Author: fore

Pico Fairway, 1929 (Driving Range)

written by J. Jones
©2013jjonesgolfhistoricalsociety

In reply to Tom Franklin – regarding Celebrating 100 Years at Brentwood C.C.

Alas, I did not write the article. But yes, you are correct; the 1962 PGA championship was moved from Brentwood C.C., to Aronimink, Pennsylvania, after Atty. Gen. Mosk’s intervention in 1961. The PGA president didn’t even think there was anything wrong with the clause, but the general membership voted to remove it, after the Southern California section, four sections from New York, and the Georgia-Alabama section, sponsored the resolution. I should mention that the “Caucasian clause” was only added to the PGA’s constitution in 1943, and that it was meant for Asians, as well as African Americans, and anyone else, not from North or South America.

Thanks for asking about the King of Romania (Rumania, at that time). Considering my extensive collection of material on Brentwood Country Club, I had never found any mention of King Carol in any contemporary publications, and I am fairly sure that he had no direct involvement in the ownership of the Brentwood Country Club.

After Brentwood CC declared bankruptcy in 1937, the course was put up for sale. The receivers leased it, month to month, to Al and Bill Bryant, who operated it as a public golf course.
In 1944, an investment syndicate, led by Rumanian industrialist, Edgar Ausnit, who was born Jewish, and who had fled Rumania in 1940, and was the chairman of the Rumanian-U.S. Chamber of Commerce in New York, purchased the Brentwood property from the bond-holding mortgage company.
While it is possible that King Carol was a secret investor in the Ausnit group, during World War II, it was highly illegal and treasonous to do business with the ex-King of Rumania, who, at that time, were an oppressive, fascist, anti-Jewish, Axis country.

Ausnit’s, Brentwood Country Club Properties, Inc., doubled its money, when they sold the land to the Brentwood Founders Land Co., in 1947. The new owners, led by Edward Zuckerman, wanted to sub-divide, but they changed their minds, when Paul Zimmerman, of the L.A. Times, gave a powerful speech about the importance of saving golf courses, at an Ionic Masonic Lodge meeting in Los Angeles.
The new, and private, Brentwood Country Club opened in July, 1948.

Cheers, JIB