At the opening exhibition of Municipal #2 (Harding) golf course in Griffith Park in 1923 with Willie Hunter, George C. Thomas Jr., Ed Tufts, A.D.S. Johnston and Norman Macbeth.
Norman Macbeth Jr., was born in Bolton, England in 1879, and grew up playing at Royal Lytham & St Annes golf club where he won the club championship three times while still in school. After an engineering apprenticeship in India with his father’s company he emigrated to Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1903.
Norman married American Lucia Holliday in 1907, and they moved to Pittsburgh where Macbeth played on the Oakmont Golf Club Leslie Cup team with W.C. Fownes Jr., and on the 1909 Pennsylvania State golf team with Albert Tillinghast.
#1 son was John Holliday Macbeth born in 1908. He drowned in 1919 while Norman was in France working for the Red Cross during WW I.
The Macbeth’s moved to Los Angeles in 1910, with Norman working for the Riverside Portland Cement company. The company supplied cement for the Los Angeles Aqueduct and half the roads that we still drive on in the 21st century.
#2 son was Norman Macbeth III or Jr., born in Los Angeles in 1910. He was also a golf champion and lived until 1989.
Norman joined the Los Angeles Country Club and won numerous amateur golf titles over the next several years.
#3 son was Alexander born in 1915 and died in May 1920. Cause unknown.
Macbeth volunteered for the Red Cross in France, where he drove an ambulance, and managed to play at least one round of golf!
He returned to Los Angeles in August 1919, and was soon elected chairman of the Green committee creating the new Wilshire Country Club golf course in Hancock Park, which became his non-working life’s passion.
Norman was also playing a full schedule of club tournaments at Los Angeles Country Club where noted golf architect John Duncan Dunn was professional and George C. Thomas Jr., and Herbert Fowler were making history designing and building the new North and South courses.
Charles Orr (manager) and Norman Macbeth (chair). Wilshire Country Club green committee.
The new Wilshire Country Club course was completed and open for member play in December 1920. Macbeth led the club team and green committee and was elected to the USGA Green Section. He was also a member of the Los Angeles Traffic Commission.
Norman and Lucia had an uncontested divorce in 1928.
In 1934 Norman married Lucille Chandler, ex-wife of Wilshire CC founder Raymond Stephens. They were parents to Norman Jr., and Lucille’s son and daughter.
At the time of Norman’s death in 1940, he also left two brothers and five sisters in England.
Arnold Palmer teeing off at Rancho Municipal Golf Course.
Today we’re looking back 60-years to the 35th Los Angeles Open at Rancho Municipal Golf Course and remembering the 12 that shook the world! The one scored by the late great, handsome, swashbuckling golfer, Arnold Palmer, on his 18th hole of the 1961 tournament.
I also want to share with you how Arnie’s story has been remembered over the years, so, after the “overview” you will find selected quotes from various news sources describing how he got the 12. Arnold himself was asked about it more than a few too many times!
Overview
The 35th Los Angeles Open (“Golf’s Golden Tournament”) was presented by the L.A. Junior Chamber of Commerce and the Southern California Professional Golfers Association. The Rancho Municipal Golf Course measured 7,131 yards and was a “par” 71. The professionals played the course with the front and back nine’s reversed, starting at the regular 10th hole. And like today, some players started on the 1st, and some on the 10th. Also traditional at Rancho for the Los Angeles Open, the Open was played from Friday to Monday. Thursday was Pro-Am day. Television forced the Thursday-Sunday change in 1966.
Interestingly Arnold Palmer “tee’d off” on the 10th, the regular 1st hole, on Friday at 12:14 P.M., playing with Billy Casper (71) and Bo Wininger (74). When he reached the 508 yard par-5 eighteenth hole he needed “par” to finish one-under 70 and stay in contention, but he spoiled it.
Palmer’s drive was perfect and went 270 yards to the middle of the fairway, leaving him a 238 yard uphill shot to a raised green at the end of a 50 yard-wide funnel of “Out of Bounds” fences.
For his second and fourth shots Arnie hit over the 25 foot high driving range fence on the right, and then put his 6th and 8th shots into the middle of Patricia Avenue on the left, with one ball crossing Pico Boulevard. For his 10th stroke he ended up over the flag on the apron of the green on a downhill lie. His approach was short, and his one-putt earned him the 12, scoring 77 for the round. It put him 10-strokes behind the leader Ted Kroll, and led to him missing his only cut of the year by one stroke when he scored 72 in Saturday’s second round.
After the L.A. Open Arnie sped off to San Diego and won the tournament, followed by wins at Phoenix, Baton Rouge, Texas, and topping off his summer by winning the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale in England.
The Stories
1961 01 07 – LA Times – Dick Hyland says: R, R, L, L
“Palmer took a 3-wood and swung. The ball shot straight as an arrow, high and to his right – six feet out of bounds over the 25 foot fence guarding the driving range.
Palmer dropped a ball, swung again. Again out of bounds. Same place.
Again he dropped a ball. Palmer corrected his grip and stance. Overcorrected. Bang. Out of bounds again, this time hole high over the grandstand and 30-ft high fence bordering Patricia Ave.
Palmer did not hesitate. He dropped another ball over his shoulder, stepped back, addressed the ball – and hit it out of bounds behind the stands again!
The fifth ball he played on the hole, for his 10th shot, Palmer slapped past the pin onto the green, the first player to hit past the pin on the long hole all day. The ball trickled a foot off the far side of the green onto the apron 25 ft. from the pin. Palmer finally went into the cup with his 12th stroke.
‘A nice round number.’ he mumbled writing it on the card. The crowd cheered him loudly.
‘What were you trying to do?’
‘I was just trying to get the ball on the green.’
‘What happened?’
‘I just hit some bad shots.’ “
1961 01 07 – LA Times – Paul Zimmerman says: R, R, L, L
“He pushed his first fairway shot over the fence into the driving range. The second went the same place, as Arnold struck with his No. 3 wood.
Boom! went the third high over the screen onto Patricia Ave., as he hooked badly trying to adjust. The fourth one looped into the same place and rolled to Pico.
‘What were you trying to do?‘ someone asked naively.
‘I was just trying to get the ball on the green,‘ was Palmer’s retort as a thin grin broke across his handsome face.“
1961 01 07 – NYT – Arnold Palmer Says: R, R, L, L
“ ‘I pushed a No. 3 wood out of bounds into the practice fairway the first time. Then I pushed another one about in the same spot.‘
‘It is possible I over corrected on the third one and knocked that clear out of the course on the opposite side of the fairways and clear out on the highway. The fourth one went right with it.‘
‘It was a nice round figure, that 12,‘ he quipped as he walked off the El Rancho course, appearing only slightly perturbed.”
1965 01 07 – LA Times – Bill Shirley says: L, R, L, R
“He knocked his second shot out of bounds to the left, dropped another ball and hit it out of bounds to the right…He tried again – and hit another shot out of bounds to the left. Shot No. 5 sailed out of bounds, this time to the right again, presumably to keep the score even.”
1967 01 27 – LA Times – Charles Maher says: L, R, L, R
“On his second shot…Palmer hit a ball right down the middle. That is, it was right down the middle of Patricia Avenue, which borders the course on the west.
Palmer then shot out of bounds on the east side, knocked another ball onto Patricia Avenue, went out of bounds once more in the east…”
1968 01 21 – LA Times – Patrick McNulty says: L, R, L, R
“Palmer blasted off with another power shot that carried 250 yards. Unfortunately, the shot hooked badly, finally bouncing out of bounds on the road.
Then: Whammo! another Palmer shot, this time slicing over into the driving range…dropped another ball. Incredibly this ball too began curving left, falling into the street…Another ball and another slice…”
1982 01 13 – UPI – Plaque says: R, R, L, L. – Palmer says: R, L, L, R
“A permanent plaque describes the 12 as follows: After hitting a perfect drive, Palmer sliced two balls into the driving range and followed with two hooks onto Patricia Avenue, which runs alongside the ninth fairway. He reached the green with his 10th shot and two-putted for his 12.
Palmer, understandably, says he doesn’t remember all the details of the fateful day in the first round of the 1961 tournament. But he said the plaque is wrong.
‘After a pretty good drive, my next shot, a 3-wood, hit the top of the fence before going into the driving range,’ he said. ‘Then my next shot hooked over the fence. I think my next shot went left, too, then the next one went to the driving range again.’ “
1983 01 13 – LA Times – Shav Glick – two right, two left
Palmer – “ ‘The plaque is wrong, though, it wasn’t the first round, it was the second round.’ “
1987 07 18 – Washington Post – Arnold Palmer says: L, R, L, R.
“I took 12 on a par-5 in the L.A. Open once: I wanted to knock a 3-wood on the green, but put it out of bounds to the left. I hit it again and put it out of bounds on the right. Then the left again, and then the right again. A guy in the press asked me, `How’d you make 12?’ {Pause. Wink.} I said I missed a 20-foot putt for 11.”
1990 10 25 – LA Times – Dan Hafner – Palmer says: R, L, R, L.?
“It was Palmer’s last hole of the second round on Jan. 6, 1961. He drove the ball 275 yards up the middle of the fairway.
‘The plaque says it was the first round, but it was the second,‘ Palmer recalled. ‘I knew that I needed a birdie for a 68, and an eagle would put me close to the lead.‘
‘I went for the green in two, using a three-wood. It soared over the fence into the driving range.’
Asked why he didn’t then play it safe, Palmer said, ‘Well, I still had a chance to make par.’
Palmer hit the next shot into the road on the left, then stubbornly hit two more out of bounds.
‘I had to make a tough putt just to get my 12,’ he said, laughing. ‘Instead of being close to the lead, I missed the cut.’
‘I think you could say there was no lasting effect. I won the next two tournaments on the tour and then had three winning tournaments at Rancho in future years. I’ve always enjoyed playing there.’ “
1991 04 07 – LA Times – Mal Florence – Palmer says: 4 balls out of bounds
“He then proceeded to hit four balls out of bounds and missed the cut.
‘I was devastated,’ he said. ‘I went to the VIP tent and ordered a beer. I was mulling over what happened, and J. Paul Getty was in there and he said. ‘How in the world could a player of your caliber do that?’ I said, ‘Well, I missed a 20-foot putt for an 11.’ ”
1993 10 17 – OC Register – John Strege – Palmer says: R, R, L, L
“Palmer put his drive in the fairway, then pushed his next two shots right, into the driving range. He hooked two shots out of bounds, onto Patricia Ave. He then hit the green and took two putts.
Later he was asked how he made 12.
‘I missed a three-footer for 11,’ he said.”
2014 05 08 – TV Week – Chuck Ross – Palmers says: R, R, L, L
“ ‘…pushed the first two shots – hooked two onto road.’ ”
At Jack Nicklaus’s 1st Masters in 1959, George Bayer won the Long Drive competition on the first hole of Augusta National with a 321 yard belt. Golf Hall of Famer Frank Stranahan came second with 293 yards.
At 245 lbs and 6 foot 4 inches tall, Pasadenan George Bayer hit regular 365 yard drives and was the first modern professional to drive over 400 yards. He was discovered by Bob Hope at the Inglewood City Championships in Los Angeles.
In 1960 the USGA came up with a new ball measuring machine to stop the touring pros from averaging more than 260 yards to save golf courses from having to buy more land to lengthen their layouts!
For George they said they had nothing, because they couldn’t stop muscles!
George Bayer smoking one 321 yards on #1 at Augusta to win the 1959 Masters Long Drive.
Always one of the busiest golf courses in America, Rancho’s rolling hills, lofted trees, wide fairways, minimal rough and small greens, can still challenge and enchant, despite existing in a playing condition more akin to the 1980s than television golf.
The Los Angeles Open was held at Rancho between 1956 and 1983, when it was a major civic event, drawing thousands of spectators, and where Arnie’s Army really began.
The Open’s early-January date was the first of the professional season, and often enhanced by fog, wind, cold and rain, making for great competition. When Rancho was in championship form, with double cut greens, deep rough and narrow fairways, the pros almost never “ate up” the course.
The lowest Los Angeles Open score on Rancho was 268 by 23 year-old Phil Rodgers in 1962, the same year Jack Nicklaus entered his first championship and finished in last place. Rodgers had a 62 in the final round! Phil also won the 1954 Junior L.A. Open at Rancho, beating runner-up and National Junior champion Al Geiberger by seven strokes.
Arnold Palmer on the range at Rancho during the 1963 L.A. Open.
Rancho’s next lowest L.A. Open score was Arnold Palmer‘s 269 in 1967.
Gil Morgan managed 270 in the last L.A. Open at Rancho in 1983. This compares to Lanny Watkins’s record score of 264 in 1985, Fred Couples’ 266 in 1990, and Chip Beck and Mike Weir’s 267 in 1988 and 2004 respectively, all scored on the Riviera Country Club course.
William Park “Billy” Bell was born in 1886 and raised on a Pennsylvania farm. In 1911, after a stint at Duff’s College, Pittsburgh, Billy was hired by the Annandale Country Club as a greenkeeper and caddie master. By 1917, he was the official Ground Foreman, working with Donald Ross associate Walter Fovargue, building a new Annandale golf course. Architect William Watson was hired in 1919 to remodel the course in grass, and Billy Bell supervised and built it.
Billy Bell competed in local golf tournaments, finishing in the top ten out of 385 entries at Griffith Park for the Red Cross in 1917, and coming sixth in an invitational at Annandale in 1919.
Billy Bell left Annandale to work with Chicago legends George O’Neil and Jack Croke at the new 54-hole Pasadena Golf Club (Altadena) by May of 1920. Soon after, Croke and Bell built Mountain Meadows and rebuilt Annandale and Rancho, after which Billy went on to build new courses with Max Behr at Montebello and Rio Hondo, and then with George C. Thomas Jr. at Griffith Park, Ojai Valley, La Cumbre, Bel-Air, Riviera and Los Angeles North.
Billy Bell designed and built over seventy golf courses, including Palos Verdes, Woodland Hills, Chevy Chase, Castlewood, Sunnyside, Oahu, Catalina, Brookside, San Clemente, San Diego, La Jolla, Western Ave., (Chester Washington), Lakewood, Recreation Park, Stanford, Apple Valley, and he worked with William Johnson on Rancho Park, Balboa/Encino, Alondra Park, and Singing Hills.
“By the 1930s Bell had earned a reputation as the most prolific architect in the west.”
He was a pioneer in golf course construction, irrigation and landscaping, and an expert agronomist, who was also in charge of the turf at the Pasadena Rose Bowl and the Los Angeles Coliseum, where he was turf advisor for the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.
“During World War II, he served as a turf consultant to the U.5. Army Corps of Engineers.”
After the war, Billy Bell designed and built a number of golf courses for the veterans, at his own expense, including at Pearl Harbor, Guam, Long Beach, West Los Angeles, Van Nuys, Santa Ana, Marine Memorial, and Camp Pendleton.
“In 1946 he was awarded a commendation by the Southern California chapter of the PGA for his effort in creating courses for wounded servicemen.”
His partnership with his son, Billy Bell Jr. (William Francis Bell), started after junior’s return from the war, where he was a Yeoman on the Aircraft Carrier USS Block Island (CVE-21 & CVE-106) in both the Atlantic and Pacific campaigns, reaching the rank of Major.
After the war, father and son formed a new company and started working together. As Billy slowed down, junior sped up. By the early 1950s, Billy Bell Jr. was clearly carrying on the family tradition. He would go on to design, build and renovate, over 100 golf courses.
Their work together included, Tamarisk, Torrey Pines, Tucson, Bakersfield, Buena Ventura, Newport Beach, and Rolling Hills, while on his own, Billy Bell Jr. gave us Malibu, Industry Hills, Antelope Valley, California, Harbor Park, Jurupa Hills, Monarch Beach, Newport Beach, Palm Desert, Saticoy, Skylinks, Knollwood, Heartwell, Los Verdes, Lake Arrowhead, Sandpiper, Whittier Narrows and Soule Park, to name but a few.
Billy Bell and Billy Bell Jr., are the two most important golf course architects in Southern California history. Billy Bell was a founder and 1952 president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, and Billy Bell Jr., was president five years later. Their induction into the 2017 Hall of Fame is a long overdue reward for their magnificent contribution to the sport of golf in our state.
Rancho’s 1949, # 9. Now the location of #10 tee. The hole was reversed in 1952.
After the Bob Hope Exhibition on July 3, followed by the United States Golf Association Public Links championship, the Rancho golf course opened to the Public on July 17, 1949. Greens fees were $1 for 18 holes!
The Los Angeles Times reported that,
“A capacity play of 400 golfers crowded the new Rancho municipal course yesterday on the first day of public use of the city’s latest 18-hole links.”
“From 4:40 a.m., when the clubhouse doors were open and several score early waitees headed for the starter’s window, until 6 o’clock when the place was jumping. By 7 a.m. a four-hour wait was needed to get a starting time at the first tee.”
Dr Bull : “You boys, Haskell and Kempshall are much too lively.” (G.I., Sept 05, 1902)
By 1902, golf was changing. The new rubber-filled Haskell and Kempshall golf balls were replacing the long-used, and loved, gutta-percha balls. The old gutta was shorter on the carry, but more controllable. The new balls were known as “bounding Billies,” because they bounced and ran through bunkers and hazards with nothing able to stop them. Amateur champion Walter J. Travis actually drove a Haskell 382 yards on the Garden City links in January 1903.
In Southern California, where long dry summers meant hard-pan fairways, summer golf nearly ceased to be when players opted for the new longer-distance rubber balls.
At the Los Angeles Country Club, at Pico and Western boulevards, the club’s bowling alley and ping pong tables replaced summer golf until irrigation arrived about ten years later.
_________________
Here is a short piece from Mr. J. L. Low, published in the Athletic News (UK), Summer 1902, about the impact of the Transatlantic Bomber:
“The mind of the American man is exceedingly cunning, and he has devised a ball which makes it easier for the ordinary mortal to go round a golf course in a low score.
Let us admit this fact, and say, ‘We acknowledge that your ball is easier to play with than a golf ball, but you need not make any more, as we don’t wish the game made easier, our links being laid out to test the strength and skill of a golfer playing with a ball made out of certain recognized material.’
Or there is another course open to us, and that is to counteract this unfortunate inventive power of making the game easy by making the courses longer and more difficult. On courses which are at present of good length the holes would need to be lengthened by about thirty yards in order to give good driving its former advantage ; and there are other ways of making the rubber ball tremble within its skin.
But of the two ways of escaping the curse of these new balls and restoring the game to its old position as one of the most difficult of games, the former seems the more simple and less expensive ; the cost of altering our courses is, in fact, too great to contemplate.”
“In the meantime it cannot too extensively be advertised that scores made with patent balls are only equal to scores made with gutta balls from ‘short tees.'”
Jock Hutchison giving actress Constance Talmadge an indoor golf lesson in 1922.
Jock Hutchison and Jim Barnes were the reigning British and U.S. Open champions when they booked a 12 date exhibition tour of the Pacific Coast, from December 1921, to January 1922. Their first stop in Southern California was the Ambassador Hotel golf course in Los Angeles, which later became the Rancho Golf Club, which is on the same land that is now the municipal Rancho Park golf course and Cheviot Hills Park.
Constance Talmadge was one of the three Talmadge sisters to succeed in Hollywood. Their father, of course, was an alcoholic, and abandoned them, and their mother went to work doing laundry!
Jim Barnes and Jock Hutchison in 1921.
St Andrews born, Jock was the first naturalized American to win the “British” Open, which he did in 1921.
English-American “Long” Jim Barnes was the 1921 U.S Open champion, and a West coaster who worked at Claremont G.C. (Oakland, CA.), Spokane G.C., and Tacoma G.C. He hit a 350 yard drive at Del Monte in 1911, and his consistent 300 yard length “off the tee,” gave him his nickname.
Constance loved comedy, not slapstick. She said she couldn’t be compared to her sister, as she couldn’t weep over a plastic doll. She loved golf, but preferred to watch the experts play, or caddying for them, and could often be found following the many exhibition matches held in Los Angeles in the 1920’s.
Note – I have included Wikipedia links to the people in this article, however, I often disagree with much of the history these pages present – jibj
Filling in the barranca at the “the island green” sixteenth, in early 1919 on Del Monte No. 2. (P.B.)
“The new course, which has just been opened for play at Pebble Beach, to be known as the Del Monte Second Championship Course, has as complete a watering system as was ever devised. It is already in working order, and with like comparison the other features of the course are having their development in the most scientific and intelligent manner.”
“The watering system on this course is capable of distributing two million gallons per week, which, with the annual rainfall, aggregates seventy inches a year on the watered area. These facts illustrate that California is prepared to take care of all the golfers in the country and give them excellent courses under ideal conditions.” – from The Golfer’s Happy Hunting Grounds by Jack Neville. Pacific Golf and Motor, March, 1918.
To the Editor of Golf Illustrated (UK), July, 1903
Sir, I have just read your criticism of the Prestwick course in your paper of the 15th inst.
The two bunkers you mention as having come in for special condemnation are the only two on the course that a long driver has ever to think of, except when the ground is hard and there is a following wind, as was the case during the late championship. As you remark, the hazard at the sixteenth which caught balls going to the thirteenth as well as going to the sixteenth, has plenty of room for the hazard to be avoided. In playing to the sixteenth, if the ball is driven to the left it is perfectly safe, but if the player has pluck and accuracy he can go straight for the hole between the hazard and the Cardinal, and is rewarded by reaching the green.
With regard to the Pot, going to the fifteenth, it has been a bone of contention for very many years. You observe that the bunker is not only hidden, but is the only good and safe line to the hole. This is not the case, for if the ball is played to the right there is a path down which it can run, and very often goes as far as a ball which carries the bunker.
The late Willie Campbell – and he was by no means an abnormally long driver – when playing with me, carried the bunker nine consecutive rounds. One fine summer evening I saw Mr J.H. Whigham drive six balls over it. This was done at a time there was a discussion going on about its fairness. In my opinion, three fourths of the players who now grumble at the hazard would carry it if it were filled up. The truth is, they funk it. They have the same feeling that a short driver has at every hazard, and they say it is not fair because they ought to use their heads at one hole if they cannot trust their hearts.
The whole tendency for years has been to remove all difficulties from courses. The horse mower is in constant use and nearly the whole course is now cut and rolled and made to look more like a bowling green than a golf links.
Instead of filling up the bunkers complained of, the course would be much improved if many more similar ones were made, to punish long, erratic driving.
During the late championship I had talks with several old golfers. Archie Simpson said to me, “I mind when I was here if I got round in 80, I thought I was playing grand golf ; look at it now.” I met James Kay at the thirteenth hole. He said, “This is easy golf ; I have had nothing but teed balls.” Willie Park and Andrew Kirkaldy expressed the same opinion. One of the New School said to me the course was in beautiful order, but he thought more of the long grass should have been cut round the greens. The one thought of the New School seems to be to remove anything that might spoil a score. They think it is golf to get into the hole in the fewest number of strokes, forgetting, as Sir Alexander Kinloch so well expressed it, “That this is not golf, and, please God, never will be golf. Golf is to get into the hole in one stroke less than your opponent.” To eliminate chance from any game is to spoil it.
I do not agree with your criticism of where the holes were placed on the second and sixteenth greens. With regard to the former, the Cup has been the place for medal play from time immemorial, and to get near that hole is one of the best shots on any links. As the ground was hard and a following wind during the championship, it was exceedingly difficult ; but it was not impossible, as I saw J.H. Taylor play it to perfection, and he was rewarded with a two. To place the hole in the centre, or far end of the green, is to make it what Mr J.L. Low called it in an article he wrote about Prestwick – a “featureless hole.”
