Jim Nantz hinted that it was going to happen near the end of CBS’ broadcast of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in February. It was a light remark after Collin Morikawa won the PGA Tour signature event and it mostly went unnoticed.
Overnight (Australian time), however, Pebble Beach released images and news that made it official – a second cypress tree has been planted in the fairway of its iconic 18th hole, “restoring the hole to its original design intent and reinstating the signature look golf fans had come to know until the original was lost in a 2014 storm.”
A new (and yet so familiar) addition to the iconic closing hole at Pebble Beach Golf Links.
A second cypress tree has been planted, restoring the hole to it's original design intent and reinstating the signature look golf fans had come to know until the original was lost in a… pic.twitter.com/LCCgKp6ROd
— Pebble Beach Resorts (@pbresorts1919) April 30, 2026
Pebble Beach is ranked ninth in Golf Digest’s list of America’s Top 100 Greatest Golf Courses. It hosts the US Open next year.
According to Pebble Beach, the tree is 30 paces further down the fairway from the other cypress and is slightly more to the right, which brings more strategy into play for most players. The newly planted tree was moved from the 17th hole at nearby Spyglass Hill.
In December 2014, Golf Digest reported that the previous tree, which was only planted 10 years earlier to replace a tree that was dying, was knocked down from winds during one of the area’s worst storms in years.
The 18th hole before the second tree was added. [Photo: Getty Images]
“I was standing on the 18th tee and conservatively the wind was blowing at least 40 miles an hour,” Ron Read, a long-time USGA official who lived in the area, told Golf Digest at the time. Read said he returned to the tee later in the morning and took a picture looking down the fairway and did not notice the downed tree until examining the photo later.
