The field desk · Los Angeles
Reporting, guides, history, routes, and useful field notes for golfers across Los Angeles.
History desk
The newest published History entry in this desk.
How Rustic Canyon turned a protected Moorpark wash and a $3 million budget into one of America's most admired public golf courses near Los Angeles and beyond.
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Hillcrest Country Club history: founded in 1920 by Jewish Angelenos shut out of most of LA's elite clubs — then came Hollywood's Round Table, the 1929 PGA, and oil.
The history of Rancho Park Golf Course: how an LA muni hosted 17 L.A. Opens, Arnold Palmer's famous 12, and Charlie Sifford's landmark 1969 victory.
Griffith Park golf history: LA's first muni links in 1914, George Thomas's Wilson and Harding courses, the late-1930s LA Open, and a century of public golf.
The 2023 U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club ended L.A.'s 75-year major drought — how a restored George Thomas masterpiece and Wyndham Clark made history.
Riviera Country Club history: how a 1926 Santa Monica Canyon course became Hogan's Alley, Hollywood's fairway, and the stage for the 2028 Olympics.
Maggie Hathaway golf course history: the blues singer turned activist who desegregated LA's public golf — and the South LA par-3 reborn under Gil Hanse in 2026.
Tiger Woods's Riviera record is golf's strangest anomaly: a 1992 LA Open debut at 16, 82 PGA Tour wins — and none at the course he now hosts.
Amy Alcott learned golf in a Westside front yard, won 29 LPGA titles and five majors, and invented the Dinah Shore leap — LA golf's homegrown Hall of Famer.
The history of golf in Los Angeles, from 1897's Windmill Links to the first LA Open, Hogan's Alley and Riviera, and the road to the 2028 Olympics.
Hollywood golf history: Lakeside Golf Club's celebrity members Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, Hillcrest's comedians' Round Table, and the movies filmed at Riviera.
Babe Zaharias entered the 1938 Los Angeles Open at Griffith Park as the first woman in a PGA Tour field — then returned to make the cut at Riviera in 1945.
From Western Avenue to Rancho Park, how Black golfers and trailblazing women broke professional golf's color and gender lines on LA's public courses.
Los Angeles Open history, 100 years on: from a record $10,000 purse at LACC in 1926 through Rancho Park and Hogan's Alley to today's Genesis Invitational.
William P. Bell — Billy Bell — built Riviera, Bel-Air and the LACC North with George C. Thomas Jr. Meet the builder behind LA's golden age golf courses.
Charlie Sifford won the 1969 Los Angeles Open at Rancho Park at 46 — the story of the opening 63, the playoff, and LA's municipal stage for a civil rights milestone.
The Los Angeles golf legends — champions, architects, and activists — whose defining moments made LA the game's biggest stage, from Hogan's Alley to Rancho Park.
Ben Hogan won three times at Riviera in 18 months — the 1947 and 1948 LA Opens and the 1948 U.S. Open — and the Pacific Palisades course became Hogan's Alley.
How George C. Thomas Jr. brought strategic Golden Age design to Los Angeles — shaping Riviera, Bel-Air, LACC, Palos Verdes and Griffith Park's public courses.
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