk of it, out to sea with it.

From the 1940s into the mid-90s, officials estimate that erosion claimed three inches of shoreline annually. Left unattended, it would only be a matter of time before the tides and storms would devastate the last hole and a half of one of the world's most acclaimed courses.

"It wasn't a case where we might lose three inches," said Ted Horton, Pebble Beach Company's vice president of resource management. "We were going to lose 30 or 100 feet and there was a question that we'd ever get it back."

The most recent renovations of the Pebble Beach seawall were effected by a series of El Ni-o storms in early 1997. To strengthen the 18th hole's resistance to the pounding surf, Pebble Beach contracted with Granite Construction Co., of nearby Monterey, Calif., for a six-month, multimillion-dollar fortification effort. The company rebuilt a five-foot-wide base, constructed a new seawall and placed one- to four-ton rocks along the shoreline; Cemrock Landscapes Inc., of Tucson, Ariz., fashioned and sculpted the outlying rock formations that meet the incoming tides, then painted them to match the existing landscape.