We just made it a whole lot easier to plan, book, and play your next round at Pajaro Valley Golf Club — our new mobile app is live, free, and available for both iPhone and Android.

Whether you’re a regular walking the same nine holes every Saturday or you’re planning your first visit, the app puts everything you need in your pocket. Here’s a look at what’s inside.

Book your tee time in seconds

Skip the phone call. Open the app, pick your day, and see every available tee time — including Daily Deals with real-time discounts (we’ve seen guests save 15–20% just by booking through the app). We guarantee the best rate when you book online or in the app, so there’s no reason to book anywhere else.

Play smarter with built-in GPS

Once you’re on the course, the app becomes your caddie. Pull up GPS yardages hole by hole, track your score as you go, and keep a running history of every round you play at Pajaro Valley.

Earn rewards just for playing

Every round earns you Yards, our in-app currency you can redeem in the Yards Store. Check in daily for Daily Free Yards, and watch for our Yards4Yards promotions that make it even easier to stack up rewards toward your next round.

Enter live giveaways

We regularly run giveaways right inside the app — think gear, rounds, and course credit. It’s free to enter, and new giveaways go live throughout the season.

Stay connected to the course

The app’s Feed is where we post course conditions, event announcements, and what’s happening day to day at Pajaro Valley. Follow along, connect with your regular playing partners, and never miss an update.

Get it now

The app is 100% free for iPhone and Android. Search “Pajaro Valley Golf Club” in the App Store or Google Play, or scan the QR code below to get started in under a minute.

Download the App

By Todd Guild OF THE PAJARONIAN

Eddie Duino was 8 years old the first time his father brought him to what was then the Watsonville Country Club.

Nearly eight decades later, he still walks the fairways of the same Royal Oaks course, now known as Pajaro Valley Golf Club, teaching the game he has devoted his life to while reflecting on the generations of golfers who have come through its gates.

“My dad brought me here when I was about eight years old,” Duino said. “There’s a lot of history here.”

That history reaches a mile- stone this year as Pajaro Valley Golf Club celebrates its 100th anniversary, marking a century as one of the Central Coast’s oldest golf courses. While the club plans a yearlong series of tournaments and special events through June 2027, perhaps no one embodies its legacy better than Duino, who has spent 65 years as a golf instructor, including the past three decades at Pajaro Valley Golf Club.

For Duino, now in his 80s, the course is more than a workplace.

“It’s like you’re out in a park,” he said. “You’re in the country.”

He has played nearly every course in Santa Cruz County and spent years as the head golf professional at Seascape Golf Club, a place he still speaks fondly of. But Pajaro Valley remains special.

Unlike courses hemmed in by homes and busy roads, Pajaro Valley feels tucked away among oak trees, Monterey cypress and farmland, with views stretching toward Elkhorn Slough.

“You’ ll see deer run through here, turkeys, lots of birds,” he said. “It’s got a lot of character.”

Duino also believes the course strikes a rare balance.

“It’s nice enough for a good player—it’s very challenging,” he said. “But for the average player, it’s very user-friendly. It’s got everything.”

That accessibility has helped make the course a destination for generations of local golfers, from beginners taking their first lesson to experienced players returning year after year.

Duino knows many of them by name. Teaching golf has been his life’s work. “I must like something about it because I started my career, which I’ve never changed,” he said. “I’ve been at it for 67 consecutive years.”

In the golf business, he said, teaching is often something professionals do after years of running clubs or competing. For him, however, helping players improve has become the most rewarding part of the game.

He still jokes with students, critiques swings and hands out novelty T-shirts proclaiming, “I take lessons from Eddie Duino.”

His enthusiasm has hardly faded.

That continuity mirrors the course itself.

Originally established in 1926, the property began as the Watsonville Country Club. Its first nine holes were designed by Peter Hay, the longtime golf professional at Pebble Beach. Before it became a golf course, the site played an important role in the region’s agricultural economy, serving as Hudson Landing, where barges loaded with produce traveled through Elkhorn Slough before railroads transformed transportation on the Central Coast.

Today, golfers still experience much of the landscape that first attracted visitors a century ago.

“It’s a unique location within the wonderful agricultural context of the Pajaro Valley,” said Mark Swartz, director of operations for the club. “Rolling terrain, mature Monterey cypress and views of the Elkhorn Slough—it is truly a special property.”

Swartz said preserving that character while preparing the club for another century is the guiding philosophy behind its long-term plans.

Those plans include a new clubhouse, restaurant, banquet facility and visitor accommodations, along with environmental improvements designed to reduce water use and protect nearby habitat. The owners are also exploring public trails connecting the property to Elkhorn Slough and hope to permanently preserve 51 acres of resource conservation land bordering the estuary.

The course’s proximity to Elkhorn Slough, one of California’s largest tidal wetlands, has shaped those plans.

“Our approach requires the natural hydrology flow through bioswales that support the creation of additional native habitat while cleansing the water as it moves toward the slough,” Swartz said. “Environmental quality drives our solu- tion-based approach.”

While much has changed since Duino first arrived as a boy, he still remembers the families who built the club.

He attended college with Charles Leiter, whose family owned the course for many years, another thread connecting his own story with the club’s history.

“ There’s a lot of history here,” he said again.

Brian Robbeloth, the club’s general manager, believes visitors sense that history almost immediately.

“This course has a unique history and personality that people immediately feel when they arrive,” he said in announcing the centennial celebration. “There’s a sense of authenticity here that has stayed with the property for generations.”

As the club looks toward its second century, Duino isn’t focused on development plans or anniversary festivities.

He talks instead about the feeling golfers get when they step onto the first tee.

Away from traffic, surrounded by open space and wildlife, the course offers some- thing increasingly difficult to find on California’s crowded coast.

For nearly 100 years, generations of golfers have come to Pajaro Valley Golf Club searching for that experience.

Few have appreciated it longer than Eddie Duino, who first arrived with his father as an 8-year-old boy and never really left.

---

Original Article: Click Here

At 100 years, Pajaro Valley Golf Club still swinging

By NICK SESTANOVICH | nsestanovich@santacruzsentinel.com
PUBLISHED: July 5, 2026 at 11:41 AM PDT

ROYAL OAKS — In the days since Calvin Coolidge was president and silent films ruled movie theaters, the Pajaro Valley Golf Club has provided lifetimes of memories for its budding and seasoned golfers.

Maybe it was where they hit their first hole-in-one, taught their kids about the most efficient swings or won their first tournament. In any case, the Royal Oaks course has provided many milestones in its 100 years, which is why it is time for the club to celebrate a milestone of its own.

General Manager Brian Robbeloth said the centennial was a “wonderful” occasion.

“It’s a great opportunity to be part of a wonderful historic place,” he said. “Pajaro has a special feeling. It’s creating enjoyable experiences for our golfing guests, both our staff and our people that play here.”

According to Mark Swartz, director of design and entitlements for the club’s current owner Parks Legacy, the front nine holes of the Pajaro Valley Golf Club were designed by professional golf legend Peter Hay who later developed The Hay course at Pebble Beach. The site had previously been home to the old Hudson Landing, a primary connecting port to deliver crops via steamboat from the Pajaro Valley.

“There were mining carts that would take the produce from approximately Salinas Road today all the way down to the (Elkhorn) Slough to load them on the barge,” he said. “Eventually, the railroad came along and disrupted that as a method of transportation for the produce.”

In those foggy days, that Central Coast residents should be very familiar with, Swartz said the barges would reportedly steer toward an oak tree which remains on the site. The site was redeveloped as a golf course with Hay’s input in 1926.

“Likely, some gentlemen who owned the land and were farming it tapped into Peter Hay’s knowledge to design the front nine of the golf course,” said Swartz.

The back nine was developed decades later by Robert Muir Graves, but the club has been largely unchanged since, with most of its changes being in its ownership. Since 2023, it has been owned by Parks Legacy, a Phoenix-based company aimed at preserving golf clubs and open space while also allowing for mixed-use development.

Eddie Duino Jr., a member of the Professional Golfers’ Association of America for more than 60 years, has been playing at Pajaro Valley Golf Club since the ’40s and has been a golf instructor at the club since 1998. His father, Eddie Duino Sr., was the PGA’s home professional of the year in 1959 and became head professional at the San Jose Country Club where Duino Jr. grew up. The younger Duino has served as head golf professional at Palo Alto Hills Golf & Country Club, Merced Golf & Country Club and Seascape Golf Club in Aptos, but Pajaro Valley stands out for its abundant nature.

“It’s like you’re in a park,” he said. “You’ll see the animals, it’s like you’re out in the wilderness.”

Additionally, Duino Jr. said the layout of the course makes it suitable for all types of golfers.

“This is the way that courses should be designed,” he said. “Some of the modern courses are too tricked up, tricky. This is a beauty, it really is.”

Robbeloth agreed that the course is intended toward all skill sets.

“At other golf courses, it takes a long time, like six hours, to play golf,” he said. “Here, people are really proud that they can play for two and a half hours and get along with their day. I think they can play quicker here because it’s wide open. You can always find your ball.”

One other way Pajaro Valley Golf Club stands out is its abundance of nature. Canada geese and wild turkeys are frequent visitors, and golfers have also seen deer and foxes roaming the green. The club unveiled a special centennial logo with animals native to the Elkhorn Slough area, consisting of a pelican, butterfly, fox, trout, deer and otter.

“All of these animals can be found in the slough and the surrounding areas,” said Robbeloth.

The club also has places to decompress after a game of golf. Carmona’s Bar & Grill serves up a menu of burgers, sandwiches and breakfast while also hosting live music, special events and cornhole games. The gift shop sells a wide variety of golf accessories, apparel and books but also golf club covers in the shape of animals and a unique presentation. Visitors are instantly greeted with a ceiling mural painted by Santa Cruz artist John Crawford and a 93-inch Costco bear donning a golf club and a straw hat.

“This man has an ability you won’t find in very many golf shops,” Duino Jr. said of Robbeloth and gestured toward a display with Adirondack chairs, golf club covers in the shapes of dog heads and a plush rabbit cradling a plush taco. “This display is unbelievable. It’s creative. You don’t find this in most places, not even at Pebble Beach.”

Tucked in a corner is a “Golden Tee 3D Golf” arcade cabinet which Robbleoth bought from Costco, thinking it would be a way to generate extra money from people putting in quarters, but it turned out the machine could play games without putting quarters in.

“It was free to play,” he said. “It’s good for the kids.”

Swartz said the club is looking at its first big update since its expansion more than 60 years ago. The club worked with golf architects Forrest Richardson and Jim Urbina on a development master plan that, in its current iteration, utilizes the existing zoning to preserve 90 acres of the course while incorporating a new clubhouse, 56 RV sites, 88 golf cabins, 160 attached townhomes, fitness center, arcade, restaurant, 200-person banquet center and a commercial plaza along Salinas Road with a coffee shop, sundries market and tavern.

Additionally, Swartz said the golf course would be renovated to the tune of $10 to $12 million.

“It’s a lot of money, but it doesn’t go very far when you consider the needs of the golf course with an aged irrigation system, so we’ll spend $4 million of that $12 million underground where nobody sees them redoing an irrigation system,” he said.

Bunkers will also be renovated and cart paths updated while the terrain, topography and some trees will remain. Swartz said the new course would address environmental concerns, namely that the current course uses too much water.

“We’re cutting down the overall amount of turf which is about 110 acres today,” he said. “We’re cutting that in half to about 55 to 60 acres, so it won’t be wall-to-wall grass. That’s too much water use.”

The project is currently undergoing a consistency review from Monterey County to go over various documents and will then embark on a scoping and request for proposal process.

“It’s still got a ways to go,” said Swartz. “It’s at least two years more just getting our development plan approved if we’re so fortunate and, in the meantime, try to do everything we can to enhance a golf course that’s 100 years old.”

The club will have a variety of events over the next year to celebrate its 100th anniversary, but Swartz said details have not been finalized yet. Currently, there are centennial golf cars with discounts and plans for a party in September where the course is shut down for half a day for people to explore with food trucks, live music and merchandise giveaways on site.

“We see the centennial as a yearlong event,” he said.

The thing that stands out for Robbeloth most is the unique experiences Pajaro Valley Golf Club creates for its guests.

“It’s the product, it’s the golf course, it’s the birds, it’s the wildlife,” he said. “When you go out there and see the turkeys, you want to come back.”

By Nick Sestanovich – santacruzsentinel.com view the original article here