At long last! The women get their turn at a major at Pebble Beach

The first time Patty Sheehan met Juli Inkster was in the 1970s at the California Women’s Amateur at Pebble Beach Golf Links. Back then, tournament founder Helen Lengfeld, a legend in California golf circles, handed each contestant a lucky penny when she checked in. Winners received a piece of silver from her personal collection. Sheehan and Inkster combined for three titles from 1977 to 1981 and cherished each memory made along American golf’s most iconic coast.

“It’s just the most spectacular place on the face of the earth,” said Sheehan, who always wanted to live somewhere along 17-Mile Drive but never felt that she could afford it.

The first time NCAA champion Rachel Heck played Pebble Beach was on her first visit to Stanford. Her parents surprised her with a tee time for her 15th birthday.

“I legitimately shed tears on the 18th hole walking down that fairway,” said Heck. “It’s breathtaking. It’s more than you can imagine.”

This Fourth of July, the best women in the world will tee it up at Pebble Beach Golf Links for the first time at the 78th U.S. Women’s Open. It will mark the 14th USGA championship at Pebble.

LPGA founder Betty Jameson won the 1940 U.S. Women’s Amateur title at Pebble and Grace Lenczyk won there in 1948. But the best female professionals from all the over the world have never before had the chance to do what Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Tom Kite, Tiger Woods, Graeme McDowell and Gary Woodland have done over the past five decades – win a U.S. Open there.

“It was a long time coming,” said Inkster, a two-time U.S. Women’s Open champion. “It’s such an iconic venue for golf, and for us to not have played there. … I just didn’t think that was right.”

Inkster, 63, played in what’s now the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am as an amateur with PGA Tour pros Bob Mann and Barry Jaeckel. Contestants back then were given tee prizes, little mementos of Pebble filled with liqueur, and Inkster lost those cherished items in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

“That was when Bing Crosby had his clambake and women weren’t allowed,” said Inkster. “(Husband) Brian and my dad went, and they loved it.”

Two years ago, Inkster signed up for U.S. Women’s Open qualifying when the championship was being held at San Francisco’s’ Olympic Club for the first time. Inkster estimated that she’d played the course 50n…