A 100 Year History -- Part Two: 1920-1939

Chapter One -- A Golden Age of Golf Courses

The golf tide in Southern California has always ebbed and flowed due, in large measure, to the region's financial fortunes, but the 1920s stand out as the first "Golden Age" of golf course architecture and construction in Southern California.

The sport of golf had captured the country and nowhere was that more evident than in Southern California. From 18 clubs with 1,371 members in 1919, the SCGA skyrocketed to 45 clubs in 1925 with approximately 20,000 members. Not all of these clubs survived the Great Depression of the 1930s or the wrecking ball as developers sought land on which to build more homes and business in succeeding decades. Nonetheless, many of the clubs built in the 1920s remain today as landmarks in golf course design.

That golf courses could flourish in what is essentially a vast desert was due, in large measure, to the miracle of irrigation. Several clubs experimented with hardy strains of grass and ways to keep it green. As long-time SCGA President Edward B. Tufts noted in his 1925 book, The History of Golf in Southern California, "A scant ten years ago, there was not a grass green or turf fairway in the Southwest. Greens were oiled sand and fairways were hard dirt. California golf was a joke and it seemed it had no future."

To solve that problem, Tufts and his club, The Los Angeles Country Club, planted a patch of bermudagrass. "Almost over night (sic)," writes Tufts, "it made a smooth carpet of lawn. We then cut off the water supply and the grass turned brown and seemed to die. Even so it still presented a stiff brush that made a poor lie next to impossible. After it had apparently been killed we started watering it again and it came to life, turned green and started growing . . . Here was a grass that could not only exist but would thrive in California."

Another element of nature that contributed to the '20s golf course building boom was oil. Hundreds of people became rich when they struck oil in Southern California, from Bakersfield and the San Joaquin Valley to Santa Fe Springs, Signal Hill and Long Beach. One of the most notable of these was Alphonso Bell, whose oil riches would eventually be translated into Hacienda Golf Club and Bel-Air Country Club.

A third element that contributed to the proliferation of golf courses was real estate development. Developers looked at the success of The Los Angeles CC and Annandale Golf Club early in the century and realized that golf courses could act as a value enhancement to real estate prices. Moreover, hotel magnates saw how golf courses had significantly enhanced the renown of many resorts and hastened to either build or attach themselves to new golf courses.

Wilshire Country Club was a precursor of things to come when it was built in 1920. First, it was a course that brought additional prestige and value to its locale, Hancock Park, an area that was already one of the wealthier enclaves of Los Angeles. Moreover, its designer was Norman Macbeth, whose fame as a golfer (he was SCGA Amateur champion in 1911 and 1913) was widespread throughout the region and, indeed, the country. Thus, Macbeth might be said to be the forerunner of Jack Nicklaus and others whose golfing ability gave instant stature to their work as golf course architects.

Although the term "golf course architecht" had yet to be fully developed, several well-known designers fashioned courses in Southern California. Among the best-known and most prolific were George Thomas, Jr. (see pages 6 & 7) and Max Behr (see pages 8 & 9), but others were to leave their mark here, as well.

Perhaps the most prominent was Alister MacKenzie, the Scottish-born architect who worked with well-known Southern California golfer Robert Hunter to design Cypress Point Golf Club and The Valley Club of Montecito, both in 1928. MacKenzie is also credited with designing Tijuana CC and with redesigning Redlands CC, one of the SCGA's five founding clubs.

One other person who would go on to become a respected golf course architect was William Park Bell, who came to California at 1911 and became caddie master at Annandale Golf Club.

Billy Bell served a storied apprenticeship. He was construction supervisor for Willie Watson (who designed, among others, The Olympic Club in San Francisco), and George Thomas, Jr. and is credited with making significant contributions to many of Thomas' designs (see pages 4-5).

In succeeding years, Bell designed and remodeled nearly 100 courses, some in conjunction with his son, William Francis Bell. Among Bell's finest works from the 1920s are the two courses at Brookside Golf Club in Pasadena, which date from 1928, and San Diego CC, which was built when the club relocated to its present Chula Vista location in 1921.

Chapter Two -- A Golden Age of Golfers

George Thomas -- A Rose By Any Other Name

Horticulturalists know the name George C. Thomas, Jr. because of his prominence in breeding roses. Golfers know him because he designed some of the world's great golf courses, all in Southern California and within a span of less than a decade.

Thomas (1873-1932) was born in Philadelphia, the son of a prominent Main Line family. As a consequence, he became independently wealthy (his father was president of Drexel and Company) and reportedly never took a commission for his golf course designs. He received an on-the-job apprenticeship in golf course design by working as a club committeeman with Donald Ross, A.W. Tillinghast, Hugh Wilson and George Crump as each designed courses in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

In 1908, Thomas designed his first course, Whitemarsh Valley CC, but his budding career was interrupted when he served in World War I as a captain (which provided the title, "The Captain," of a superb biography of Thomas by Riviera CC's Geoff Shackelford).

Thomas relocated to California after the war. His first Southern California golf course effort was to work with Herbert Fowler on the redesign of The Los Angeles CC's North Course, which Thomas completed in 1921. It was to be the first of some 25 courses that Thomas would design and build, many with the help of William P. Bell (who went on to become a significant golf course architect in his own right).

In 1922, Thomas designed a nine-hole course for Red Hill Country Club. The following year, he designed the Harding Course in Los Angeles' Griffith Park and remodeled the Wilson Course. Not only did Thomas not take a fee but when things ran tight in the city of Los Angeles, he advanced the funds to finish the project. Palos Verdes GC was created in 1924.

Two of Thomas' most significant creations were Ojai Valley Inn and Bel-Air CC. The Ojai Valley Inn was the brain child of Ohio industrialist Edward Drummond Libbey, who in 1922 hired Thomas with two dictums: "that the average golfer could enjoy his round without too great a penalty and that a test must be afforded requiring the low-handicap player to play fine golf in order to secure pars."

Bel-Air required two separate design efforts from Thomas and Bell. The first nine holes were completed in 1925 but the land on which the second nine was supposed to be built was expropriated for what would become UCLA. In Bel-Air's 75th anniversary book, Bel-Air Country Club: A Living Legend, the story is related: Standing with Bell and Jack Neville, Thomas mused, "If members could carry that miserable canyon on their drives, we could make that the 10th hole." Upon discovering that a player could, indeed, do just that, Thomas built the club's famed par-three 10th hole and bridged the canyon with its "Swinging Bridge," one of golf's great landmarks.

Thomas' best-known course is probably Riviera CC, which he built in 1928. It remains the only Southern California course to have hosted a U.S. Open Championship (in 1948) and has also hosted two PGA Championships (1983 and 1995). Thomas originally designed both a championship and a "mashie" or pitch-and-putt course, but the latter never materialized; it became a polo field instead.

In addition to his roses and golf courses, Thomas was a prolific writer. His 1927 book, Golf Architecture in America, is considered to be a landmark, in no small part because it contains more than 100 photographs and 61 line drawings of golf holes.

Thomas' final work was at The Los Angeles CC where he redesigned the North Course into the championship layout it is today. He was preparing to remake his South Course design when he died in 1932 at the age of 58 from a heart attack.