Women finally get their day at Pebble Beach for US Open

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. (AP) — The women are finally getting their day at Pebble Beach.

The USGA said Tuesday the U.S. Women’s Open will be held at Pebble Beach in 2023, making good on a decade-old pledge to hold the biggest event in women’s golf on one of the most famous courses in America.

The USGA also said Pebble Beach will host the U.S. Open for the seventh time in 2027, giving California four U.S. Opens in a nine-year stretch starting in 2019.

Pebble has hosted the U.S. Women’s Amateur twice, but never the Women’s Open.

Former USGA president Walter Driver said in 2004 that Pebble Beach had expressed interest in hosting the Women’s Open. Three years later, former USGA executive director David Fay all but guaranteed the Women’s Open going to Pebble Beach. “We know the year — it’s 2014 — but we have not finalized the date,” Fay said in 2007.

Instead, the U.S. Open and Women’s Open were staged in consecutive weeks at Pinehurst No. 2 that year.

Pebble Beach will be the ninth course that has hosted the men’s and women’s U.S. Open.

“The USGA is committed to bringing our championships to golf’s greatest venues and the opportunity to have the best players in the world, female and male, compete at this iconic course will provide a fantastic showcase of the game,” USGA president Diana Murphy said.

By awarding the 2027 U.S. Open to Pebble Beach, the USGA is bypassing an immediate return to The Olympic Club in San Francisco. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the USGA first offered 2027 to Olympic, but that contract talks stalled.

Olympic has held the U.S. Open five times, most recently in 2012.

The USGA, which for years battled the perception of having an East Coast bias, is taking the U.S. Open to Pebble Beach in 2019, Torrey Pines in San Diego in 2021, Los Angeles Country Club in 2023 and a return to Pebble in 2027. That gives it the opportunity to be played in prime time.