Gil Hanse’s Spanish Bay Project Gets a Timeline

The big news of the week in the golf architecture world is that Hanse Golf Course Design’s overhaul of the Links at Spanish Bay, which we first heard about in November 2023, finally has a timeline. On Monday evening, the Pebble Beach Company revealed that Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner will carry out their work between March 18, 2026, and the spring of 2027. The course will reopen in time for the 2027 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach Golf Links.

The goals of the redesign, the press release says, will be to “elevate the 40-year-old course to the pedigree of the other championship courses in the Del Monte Forest,” and to “transform Spanish Bay from a 1980s-era Scottish-inspired links to a modern California Coastal masterpiece while remaining within the existing developmental footprint.” Interesting that the Pebble Beach Company seems to be acknowledging that Spanish Bay, the youngest of the courses under the PBC umbrella, is already dated.

Anyway, I have two big questions about this project:

1. Given that Hanse and Wagner must restrict themselves to the “existing developmental footprint” (for environmental reasons, presumably), how will they go about improving the course? One of Spanish Bay’s current flaws is how constricted many of its hole corridors are. If Hanse and Wagner want to create more room to play and a greater variety of strategic options, they will have to be very clever indeed.

2. Is this a one-off for the Pebble Beach Company or a meaningful change in direction? All of the press materials about Hanse and Wagner’s project have included language about bringing Spanish Bay up to the standard of the company’s other courses in the Del Monte Forest—that is, Spyglass Hill and Pebble Beach. Does this mean that the PBC thinks Spyglass Hill and Pebble Beach don’t need work? Because, um… I disagree. And I’m hopeful that the PBC will see the wisdom in retaining Hanse and Wagner as general consultants after the Spanish Bay project.

Any thoughts, Club TFE? Have you played Spanish Bay? If so, what’s your take on it?