“The Most Beautiful Golf Course” Pebble Beach: Once Sold for $820 Million, Now Worth Over $3 Billion
This week, the PGA Tour’s first signature event of the season—the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am—is underway. Only 80 players are competing for a $20 million purse, with defending champion Rory McIlroy, world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, and FedEx Cup champion Tommy Fleetwood among the field. The venue, Pebble Beach Golf Links in California, is equally captivating.
Established in 1919 on the Northern California coast, Pebble Beach Golf Links is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful courses in the world. Laid out along the 17-Mile Drive, the course leverages natural terrain, blending cliffside fairways, undulating greens, and pristine landscapes into a design that is both challenging and scenic. In 2001, Golf Digest named it the best course in America, making it the first public course ever to earn that honor.
Above: The famous 7th hole at Pebble Beach
The Pebble Beach Company, which owns the course, also operates three other 18-hole courses, a par-3 course, three hotels, a spa, and over a dozen restaurants.
Orange Bay Sports research reveals that over its 100-plus-year history, Pebble Beach has changed hands several times.
From 1919 until the 1970s, the course was owned by the Del Monte Properties Company, a prominent Monterey Peninsula developer. In the late 1970s, 20th Century Fox used profits from Star Wars to acquire Pebble Beach Company for $81.5 million.
In the early 1980s, oil magnate Marvin Davis and financier Marc Rich teamed up to buy 20th Century Fox—including Pebble Beach Company—for $722 million. A few years later, Davis sold the film studio stake to media mogul Rupert Murdoch for $325 million, but retained Pebble Beach Company.
In the early 1990s, Japanese businessman Minuro Isutani purchased Pebble Beach Company from Davis for $841 million. The course almost immediately ran into financial trouble.
In 1999, Pebble Beach was again put up for sale. Stepping in was Peter Ueberroth (pictured below), who had served as president of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee for the 1984 Games. He told The Wall Street Journal bluntly:
“I was afraid some big American company would pay a huge price and then five years later start figuring out how to get out. To me, this place shouldn’t be passed around.”
Ueberroth assembled an all-star investment team determined to permanently remove Pebble Beach from the trading market. He brought in Hollywood actor and director Clint Eastwood, golf legend Arnold Palmer, and former United Airlines CEO Richard Ferris. Together, they submitted a bid of $820 million. Though lower than other offers, it was accepted.
Above, left to right: Eastwood, Palmer, and Ferris
Ferris said, “If it had been someone else, especially hedge fund-type capital, they would have bought it and demanded a return. Our focus has always been on preserving this natural treasure in an economically sustainable way.”
A 2020 Golf.com article noted that at the time of the deal, the four also offered minority stakes to select investors at $2 million per share—each share was valued at $8 million to $9 million by 2020. And Pebble Beach Company itself was worth between $3.2 billion and $3.7 billion.
| Source: 1999 official press release; Golf.com
| Image credit: Golf.com; Pebble Beach official website; Wikipedia