This new book also captured the history of the tournaments as never before. Pebble Beach Golf Links will host the 2010 U.S. Open for a fifth time, more than any other venue since 1970. The past champions - Nicklaus, Watson, Kite, and Woods - are household names to anyone that's replaced a divot. But Hotelling also tells the stories of the other USGA Championships played on the peninsula, including two young ladies who faced off in the 1952 Girls Jr. Championship on the Dunes course at Pebble Beach and are now in the World Hall of Fame - Mickey Wright and Judy Bell. The professionals have been coming to Pebble Beach annually since Bing Crosby kicked off his clambake there in 1947, but do you remember that the LPGA came in 1950 and 1951 with Babe Didricksen and Patty Berg taking the top prizes?
They are all in the book, as are some of the top amateur contests that have been played from the first record tournament at Del Monte through the latest visit of the pros and amateurs at the 2009 AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. For instance, most golf historians can tell you that Lawson Little is the only golfer to have won the U.S. and British Amateurs in the same year twice (1934 and 1935). But did you know that just before his unprecedented string of undefeated match play victories, he also wont he 1934 Pacific Coast Intercollegiate, a match play championship at Pebble Beach? It's in the book, which includes an appendix that for the first time tries to capture the top finishers in all of the significant national and regional championships that have been played on the courses at Pebble Beach.
