Los Angeles, California | The VfE (visitor from England) landed at Los Angeles International Airport in the middle of a hot June day. Home at this time of day, he’d have a cup of tea and maybe a slice of fruitcake at his golf club. Now, he squinted as he stepped off the plane that took him from London Heathrow Airport to LAX in 12 hours, and faded as the California sun bounced off the runway and hit him in the face. immigration. customs. luggage carousels. waiting lists. Cars honking their horns. Drivers slam the trunks of their cars. Noise, noise, noise People, people, people. He believes in himself the hallmarks of travel.
This was his first visit to his beloved California city since the 2017 Walker Cup at Los Angeles Country Club. He remembered how, at that biannual party of special warmth and friendship, he and the other journalists were made to feel only marginally welcome in that club—maybe 15 of them were housed in a room adequately for 10 and told that on the walk to the course they didn’t They are allowed to pass through any of the club’s many rooms.
That year, at a cocktail party after the inaugural ceremony marked by a dry welcome speech by George W. Bush, the immediate former US president, VfE heard a golf coach at the university say he would not even consider offering a young man a scholarship. Unless a golfer can hold the ball in the air 275 yards. Six years ago, that would have been amazing. Now the equivalent number would be 285, maybe 290 yards. Later, he told this story to some fellow golf club members, many of whom had never been able to hit the ball in their dreams 285 yards, let alone carry it that far. Their eyes widened.
One day that week the VfE and some British friends were invited to the Bel-Air Country Club for a game lavishly arranged by a Welshman who had left his homeland to seek his fortune in the United States, and upon dues demanded from a member in Bel-Air, Obviously, he found it. He was struck by the subtlety of the design in a land not very promising or spacious and how many holes were exposed up or down, and sometimes around, a barranca, a steep valley, a valley or a gorge. What a catchy word valley He was. At home, this feature can be called a moat.
Golfers leaving Bel-Air’s ninth green must pass an unusual hurdle to reach the next tee. They must guide their wagons through a rock tunnel to reach a lift from which they, along with their clubs and wagons, are transported to the tenth tee. It was cold in the tunnel and also narrow. There was a little room to spare on the sides of the cart, and as a result, it wasn’t a place to break. As he slowly drives through the tunnel, the VfE is told that the width of the golf cart is largely determined by the width of the tunnel at Bel-Air.
The Bel-Air was a very eclectic type of club where current and past members included Jack Nicholson, Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, and Ronald Reagan. When the VfE settled in to attack the club’s cold beer after its tour, it noted that Eddie Merrins, the club’s longtime pro, was nearby, white-cap and all, dispensing golfing wisdom, charm and smiles. VfE recalled a joke he often told when he gave after-dinner speeches at golf clubs in the UK. It centered on a similarly exclusive American golf club, perhaps more so than “At Cypress Point, they had a membership campaign and they threw out 50 members.”
Los Angeles meant a lot to VfE. In the early 1980s, on leave from his newspaper in London, his wife and their two children spent one month there touring California in a camper van with Judson Christopher also on board.
At Bel-Air he was struck as he had always been in golf clubs in the United States by the size and comfort of the locker rooms and fixtures in them. The locker room where he changed his shoes was spacious, though not as large as the Seminole’s and didn’t have a vaulted ceiling nor were those chairs much favored on cruise ship decks where it’s almost impossible to feel uncomfortable or like that. clubs.
But it contained an enormous supply of cans, creams, potions, tubes, aerosols, and razors. Paper slippers were placed outside the bathrooms as well as piles of huge white towels. In several clubs back home, he thought to himself, there might be an old comb with some of its teeth missing, a hairbrush and some small towels.
Los Angeles meant a lot to VfE. In the early 1980s, on leave from his newspaper in London, his wife and their two children spent one month there touring California in a camper van with Judson Christopher also on board. The main residence for their month-long stay was the geodesic-domed house in Topanga Canyon, near Malibu, owned by Christopher’s father. On some balmy evening, VfE was going up and down Topanga Canyon in training for the London Marathon two months later.
In 1995 he made his first visit to the Riviera Country Club, one of the other great golf courses in this city. It was here that OJ Simpson, the former American football player acquitted of double murder and embroiled in a historic and spectacular car chase during the 1994 US Open, played golf and kept his safe – 733. Also here, 65 members have handicaps of 5 or better , and here in August 1995, despite a number of fine irons and long straight drives, Colin Montgomerie was dumped in that year’s PGA Championship by Steve Elkington because his putting did not match the fine quality of the rest of his play.
Over four innings, Montgomery hit 60 off 72 greens and 51 off 56 fairways. Ellkington’s equivalent numbers were 51 greens and 44 fairways. If the importance of participating in this game of madness was ever proven, it was now. Montgomery averaged 30 catches in each of his four innings, a total of 120 catches, while Elkington had 14 less and Ernie Els, who finished joint third, had 13 less.
Ben Hogan won his first US Open at Riviera in 1948, 22 years after the course began. Humphrey Bogart used to watch golf on the Riviera from under a tree by the 12th fairway. He played Dean Martin in Riviera. He once said he only played golf in the days ending in the letter y. Clark Gable and Richard Nixon scored holes in one at the Riviera, and some parts of the Tarzan movies were filmed in a cave now covered in vines near the fourth fairway.
Riviera and the LACC, two of the greatest golf tests in the country, and Bel-Air, a golf club of special charm and historical interest, add glamor to a city that doesn’t need it often. This week in La La Land, the city best known for its fantastic and impossible productions, the LACC is about to bring most of the competitors in the 123rd US Open to a place where reality is the main currency.
For US Open tee times for Rounds 1 and 2, click here.
Above: A view of the LACC XVI from the sky. Photo: Courtesy of John Mummert, USGA
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