The second trip of our journey takes us to San Francisco.  There are 8 courses on the Top 100 list within 2 hours of the city. They are Cypress Point (#5), Pebble Beach (#6), Olympic Club (#27), San Francisco (#33), Spyglass (#52), Preserve (#68), Monterrey Peninsula (#80) and Mayacama (#82). Going into our journey, both of us really like our chances at playing all 8 of these courses.  Both of us live in California and Greg spent 7 years living in San Francisco.

The trip idea started as a quick 1 night 2 day journey where we were going to play 2 or 3 of the 8 courses.  Going into the trip the confidence level was high as Greg’s moms friend is a woman member at San Francisco GC, the head pro at Mayacama is good friends with the head pro at Martis Camp where Greg’s parents are members and our good friend Neil is a social member at Olympic Club. The plan from the start was to play those 3 courses in two days.

Unfortunately, we arrived at the W Hotel in San Francisco on Monday, July 15th still not knowing where we were playing Tuesday.  Neil, our friend from Olympic Club, had lined up a 7:30 tee time on Wednesday at Olympic Club but Tuesday  was still up in the air. We decided to not worry about Tuesday’s golf location and enjoy a night out in San Francisco.  We had a fabulous dinner at Boulevard  (Greg’s favorite San Francisco restaurant) and capped the evening with several cocktails at the Redwood Room in the Clift Hotel.  Maybe we won’t succeed on our golfing journey but we surely will have fun and experience the best San Francisco has to offer.

Unfortunately, Greg’s moms friend ended up not getting us on San Francisco GC.  This had something to do with her being a woman member at a male dominated club. We didn’t ask questions.  We were still hopeful that we could get on Mayacama Tuesday morning.  Mayacama is closed to members on Tuesday but caddies and staff are allowed to play the course.  Unfortunately, Greg got an email at 10:45PM on Monday night that we wouldn’t be able to play Mayacama due to a staff party that day.  Damn… we had high hopes for the 8 courses in Northern California and starting our first day without getting on any of them was disheartening…  Oh well, we are together, in San Francisco and ready to play…

On Tuesday, we decided that we didn’t want to drive all the way  to Pebble Beach. The next best course not on the top 100 list is Pasatiempo Golf Club in Santa Cruz.  Pasatiempo Golf Club was designed by the famous English Architect Alister MacKenzie. (MacKenzie also designed Cypress Point and Augusta National.)  In fact, Pasatiempo was MacKenzie’s favorite course and he lived there until his death in 1934. Pasatiempo was opened in 1929 with Bobby Jones playing in the first group. Pasatiempo appeared on the Top 100 list  until 2007.  While Pasatiempo doesn’t help us on our quest to play  the top 100; we were both excited to play our first Mackenzie design.

Greg and Ashley at Pasatiempo entrance

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