“If I had only one more
round to play, I would
choose to play it
at Pebble Beach.” 
Jack Nicklaus

I had my chance. I had the opportunity to play a round of golf at the storied Pebble Beach Golf Course — for free! My good friend, Yoko Hirakado, owned WISH International, the organization that brokered the cultural exchange program between Saint Lawrence Academy in Santa Clara, California and Junshin Girls’ High School in Nagasaki, Japan. I had the pleasure of coordinating the exchange program at Saint Lawrence for several years. During that time, Yoko and I became good friends. She was my ticket to the golf course.

Yoko, and her husband Darryl,  owned a spectacular home in Pebble Beach along the world-famous 17-Mile Drive. Each year in January, they would host a party at their home. Yoko had a friend who was a famous sushi chef in Osaka. At the party each year, he would create dozens of sushi and sashimi options for the guests. In exchange for his services, Yoko would arrange for him to play a few rounds of golf at Pebble Beach. It was a win-win.

I first worked with Yoko on the exchange program in 1998. By 2014, I had visited Nagasaki more than a dozen times. Kathy and I had also hosted more than twenty students, teachers, and other Japanese residents who wanted to improve their English speaking skills. When one of my host students from Junshin High School, along with her mother, visited my home in 2010, Yoko invited us to spend a night at her home in Pebble Beach, as we had planned to visit Monterey and Carmel. 

It was about that time that Yoko extended the invitation for me to play a round of golf at the legendary Pebble Beach Golf Course. I had enjoyed playing golf since my junior high school days. My first few rounds were played at the Jack Fleming Golf Course, a relatively easy nine-hole course surrounded by the eighteen holes of Harding Park Golf Course in San Francisco. When I moved to San José, I played several of the public courses there and in the local communities of Sunnyvale, Cupertino, and Santa Clara. On one occasion, I accepted an invitation to play the Seascape Golf Course in Aptos. As difficult as that was, the most challenging course I encountered, a course I played at least a half-dozen times, was the lake course at the Olympic Club in The City. That was a humbling experience!

The bottom line is that while I enjoyed the game of golf, and I had an occasional impressive drive, chip, or putt, I was a mediocre golfer. So when Yoko invited me to play Pebble, at a time when I was no longer playing golf on a regular basis, I asked for a rain-check. I did not want to desecrate that sacred course with my less-than-adequate golfing skills. I hoped that, at some point, I would get back into playing golf on a regular basis, improve my game, then accept Yoko’s invitation. That never happened. 

While I regret never playing the course, I do not regret my decision to postpone the opportunity, even though it meant never playing the course. I have too much respect for the game of golf, and for Pebble Beach, to make a spectacle of myself hacking my way around one of the most beautiful golf courses in the world. 

I am grateful to Yoko for her kind offer. Sadly, Yoko passed away several years ago after a lengthy battle with cancer. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I will never play Pebble Beach,… and I’m okay with that.