California Golf Club of San Francisco

The California Golf Club of San Francisco — better known as simply “Cal Club” — has a tangled architectural history. Scottish designer Willie Locke created the initial routing in 1924, but the club soon replaced him with Irish-Canadian architect Arthur Vernon (A.V.) Macan, who directed construction in 1926. Two years later, Alister MacKenzie and his associate Robert Hunter revised the bunkering in their signature lacy-edged mode. In the 1960s, Cal Club lost acreage along its northern boundary to the expansion of Westborough Boulevard and brought in Robert Trent Jones to rearrange some holes on the front nine. The result was an awkward hodgepodge of design styles.

To give the course a more coherent identity, Cal Club hired Kyle Phillips in the mid-2000s to conduct a renovation and partial redesign. Phillips opened up the cramped routing of the front nine by relocating the practice area and fashioning a striking new par 4, the Cape-like seventh hole, on a previously unused bluff. He also rebuilt every bunker and green, using a 1938 aerial photograph for inspiration but taking liberties where he saw fit. By paying homage to the past without being wedded to it, Phillips produced a course that feels simultaneously retro and modern. The broad fairways, flamboyant bunkers, and expansive, undulating greens gesture toward MacKenzie and Hunter while reflecting Phillips’s own taste for the extravagant. When the updated Cal Club opened in 2008, it immediately reentered the conversation about the best golf courses in the Bay Area. I would still rank it second to San Francisco Golf Club, but many knowledgeable players argue passionately for the opposite view.

Take Note...

Firm and fast. Perhaps the most important decision Cal Club made during Kyle Phillips’s 2008 renovation was to regrass the fairways with a mixture of fine fescue and colonial bentgrass. This playing surface is now unrivaled for firmness in San Francisco.

The lost Golden Age great. A.V. Macan, Cal Club’s original architect of record, designed many well-regarded golf courses in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest during the 1920s and 30s. A selection of his credits: Victoria, Shaughnessy, and Royal Colwood in British Columbia; Broadmoor, Fircrest, and Inglewood in the Seattle area; and Columbia Edgewater in Portland. Macan disliked travel, however, so his reputation did not spread outside of the West Coast until his work was rediscovered and began to be restored in the 21st century.

‍Contrasting nines. Whereas the front nine at Cal Club traces an extended loop through the hilly northern and western portions of the site, the back nine is packed onto a single hillside south of the clubhouse, with several holes running parallel to each other. The front creates a sense of seclusion and adventure; the back fosters a feeling of intimate sociability. Which you prefer might say a great deal about your architectural preferences. (I like the back nine.)

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