Rancho Park: The People's Course That Hosted the LA Open 17 Times
Every big golf city has a course that belongs to everybody, and in Los Angeles that course is Rancho Park. It sits on the Westside, in Cheviot Hills, a city-owned par 71 run by the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks — the kind of place where you book a tee time through the municipal system, carry your own bag if you like, and wait your turn behind retirees, studio grips, and teenagers learning the game.
And yet: seventeen times, the PGA Tour came here. Not to a gated club with a guard shack, but to a muni. Between 1956 and 1983, Rancho Park hosted the Los Angeles Open seventeen times, and along the way it collected some of the best stories in Southern California golf — Arnold Palmer's infamous 12, Jack Nicklaus's first professional paycheck, and Charlie Sifford's historic playoff win in 1969. Play the finishing hole today and there's a bronze plaque along its western boundary waiting to tell you one of them.
Before the City Took Over: Rancho Country Club
The land didn't start public. The site was originally a private club called Rancho Country Club. The club ran into tax problems, and the federal government took ownership of the property to satisfy the tax debt, leasing it back to the club in the meantime.
That's when the neighbors stepped in. A group of citizens spearheaded a campaign to turn the site into a city park, and in 1945 their efforts paid off with the creation of Cheviot Hills Park — roughly 200 acres that included the golf course along with tennis courts and baseball fields. The golf course itself was laid out in 1947 by William P. Bell and William H. Johnson.
That design pedigree matters. Bell was one of the great builders of California golf: early in his career he worked closely with architect George C. Thomas Jr., contributing significantly to designs like Riviera Country Club, and his own portfolio of more than fifty courses — mostly in Southern California — includes Bel-Air and Brookside. He also drew early plans for Torrey Pines, though that course opened in 1957 and was completed after his death by his son, William F. Bell. The elder Bell died in Pasadena in 1953, and Rancho Park is part of the long shadow his work casts over Southland golf.
The Neighborhood: Public Golf Next Door to Private History
You can't tell Rancho Park's story without its neighbor. Cheviot Hills is bounded on the north by two courses sitting side by side: Rancho Park and Hillcrest Country Club.
Hillcrest opened in 1920 as the first country club for Los Angeles's Jewish community — founded by Samuel Newmark, Louis Issacs, Karl Triest, and Joseph Y. Baruh at a time when Jewish Angelenos were excluded from the city's other elite social clubs. It became a landmark in its own right: Hillcrest hosted the 1929 PGA Championship, won by defending champion Leo Diegel, which held the distinction of being the first major championship ever played in the western United States. By the 1940s its dining room hosted the famous comedians' Round Table — Jack Benny, George Burns, Milton Berle, Danny Kaye, Al Jolson, and the Marx Brothers trading material over Friday lunches.
So within a few hundred acres of Westside real estate you get the whole history of who got to play golf in Los Angeles, and how: a club built because its founders were shut out everywhere else, and next door, a city course open to absolutely anyone with a few dollars for a green fee. That second idea — golf for everybody — is what the PGA Tour ratified when it moved in.
The L.A. Open Comes to a Muni
The Los Angeles Open — today's Genesis Invitational — is one of the oldest stops on the PGA Tour, and for most of its life it has rotated among the city's famous venues, with Riviera as its long-term home. But from 1956 through 1967, and again from 1969 through 1972, the tournament belonged to Rancho Park. It returned one final time in 1983, while Riviera was being prepared to host that year's PGA Championship. Seventeen editions in all.
The roll of Rancho Park champions reads like a mid-century hall of fame: Lloyd Mangrum won the first one in 1956, followed by Doug Ford (1957), amateur-legend-turned-pro Frank Stranahan (1958), Ken Venturi (1959), Dow Finsterwald (1960), Bob Goalby (1961), Phil Rodgers (1962), Paul Harney back-to-back (1964–65), Billy Casper (1970), Bob Lunn (1971), George Archer (1972), and Gil Morgan (1983). And three times — 1963, 1966, and 1967 — the winner was Arnold Palmer.
Which is ironic, because Palmer is also the reason Rancho Park has the most famous plaque in municipal golf.
Arnold Palmer's 12
In the first round of the 1961 L.A. Open, Palmer arrived as the reigning Masters and U.S. Open champion — the biggest star in the sport. On the 508-yard par-5 ninth hole (the hole that plays as Rancho's 18th today), he striped a great tee shot. Then he hit four consecutive shots out of bounds.
The hole narrows near the green, squeezed between the driving range on the right and Patricia Avenue on the left. Palmer hit his first two attempts right, into the range, then over-corrected and hit the next two left, onto Patricia Avenue. He walked off with a 12, and the shocking number led the next morning's sports pages.
Rancho Park did what only a public course would do: it put up a bronze plaque commemorating the disaster, along the hole's western boundary — the Patricia Avenue side, right where the balls sailed out. Sixty-plus years later, every weekend golfer who plays the hole can look at it and feel a little better about their own game.
Palmer got his revenge. Five years later, in the 1966 L.A. Open, he tied the course record with a third-round 62 to build a seven-shot lead, then closed out a three-stroke victory over Miller Barber and Paul Harney — the second of his three wins at Rancho.
A Rookie Named Nicklaus
Rancho Park also hosted one of the quietest milestones in golf history. At the 1962 L.A. Open, a 21-year-old rookie named Jack Nicklaus made his professional debut. He finished more than twenty strokes behind winner Phil Rodgers — who closed with a 62 — and earned his first tour paycheck: less than thirty-four dollars out of a $45,000 purse. A few months later, Nicklaus won the U.S. Open. The first check he ever cashed as a pro, though, came from a Los Angeles muni.
Charlie Sifford's 1969 Breakthrough
The most important tournament ever played at Rancho Park happened in January 1969.
From 1934 until November 1961, the PGA of America kept a "Caucasian-only" membership clause in its bylaws; it was removed by constitutional amendment after California Attorney General Stanley Mosk threatened action against the organization. Charlie Sifford, who had spent years winning Black golf's National Negro Open while being barred from the mainstream tour, became the first African American to join the PGA Tour in 1961. He was already pushing 40 when the door finally opened. He won his first official tour event, the 1967 Greater Hartford Open, at age 45.
Then, on January 12, 1969, at Rancho Park, the 46-year-old Sifford opened the L.A. Open with a 63, finished at eight-under 276, and beat South Africa's Harold Henning with a birdie on the first playoff hole. It was his second and final PGA Tour victory — and it happened in front of Los Angeles galleries, on a public course, in the city's own championship.
The game eventually caught up to what Sifford meant to it. He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2004, the first African American to receive that honor, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014. Tiger Woods has said that without Sifford, "I probably wouldn't be here." Since 2009, the Genesis Invitational — the same tournament Sifford won at Rancho — has awarded the Charlie Sifford Memorial Exemption to a player who represents the advancement of diversity in golf. Every time it's presented, the line traces back to a Monday playoff on Pico-adjacent parkland.
The Encores: LPGA Stars and Senior Legends
The men's tour said goodbye after Gil Morgan's win in 1983, but Rancho Park kept hosting big-time golf.
The LPGA's Sunstar Classic set up at Rancho from 1978 through 1980, and it caught Nancy Lopez at exactly the right moment: she won there in 1978 for the second victory of her career, at the front edge of her spectacular rookie season, then defended the title in 1979 by sinking a birdie putt on the final hole. JoAnne Carner won the 1980 edition, shortened to 54 holes after rain washed out the first round.
A decade later the Senior PGA Tour arrived, and Rancho Park hosted the Security Pacific/Ralph's Senior Classic five straight years, from 1990 through 1994 — one more era of tour pros teeing it up between the eucalyptus while the public queued up to play the same holes the following morning.
Add it up: seventeen PGA Tour events, three LPGA events, five senior tour events. Few patches of public land anywhere have seen more professional golf.
Playing the History Today
Rancho Park is still exactly what it was built to be. It's a par-71, 6,839-yard city course in Cheviot Hills, operated by the Department of Recreation and Parks, bookable like any other LA muni. The William Bell–William Johnson routing is intact, tree-lined and honest, and the finishing hole is the same 508-yard par 5 that ate Arnold Palmer alive in 1961 — driving range right, Patricia Avenue left, plaque along the boundary where his shots went out.
That's the thing about Rancho Park. At Riviera, the history is behind a gate. Here, it's part of your Saturday round. You can hit the same tee shot Palmer hit, aim away from the same out-of-bounds stakes, and walk the fairway where Charlie Sifford, at 46 years old, birdied a playoff hole and made the game bigger than it had been the day before. In a city full of famous private golf, the people's course has the best stories — and it will sell you a tee time to come hear them.
