Best Monterey Golf Courses
The Monterey Peninsula packs more good public golf into 30 miles of coastline than anywhere else in the country.
It also holds some of the most expensive public golf in the world and some of the cheapest coastal golf in California, sometimes within a few miles of each other. A round at Pebble Beach costs more than ten times a round at Pacific Grove, and both put you on the same water.
This list covers both ends of that range. For each course: what it plays like, what it actually costs, and whether you can walk it.
One thing to sort out before you book anything. Most courses here rent sets, but resort rentals are priced for resort guests and the fitting is whatever happens to be in the shed, so if you are playing more than a round or two, bringing your own golf clubs works out cheaper and more comfortable.
Pebble Beach Golf Links
This is the one people fly across the country for.
Jack Neville and Douglas Grant routed it in 1919 with one instruction to themselves, which was to put as many holes on the water as the land allowed. The cliff stretch at 6, 7, 8, and 18 is the result, and it holds up to the hype.
The cost does not. The green fee rose to $695 per player on April 1, 2026, and non-resort guests pay a mandatory $60 cart fee on top of that.
Getting a tee time is the harder part. Advance bookings require a minimum two-night stay at The Lodge, The Inn at Spanish Bay, or Casa Palmero, where rooms start around $1,000 a night, which puts a single day north of $2,500 once everything is counted.
Non-guests can book inside a 24 to 48 hour window if something opens up. That is a real path, but it means gambling your schedule on a cancellation.
Spyglass Hill Golf Course
Robert Trent Jones Sr. opened Spyglass in 1966, and the first five holes run down through coastal dunes with open ocean behind them.
Then the course climbs back into the Del Monte Forest and gets considerably harder. It plays 6,862 yards from the tips with a slope of 148, which is among the highest ratings in California and the reason it is consistently the toughest course used in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
Green fees run around $495, and non-resort guests can book up to three months ahead rather than fighting for scraps 24 hours out.
Plenty of golfers who have played both say the golf here is better than at Pebble Beach even though the views are not.
Poppy Hills Golf Course
Poppy Hills is owned and operated by the Northern California Golf Association, which makes it the most accessible course in Pebble Beach if you or someone in your group is a member.
Robert Trent Jones Jr. designed it in 1986 and returned for a 13-month renovation that finished in April 2014, focused heavily on cutting water use. It plays 7,002 yards, par 71, rated 73.5 with a slope of 135.
It is hilly, and reviewers are split on it. The average sits around 3.2 stars on GolfPass across nearly 200 reviews, which is low for this area, and the complaints tend to be about pace and green speed rather than the layout itself.
It co-hosted the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am from 1991 to 2009, so the golf is real regardless of what the reviews say.
Pacific Grove Golf Links
The best value on the peninsula, and not by a small margin.
Eighteen holes costs $53 Monday through Thursday and $58 Friday through Sunday and holidays. Twilight is $33 to $35, and juniors 17 and under play for $20.
The front nine is ordinary parkland golf through cypress. The back nine drops into the dunes by the Point Pinos lighthouse and gives you genuine coastal links golf with the ocean in play, which is why locals call it the poor man’s Pebble Beach.
It is short at 5,727 yards, flat enough to walk easily, and rated around 4.5 stars by GolfPass reviewers. Book early in the day before the fog decides what happens.
Bayonet and Black Horse
Two courses in Seaside, both built for the Army at Fort Ord and closed to civilians until the base was inactivated in 1993. The City of Seaside bought them in 1997.
Bayonet was designed in 1954 by General Robert McClure, the post’s commanding officer, who was left-handed with a severe slice and built the course to suit his own game. That is why holes 11 through 15 are a run of sharp doglegs left, known ever since as Combat Corner. It plays 7,104 yards, par 72, slope 137 from the back tees.
Black Horse is the sister course, sitting higher with more of the bay in view.
Green fees run roughly $99 to $249 depending on day and season. The cheapest way to play is a package covering all 36 holes in a single day, and both layouts are walkable, which takes the cart fee out of the total.
Del Monte Golf Course
Del Monte opened in 1897 as an amenity for the Hotel Del Monte, and Pebble Beach Company still runs it today.
It is usually billed as the oldest course in continuous operation west of the Mississippi, though Gearhart Golf Links in Oregon makes a competing claim dating to 1892. Del Monte’s more defensible version is that it is the oldest still played on its original site.
The course sits inland in Monterey, so no ocean. It runs about 6,360 yards, par 72, rated 71.1 with a slope of 126, and the defense is small back-to-front greens and out of bounds on more than half the holes.
Green fees land around $110, with twilight closer to $45, making it the cheapest way into the Pebble Beach Resorts system. It is also the sensible pick on a foggy morning, being far enough inland to stay clear when the coastal courses are socked in.
Laguna Seca Golf Ranch
Carved into oak hills along the Monterey-Salinas corridor near the racetrack, and reliably the warmest and least foggy golf in the county.
Robert Trent Jones Sr. and Jr. built it in 1970 at 6,226 yards with a slope of 129. Elevated tees do most of the work, and nearly every green is bunkered.
The 15th is the hole people remember, a 548-yard par 5 that makes you carry water on both the tee shot and the approach.
Walking rates start around $33 to $43, and carted rounds generally land under $100 depending on day and tee time. For the money it is the best golf on the peninsula that nobody outside the area talks about.
Monterey Pines Golf Club
A Navy course on the Naval Postgraduate School grounds, run by the Navy golf program and open to civilians.
Locals call it the Navy Course. It is par 70 at just under 6,000 yards, originally nine holes by Robert Muir Graves in 1963, expanded in 1972 and redesigned by Marc Messier in 2009 with new bentgrass greens.
Green fees land in the $50 to $85 range and reviewers consistently praise the conditioning. Civilians need to arrange a tee time in advance rather than turning up.
It sits between the county fairgrounds and the Monterey airport, so expect some noise. It will not be the round you remember from the trip, but it is a real course at a fair price.
Practical Notes Before You Book
Peak season runs May through October, when the marine layer burns off predictably by mid-morning.
Winter rounds cost less and the courses are emptier, but you are trading that for genuine odds of playing in fog and wind.
Pack a wind layer whatever month you come, because the coast does what it wants.
Skip any list that recommends Rancho Cañada in Carmel Valley. Both courses closed in 2016 and 2017 when the land lease ended and the owners sold to the Trust for Public Land, and the site is parkland now, but outdated guides and booking directories still show it with live green fees.
Bring a rangefinder for Spyglass and Laguna Seca specifically, where the elevation changes make eyeballing yardages unreliable.
Book Pebble Beach and Spyglass months ahead. Everything else on this list can usually be had within a week or two, and Pacific Grove and Laguna Seca often the same morning.
The peninsula rewards playing two cheap rounds and one expensive one rather than three mid-priced ones. Pacific Grove and Laguna Seca together come to less than a fifth of a single round at Pebble Beach.
