Member Spotlight: James Brier

July 11, 2016

By: Mary Goodwin

Shooting 237 in a competitive 54-hole tournament is a score envied by many. Add in not one, but two hole in ones, and you have one incredible score card.

That is the remarkable tournament score James Brier, a member of the GCSGC at Blacklake Golf Resort, had this past May at the cool age of 91, shooting 36 strokes below his age!

For Brier, the game has been a life-long pursuit, and that will never change. He still plays every Monday with a Low H.I. of 7.4 and a stroke average of 81, often with rounds in the 70s – including an exceptional 73 this past April.

He learned to play golf at an early age on sand greens in Wasco, Calif., a rural town near Bakersfield – the rest is history. Since then he has won six club and five senior championships at Western Hills CC in Chino, a combined fourteen senior club championships between Blacklake and Chalk Mountain GC, both near the Central Coast, and has even competed in a few state amateur tournaments. The cherry on top: Brier has an impressive seven hole in ones since his retirement in 1986!

I enjoy everything about the game,” says Brier, “and I have for 76 years.”

Golf is not Brier’s only passion, he has made countless contributions to education around Southern California throughout his career. He is a retired Superintendent of the Anaheim City School District and worked as a school teacher throughout Orange County after graduating from USC in 1950. In the 1970s, Brier pioneered an effort to supply closed-circuit televisions to the Los Angeles school system, bringing science, music and language courses to LA schools for the first time.

As a young man, Brier served the U.S. as a member of the Navy during WWII. He joined the war effort in 1943 at the age of 18, deferring his acceptance into USC, and was quickly assigned to a wooden mine sweeper in the Pacific Ocean. Brier participated in the Battle of Okinawa and cleared mines in the bay off the coast of Hiroshima just weeks after the Atomic bomb was dropped. He even had the unique opportunity of walking the city of Hiroshima just one month after the bombing to capture photographs of the city’s remnants.

These days, Brier boasts an 8.6 Handicap Index with the SCGA, and plays golf around once per week, mostly at Blacklake. He did, however, take a trip up to Cypress Ridge earlier this year and shot an 86, five strokes below his age!

Do you know a golfer with a story to tell? Let us know and they could be the subject of our next member spotlight! Just send an email to [email protected].