Top 10 Most Difficult Golf Courses

Pebble Beach

Legendary golfer Jack Nicklaus has said that if he had only one more round of golf to play, he would go to Pebble Beach. Easy for him to say — he knows how to hit the ball straight and has won more majors than any other golfer. But for mere mortals, a round at America’s most famous public course often takes more than six hours — and that’s only partly because players stop to take photos of the Monterey peninsula’s famous bluffs. Narrow fairways and small, sloping greens define this devilish course, designed by Jack Neville and Douglas Grant nearly 90 years ago. When the wind blows, as it did at the U.S. Open in 1992, the course transforms from a sleeping beauty into a wicked witch. Indeed, only two players in the field that year — winner Tom Kite and runner-up Jeff Sluman — finished under par.

Read a 1962 TIME cover story on Nicklaus, “The Prodigious Prodigy.”