Where the Bagpiper Walks Now That STICKS Has Gone Quiet

"Spanish Bay is so much like Scotland, you can almost hear the bagpipes."

Tom Watson said that while walking the dunes of what would become The Links at Spanish Bay, and by the time the course opened in 1987, someone had taken him literally. A piper in full kilt has walked the first fairway every evening since, rain or shine, for nearly forty years. This fall the tradition is still going. The restaurant it always started in front of is not.

If you live on the Del Monte Forest side of Pebble Beach, you already know this. If you don't, here's the short version: STICKS, the sports-bar clubhouse restaurant at the first tee of Spanish Bay, is closed for a renovation tied to a full redesign of the golf course itself. The course has been dark since March 18, 2026. The bagpiper has not missed a night. What's changed is where you go to watch him.

A tradition without a fixed address

The bagpiper's route has always been simple: start on the first tee in front of STICKS, finish forty-five minutes later at the fire pits by the second green, timed to sunset. That route assumed STICKS was open, with a patio full of people who'd wandered over for the show. With the restaurant shuttered, the starting point has effectively relocated. Regulars who want the full performance now anchor at the fire pits outside Roy's at Pebble Beach, which back onto the same stretch of dunes, or catch the tail end from the Lobby Lounge patio at the Inn.

Visitors are still figuring this out in real time. A recent Tripadvisor thread has someone asking where exactly to sit for dinner and catch the piper, since the old landmark is gone and the timing "might be different" without it. Locals aren't asking that question. They already moved their Thursday dinner reservation.

Two different clocks, two different reopenings

Here's the detail that gets flattened in most coverage of this renovation: STICKS and the golf course are not reopening on the same date, even though they're part of the same project. Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner, working under Hanse Golf Course Design, are rebuilding the course from the ground up, replacing an aging irrigation system and storm drain infrastructure along with the routing itself. The redesigned course is scheduled to open to the public on April 17, 2027. STICKS, according to local reporting from Monterey County Now, is expected to reopen the month before, in March 2027. Small gap, but if you're planning a return visit to either one specifically, it matters which calendar you're checking.

The same project also covers the Spanish Bay boardwalk, the stretch of public coastal access between the course and the beach that took storm damage before construction began. That piece started earlier, in spring 2025, ahead of the course closure. If your regular walking loop includes that boardwalk, you've likely already rerouted without needing an announcement.

This isn't the first renovation this resort has absorbed

Pebble Beach Resorts runs on what amounts to a rolling construction schedule, and last year it was the Lodge's turn, not Spanish Bay's. After Rory McIlroy won the 2025 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, the Lodge's three main dining rooms went through a nine-month refresh, reopening on staggered timelines rather than all at once.

The Tap Room came back with a new Champion's Room addition and noticeably better acoustics, a fix regulars had wanted for years. The point isn't the amenities. It's that this is a pattern, not an isolated inconvenience. One end of the resort goes dark while the other stays open, and a year later the roles reverse. If you've been here through both cycles, you already knew that Spanish Bay's turn was coming. If you moved in more recently, this is the first time you're watching it happen.

What's actually pulling people back this fall

None of this has emptied out the calendar. If anything, the events on the books this September and October are the better reason to make the drive over, course or no course:

• PURE Insurance Championship, September 18 through 20. This is the PGA TOUR Champions event, not the AT&T Pro-Am, now in its 23rd year of partnering with First Tee, pairing eighty PGA TOUR Champions players with junior participants. It's also the sponsor's tenth year as title partner.
• Hawaiian Luau at Roy's, September 27. Roy's annual family gathering, held on the same patio that's now doing double duty as the bagpiper's unofficial new stage.
• Hay's Place culinary walk-around, October 17. A ticketed event at the resort's newest dining addition, the casual post-round spot known for its Mexican-inspired menu.
• Whiskey & Fire, October 30. A golden-hour open-air tasting, timed for the shift into shorter days and fire-pit weather.

None of these require the golf course to be open. They're built around the parts of Spanish Bay that never closed, the fire pits, the patios, the sunset.

Why the timeline matters if you're already here

The reason Spanish Bay's closure has a firm end date tied to April 2027 rather than an open-ended "when it's ready" is the same reason every piece of this project has been scheduled with unusual precision: Pebble Beach Golf Links hosts the 127th U.S. Open in June 2027, its seventh time hosting the championship. Everything upstream of that date, the course redesign, the boardwalk, even STICKS's own reopening, has been sequenced to land before the peninsula's biggest golf week arrives. That's useful context if you've noticed construction traffic or crews on 17-Mile Drive and wondered how long this particular disruption runs. The answer isn't vague. It's a specific spring.

For now, the bagpiper still walks. He just starts his set from a different patio, and if you've lived here long enough, you already know which one.

If you're weighing a move within Pebble Beach or the wider Monterey Peninsula and want a read on how a specific street, view corridor, or renovation cycle might affect what you're looking at, Alex Brant can walk you through it block by block. Let's Connect.