24th Amateur Public Links Championship at Rancho Golf Course. Green #2 in background.
After three years of construction and “one and a quarter million cubic yards of earth” moved, the new municipal Rancho Golf Course opened with the 24th Amateur Public Links Championship of the United States Golf Association in July 1949.
The Golf division of the Recreation and Parks Department of the City of Los Angeles purchased the old Rancho Golf Club for $225,643, mostly to cover overdue Los Angeles County tax bills, in 1946.
“One of the truly amazing circumstances in this land purchase and its subsequent development, is the fact that this entire golf course project has been carried out not by the use of tax funds, but with surplus revenues from the operation of other city golf courses, principally those of Griffith Park. Despite a very modest schedule of fees, the City by careful operation and a program of savings accumulated a sufficient fund not only to buy the Rancho property but also to pay for the complete golf course development aggregating altogether in excess of three-quarters of a million dollars.” 1
1947 Plan for Rancho Golf Course
“Rancho Golf course has been designed with the expert advice and consultation of the well-known golf architect, William Bell, George Von Elm, the former National Amateur Champion and Johnny Dawson, famous amateur; general direction of the construction and development of the course was carried out by William Johnson, manager of Los Angeles City golf courses.” 1
“The most careful thought was given to every possible angle of golf play. For example, the direction of fairways was determined with full consideration of both morning and afternoon sun, prevailing winds and the contour of the ground. With the realization that there are more golfers who slice their shots than those who hook them, the course was designed so that sliced shots would remain in bounds but only badly hooked shots go out of bounds.” 1
Rancho’s fifteenth in 1949.
“Greens were placed so as to have adequate air circulation, and each green, tee and fairway was given an individual characteristic with special plantings of shrubs and other landscape features. More than 20,000 trees and shrubs have been used.” 1
“Fairways run parallel with valleys and canyons instead of across them, so as to make easier walking, and tees have been made in such a way that players will not have to walk across the green to get to the next tee.” 1
1949 Rancho club house, looking back down the 10th fairway to the tee. Now the driving range.
Here is the article from the opening program about the Rancho Golf Course:
Armand Hammer, Holmby Park golf course by J.I.B. Jones
1926 Proposal for Holmby Park
Before California statehood in 1850, Holmby Park was part of the 4438 acre Rancho San Jose de Buenos Ayres where Don Benito Wilson raised cattle. In 1884 the ranch was purchased by John Wolfskill, a forty-niner, and former state Senator, who also owned the 13,000-acre Escondido ranch in San Diego County. The land was known as the Wolfskill ranch before being sold to a syndicate who laid out the boomtown of Sunset in 1887. After the town failed Wolfskill regained ownership in all but a few of the sold lots.
In 1919 Arthur Letts, Sr., the merchant prince of Los Angeles, and the founder of Broadway Department Stores, bought the remaining 3296 acre Wolfskill Ranch for subdivision. The boundaries were roughly Sunset Boulevard on the north, Pico blvd on the south, and from the Los Angeles Country Club to Sepulveda boulevard east to west. The area was marketed by the Janss Investment Corporation and named Westwood. The southeastern section, which included the future Century City, was called Westwood Hills.
Holmby House, Laughlin Park, Rancho Los Felis
L.A.C.C. member Arthur Letts named the Holmby Hills area, as he had his nearby home in Laughlin Park, Holmby House. In 1927, his golfing mad son, Arthur Letts Jr., built his own rambling English house overlooking the country club. It became the infamous Playboy Mansion West in 1971.
It was the company of Letts’ son in law Harold Janss who donated the land in 1926 to the city of Los Angeles, and it was Park Commissioner Van Griffith, son of Griffith Park donor Griffith J. Griffith, who was the father of the new idea of a bowling green and a pony golf course for the park.
1936 Janss Investment Corporation advert
The 18-hole Pony golf course opened on May 18, 1929, with a week long public golf tournament, with two trophy cups donated by Harold Janss, “to the man and woman with the lowest gross scores.”
William P. Bell designed the original layout, which was revamped in 1940 under Parks superintendent William Johnson. Alterations, mainly due to providing common park areas at the north end of the park, have reduced the size of the course over the years.
In 1981 Holmby Park Golf Course was threatened with closure due to a city of Los Angeles budget crisis. It was saved at the last minute by neighbors Hugh Hefner of Playboy Mansion West (the Arthur Letts Jr. house), and Occidental Petroleum billionaire, Armand Hammer, whose name now adorns the course.
Holmby Park green and clubhouse in January 2012
The City of Los Angeles has been operating the 18-hole pony course and bowling green since 1929.
The 18th tee of Rancho Park golf course, at the re-dedication of the Arnold Palmer plaque, May 17.
On Wednesday last, a new Arnold Palmer plaque was dedicated, commemorating his score of 12, on Rancho Park’s par-five 18th hole, during the first round of the 1961 L.A. Open. The original plaque was dedicated in 1963, and later stolen. A replacement “stone” was installed by the Recreation and Parks Department.
This beautiful new plaque, designed by graphic artist and Rancho Park golf club champion, Ed Passarelli, is the permanent replacement, being a combination of a re-creation of the original plaque, plus a map of the hole, with a description of the strokes taken by Mr Palmer, plus an embossed photograph.
The idea for replacing the replacement of the original plaque, and the execution of the plan to use it to raise money for junior golf, was all Phil Baugh, of the First Tee of Los Angeles.
Arnold would be proud.
After her speech, golf legend Amy Alcott, tee’d up a ball, and played the 18th hole, with a gallery of supporters and guests, she made some beautiful strokes, easily scoring a par 5, with never an inclination of the “heart warming” 3-woods that Arnold experienced in January 1961!
From left to right in the photo:
Amy Alcott – LPGA & World Golf Hall of Fame member
John Jones – Rancho Park GC Historian & Grammy Award winner
Phil Bough – ED LAJCC Charity Foundation/The First Tee of Los Angeles
Ed Passarelli – Plaque Designer
Laura Bauernfiend – Golf Manager, LA City Rec. & Parks
When he arrived in New York from England in 1920, W. Herbert Fowler was already a long time Royal and Ancient amateur golfer, who had won the Jubilee Vase in 1902, and the Bombay Medal in 1903, at St Andrews, and had played on the English golf team of 1903-1905, against Scotland. In his early days he was a crack cricketer, playing for Somerset County. As the dean of the British Experts in golf course architecture, he came to America in January 1920, and headed to California.
Now that the ball-makers have successfully ruined most of our leading courses, it remains for the golf architects to so design the greens that they shall be both difficult of access and that the putting shall demand care and skill in judging slopes and undulations. – W. Herbert Fowler
Mr. Fowler belonged to the following clubs in 1920: Royal and Ancient, Royal North Devon, The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, Royal St. George’s, Cooden Beach, Burnham, Somerset, and Walton Heath, where he was also manager. Fowler was also a long time director of the Royal and Ancient.
William Herbert Fowler’s home club, and course design masterpiece, was Walton Heath Golf Club, which, when it opened in 1904, was the longest golf course in England, just as the Haskel Ball was changing the game, and making the old golf courses obsolete. The legendary James Braid was Walton Heath’s head professional.
The outstanding features of the seventeenth hole at Walton Heath are more grandiose, their creator – Herbert Fowler – being of Anakim. No doubt he was assisted by recollections of the seventh hole at St. Andrew’s in the good old days before the short cut to it on the right of the hills was opened up. Then it was necessary to pick up a long second with a brassie or cleek, steering the ball home to the left of Strath, and not too much to the left lest it be caught in the sand by the Eden. It is hardly too much to say that the measure of glory which has departed from St. Andrew’s is preserved at Walton Heath. – The Professional Golfers of America, August 1920
Between 1920 and 1923, Herbert Fowler traveled between San Francisco and Los Angeles, remodeling and designing many of the great golf courses of California, including; the Burlingame Country Club, the Presidio of San Francisco, Menlo Country Club, Sacramento Country Club, Lincoln Park Municipal, Olympic Club, Crystal Springs Country Club, Sequoyah Country Club, Victoria Club, Los Angeles Country Club – North and South, Rancho Golf Club, Del Monte No.1, and Del Monte No.2 at Pebble Beach.
Fowler remodeled the historic, William Robertson designed, Del Monte No.1 golf links, nine holes at a time, starting early in 1920. By April he had also made a plan for lengthening the troubled Del Monte No.2, at Pebble Beach, which was considered too short for the big hitters, with only holes; 2, 6, and 14, up to the challenge. Surprisingly, this was deemed necessary, despite the many alterations made to both courses from 1918 through 1919 by the Del Monte Country Club Green Committee, led by Francis McComas, Douglas Grant and Charles E. Maud. Less than a month before Fowler arrived to remodel Del Monte No. 1 and 2, the Green Committee announced that both golf courses had never been in better shape!
It was Douglas Grant of Burlingame, the son of a wealthy merchant in San Francisco, a Yale graduate, who had married the daughter of Sir William Rutherford, the Mayor of Liverpool, who helped bring W. Herbert Fowler to California. Grant lived in England from 1910 to 1915, mainly for his golf game. His home course was Herbert Fowler’s Walton Heath Golf Club, where James Braid was his teacher. He also played at Royal St. George’s, and at other clubs around London, and in the south of France. He entered many major amateur and Open events during those years, and was well known in the press. In 1912 he beat John Ball in the Irish championship.
Bernard Darwin, who called Fowler “perhaps the most daring and original of all golfing architects”, recalled meeting Grant, the smooth swinging Californian, at Woodcote Park, the sensational new golf course Fowler built for the Royal Automobile Club in 1915.
Douglas Grant is credited with co-designing Del Monte No. 2 at Pebble Beach with Jack Neville. He returned to California from England in January 1916. On his first visit to Del Monte in February, he was said to have said that the land at Pebble Beach was “some of the best he has ever seen for the construction of a course. It is very probable that the Del Monte management will start the construction of a new course at the seaside resort in the very near future.”
Grant, left San Francisco with his family, and headed back to live at Walton Heath, in October, 1919. One can imagine the conversation Grant and Fowler had back in England, concerning the latter’s upcoming trip to California in the new year, where he would be remodeling Grant’s home courses; the Burlingame Country Club, and Del Monte No.1 and No. 2 at Pebble Beach!
According to Hay Chapman, in the San Francisco Chronicle, W. Herbert Fowler’s 1920-1922 alterations to the Pebble Beach links included:
New back tees added to holes 2,6,9,10,11,13 & 18. New greens built for holes 1,7,9 & 12. New traps added to holes 1 & 17. Hole 5 was also straightened.
In the summer of 1922, Fowler’s most radical alteration was the building of a new raised green in front of the Lodge. With a raised tee, calling for an accurate shot with the ocean as a hazard, it makes a 535 yard hole. The fairway has been widened and it will be a big improvement over the eighteenth of last year, creating what many say is one of the finest finishing holes in golf.
The final W. Herbert Fowler updates at Pebble Beach were completed for the 1923 Del Monte summer season:
New tee at 2, lengthening the hole from a par 4 to a par 5 New tee and green at 3. New larger tee at 4. New tees at 5 and 6, ten yards added. New tee at 10, moved to the right to tempt the long hitters New tee at 13. New tee and green at 14, lengthening it from a par 4 (430) to a par 5 (580), the longest hole in the state New larger tee at 15. New green at 16, hogback removed.
W. Herbert Fowler at Del Monte No.2, Pebble Beach by J.I.B. Jones
