Sticker shock comes in many forms in sports, including what it costs to play golf at some spots

Want to shock your grandkids? Tell them how much you paid for college. In our case, that was about $200 a quarter at the University of California. Contrast that to what we paid for our son in the same system. We figured we spent enough to own a home in Santa Barbara, California. But wait. We have a better way to give your progeny sticker shock. Talk about what it cost to play Pebble Beach back in the day.

• With the USGA finally deciding to treat women golfers as (nearly) equal to their male counterparts (the U.S. Open prize money is still just 55% of the men), Pebble Beach Golf Links is back in the public eye. But the course, considered by some the best in the world, has always been open to the public.

If you can pay the freight. And these days that freight is somewhere around $2,500. For a couple of nights at an affiliated hotel and one round. At least you get a cart.

But it hasn’t always been that way.

In the mid-1970s, best friend Kent suggested we play Pebble Beach. Offseason, of course. He was the person who inspired us to take up the game back in our freshman year of high school – yep, he gets the blame – and now that we were in college, both holding down jobs and looking for adventure, he thought it would be a good idea to play the course Jack and Arnie had trod over the years.

He took care of everything. Made the reservation at The Lodge. The tee time. And off we went, driving up from the L.A. area to Monterey, and checking in to a place in which fancy is not fancy enough of a term. Opulent. At least that’s how it seemed to our teenage eyes.

We spent the night on the deck outside our room – we split one to save cost, which we will get to in a second – and then retired early, as the tee time was in the morning.

Fog greeted us, as it often does. But by the time we got to the seventh tee, overlooking the largest lateral water hazard in the world – golf humor is the best – it had burned off. And we were actually playing a major-level course, though it wasn’t at that level on this day. Hard, yes. But not overpowering.

We wrote down a 95 that day, which was accurate to the stroke. And appropriate. That’s what it cost us to spend the night in the lodge and play. Yep, 95 bucks. Well, $95 each. For a lifetime memory.

A few years later we made the trip again, though being gainfully employed, we also stuck around and played Spyglass, another of the courses in the peninsula’s Crosby Clambake rotation.

The cost at Pebble had doubled. And the course was much tougher. We played a few weeks before the 1982 U.S. Open. The course was about to close and the USGA was getting it ready.

The rough was longer. A lot longer. The greens were faster. A lot faster.

Although our game was a lot better – working nights left us time to practice during the day and the handicap was down to the teens – our score was exactly the same. Another 95. How the heck did professionals shoot in the 60s?

Then again, how the heck does anyone afford playing the course these days?

There is a way, we guess. Just use your grandkid’s college fund. They won’t need it anyway. Not if they become a professional golfer.

• Somewhere in a drawer, we still have a picture Kent took as we were standing in a Spyglass sand trap. The 18th hole, if memory serves. The lip of the bunker was above our head. Well above. We’re not sure our ball isn’t still stuck there.

Played much better that day than at Pebble. Still shot another 95. The course was way too long for our wooden driver that launched 250-yard drives – if we hit it really well.

But the score was immaterial. The experience wasn’t. And, back then, it didn’t cost an arm and a leg. Just a pinkie toe.

• For all the talk of growing golf as a game, the professionals play in a world that has nothing in common with the game most of us play. Nor will they, despite the occasional U.S. Open at Bethpage or Pebble. But such venues do lead to the “you can play these courses” stories. Though a round at Indian Canyon or Liberty Lake or Deer Park or The Links is more on our to-do list on a daily basis.