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ABOUT LOS ANGELES

BEST GOLF

Best Golf

This is the brutally honest take of an L.A. golfer: I haven’t withheld any compliments here, but I haven’t pulled any punches, either. I’d venture to guess that L.A. has more golfers per public golf hole than any city in the country. That fact-combined with local real estate values having militated against new course construction anywhere near the city-makes L.A. probably the single toughest place for a visiting businessman to get out and play a round, say, on getaway day… or for that matter, for a local resident to sneak in a round on an average weekday afternoon.

The best public course in the area-and the most crowded-is Rancho Park, located in West L.A., within striking distance of Santa Monica, Century City, and Beverly Hills, the three areas in which most of our non-downtown visitors lodge. The more or less annual host of the L.A. Open for about ten years between ’65 and ’75, Rancho is also the most difficult track in the city apart from L.A.C.C. North, Bel-Air and Riviera, and is far too much of a challenge for most double-digit handicappers. Of course, that doesn’t stop them from playing it. Because of their masochistic dedication to the place, I have never played Rancho (even in the early morning) in less than five hours.

The other standby munis are the Harding and Wilson courses in Griffith Park, 10 minutes or so from downtown. They too are heavily played, but since there are two courses on the lot, it’s easier for a walk-up to get on here than at Rancho. Wilson is a garden-variety 72, and the longer of the two, and (ironically) the one most people want to play; the shorter Harding is a much underappreciated little George Thomas gem.

These three courses, being munis, are cheap tickets-- $21 on weekdays, $25 on weekends. Moving up a level to the $40 to $60 price point relieves a lot of the waiting, but involves something in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 minutes more driving. The two venues here are Brookside in Pasadena and Industry Hills in Industry Hills. Each has two courses (a blessing, again, for walk-ups), one longer and generally better than the other, although the shorter courses are entertaining enough. The best of the four is probably the Eisenhower course at IH.

Local lore has it that the PGA Tour once asked Johnny Miller to give the course a look-over as a potential LA Open venue, and that Miller, having played it, pronounced it too difficult. It’s softened up some since then, much of the jungle-like brush surrounding landing areas having been cleaned up and groomed by the resort corporation that bought the property about three years ago. But it can still be a torture chamber for high handicappers.

Because of the local real estate situation, newer area courses are really quite a haul from the city. Lost Canyons, host of a couple of Dye-Couples courses, is out in the Valley, and a 45 minute to an hour drive. Both are fine courses, but a bit overhyped and overpriced, in my opinion, considering the $150 plus price for a round, the difficulty of the drive (which more often than not involves a good deal of traffic), and the fact that afternoon rounds often subject you to screaming winds that make the courses-hillside layouts on which environmental regulations have restricted the amount of playable turf--make most people more likely to lose a ball than make a par.

Newly opened Rustic Canyon, equally far from the city, was designed, in part, by architecture critic Geoff Shackleford; I’m eager to have a look at it, but haven’t yet. The two courses at Robinson Ranch, another far-flung site, have attracted some national ink, but are just plain bad courses, and undeserving of any more attention. The incredibly scenic and now infamous Ocean Trails, again about an hour from most of LA, figures to play at 15 holes for the foreseeable future-the beleaguered original owners have just run out of money and been forced out of the project, halting course repairs. Still, because of its Pacific Views, it’s probably the best of the just-outside-of-LA layouts, and certainly the course from which visitors bring home most stories, even if most of those stories involve the gorge now residing where three of the course’s holes used to be.

City of Los Angeles - 18 Hole Courses