Los Angeles Country Club (North Course)

Favorite Hole

No. 3, par 4, 268-400 yards

This hole mixes together all of the North Course’s secret ingredients. Off the tee, a barranca juts into the left side of the fairway. You can try to hit over it, or you can play safely to the right, leaving yourself a sidehill lie. If you take on the barranca, you’ll have a a flatter lie and a better sightline into the green. The green itself is a big boomerang with a few delightful little nooks—a theme that continues throughout the course. The front-right pin is scary, and the tiny plateau in the back left is a sneaky great hole location. From tee to green, No. 3 sets the table for the round ahead.

{{content-block-los-angeles-country-club-north-course-profile-club-tfe-002}}

Overall Thoughts

Hanse Golf Course Design’s restoration of Los Angeles Country Club’s North Course is one of the most influential golf course design projects of the 21st century. It accomplished three important things simultaneously: it returned LACC North to the top echelon of American golf courses; it helped spur the restoration boom that ended up defining the 2010s in U.S. golf architecture; and it launched Gil Hanse into superstardom.

LACC has undergone many changes over the years. Its history exemplifies many of the successes and failures of 20th-century golf architecture in general, so it’s worth describing in detail.

The first version of the course was designed by a group of members and included shots over the now-busy Wilshire Boulevard. The club then brought in English designer Herbert Fowler in the early 1920s to expand the facility to 36 holes. During Fowler’s tenure, a member named George C. Thomas, Jr., became heavily involved in the work. By 1928, Thomas had become the area’s preeminent architect thanks to his work at La Cumbre, Ojai Valley, Riviera, and Bel-Air, and he was tapped to redesign the LACC North again. This was when it became a historically great golf course.

Thomas’s version of the North lasted until 1962, when the club hired California-based architect Robert Muir Graves to make changes. The biggest alterations were relocating the second and eighth greens, the second being moved up and to the right, and the eighth pushed back. In both cases, the holes were lengthened. (Side note: in that same year, Muir Graves was also busy making heavy-handed changes to Alister MacKenzie’s work at Lake Merced. What a year for golf architecture in California!)

In 1997, the club enlisted John Harbottle III to restore some Thomas features. The biggest project was lowering the sixth green, which Muir Graves had built up into the stratosphere. This was a step in the right direction, and it cleared the way for Hanse Golf Course Design’s far more ambitious restoration. The Hanse work came in two phases: fairway bunkers in 2010, then greens and green-side bunkers in 2011. The second and eighth greens were returned to their original locations, the sixth green was lowered further, and the original dimensions of the fairways and greens were recaptured. The result was a faithful reproduction of what Thomas designed. It stands today as one of the finest examples of Golden Age golf architecture in America.

LACC North’s most exceptional traits are its land and greens. The central feature of the property is a dry canyon with a barranca winding through it. The course takes you on a journey through this landscape, one in which you play into, through, out, above, along, back into, and back out of the canyon. The holes use the land in a multitude of ways, creating dramatic uphill and downhill shots as well as uneven lies throughout the round. These shifts in topography accentuate the strategy and challenge of the approach shots into Thomas’s stunning greens.

{{content-block-los-angeles-country-club-north-course-profile-club-tfe-003}}

The eccentricity of these greens makes the North Course unique among George Thomas designs in Los Angeles. (Riviera could have equally compelling greens but doesn’t right now.) LACC’s greens are amoeba-like, with corners that wrap around bunkers to create a lot of aggressive hole locations. What really stands out, though, is the variety of contouring. Some greens are simple; others are wild, pitching in all directions. Some fall away, others tilt front to back, and many move in so many different directions that it’s impossible to typecast them. The slopes, along with the shapes of the greens, work together to drive strategy back to the tee, where players can use the wide fairways to find ideal (and less-than-ideal) positions for approach. None of the tee shots is particularly challenging if your only goal is hitting the fairway. But because of the complexity and intelligence of the green designs, almost every hole, depending on pin position, creates advantageous and disadvantageous angles of approach.

Later this year, the U.S. Open, a tournament that stakes its reputation on the difficulty of its venues, will visit the North Course at Los Angeles Country Club. I hope that this championship proves that big, brawny, testing golf doesn’t have to be a slog. -AJ

3 Eggs

(How We Rate Courses)

The uniqueness of the Los Angeles canyon landscape, the near-flawless design, and the stellar restoration make LACC North one of the best courses in the United States. There are no weak holes or shots. The presentation is impeccable, with wide corridors and large greens nearly matching their original sizes, and the best-looking barranca in the world.

Note: The USGA has narrowed fairways for the 2023 U.S. Open, undermining some elements of the North Course’s design. Our rating assumes that LACC will restore pre-U.S. Open fairway lines after the championship.

Additional Content

Course Tour

{{content-block-los-angeles-country-club-north-course-profile-club-tfe-004}}