Back now from great vacation. Pebble was a blast and Carmel/Monterrey area in general was fun.
I was curious if the course would live up to my expectations. I do not regret dropping the $ to play, it was everything I hyped it up to be.
A friend's dad happened to be on vacation with wife in Carmel at the same time as I was so we paired up to play. We ended up getting carts because he was unsure about wearing out walking the course and it made sense with the wives riding along. I agree with the posters that suggested walking and caddies if you have no constraints...but riding didn't really take away from the experience.
We were paired with another walker who carried and a walker with a caddie. Really nice guys, enjoyed getting to know them and playing with them. One of them is on a quest to become the youngest to play the Golf Digest top 100 ranked courses; he blogs about it at breakingeighty.com. He is off to a great start at age 28, he knocked out 4 more courses last week that aren't on his blog yet.
I was glad the 4th had a caddie, I was curious how big of a difference that would make. I wasn't sure the etiquette on asking another player's caddie for advice (i have only played with caddies in scrambles). On the 4th hole, I was 260 out, straight up the hill, blind from the green with the cliff and ocean cutting into the fairway in my landing area. I was scratching my head trying to figure out what on earth I should hit and what line. Thankfully the caddie took pity on me and lined me out. After that she freely offered advice when it didn't take away from her main guy. It was a big help and I was happy to tack on to her tip at the end of the round.
A few pics....
#1 tee with proshop in the back
#3 fairway
Intimidated on #4 and caddie offering help (I ended up making 1 of 3 pars on the day thanks to her tip)
#7 green. It was foggy with the morning tee time (hurt the pics more than the view thankfully) but wind was calm. 98 yard hole with no wind...0 of 4 tee shots on the green.