More Pebble Beach Design News...14th & 17th Edition

Alex Miceli writes about the new tee at Pebble Beach but also reports on the eventual rebuilding of the 14th and 17th greens prior to the U.S. Open.

The 14th has only about half of the green that can handle a hole location. The plan is to rebuild the back left of the green to keep balls from rolling off the green and recapturing a hole location on the back right of the green.

That's great news as it wasn't that long ago the right side of the green was functional. As for the 17th, the news sounds less exciting:

On the 17th, the middle part of the green will be widened and the front will be flattened, but the overall size will not change dramatically.

“It’s not the original design by any stretch because it was really flat," Harper said. “Bunkers were flat. We like the fact that from the tee box, when you're back on the back tee, you've got some visuals that allow you to see contour, and that's what we've done over time with some of the bunkering. But way back when, it was flat as a pancake, and that's not the way that hole should look and feel.”

The story also features a neat old photo of the 9th green and 10th alternate tee during the 1961 U.S. Amateur.