Under The Knife: Pebble's Beach 14th Green

John Strege reports that the long-anticipated but much-delayed restoration of Pebble Beach's 14th green is underway.

The scene of some memorable boondoggles in recent years, Chandler Egan's marvelous two-tiered green had become too severe with modern green speeds, rendering the front portion unusable for nearly two decades.

That will be changing with a move to 4,000 square feet of surface instead of the current, gulp, 3,200. Maintaining the original concept of the green seems to be the priority, reports Strege after talking to R.J. Harper.

"Through a collection of all the photos, we landed on something we think is the right way. We’re increasing it to the original size and we’re going to keep the general shape to the green. The big cavernous bunker remains, but we’re lowering the top lip that if your ball came down there it would shoot it to the back of the green. We're leveling off the upper part of the green, increasing square footing by going back, and recreateing the pin location back right that no longer had been available to us."

John Maginnes Tweeted this photo of the construction: