In addition to his pivotal role at LA Country Club and the SCGA, Ed Tufts was also the head of the Pacific Coast Golf Association and later the California Golf Association, and that was in addition to his civic commitments. Renaissance man!
Category: Southern California Golf History
L.A. Country Club’s Hunt, Eager and Burns clubhouse in 1911.
Guy Wilshire. The man behind the Boulevard in Los Angeles.
Yes, one of the “charter members” of LA golf club and LA Country Club!
My Book on Griffith Park golf history! Tom Bendelow and George C. Thomas!
The Women’s Open Amateur, held by the Southern California Golf Association in November of 1899
The first golf competition held under the auspices of the Southern California Golf Association in November 1899 at the Los Angeles Country Club’s Pico & Western eighteen-hole sand-green golf links.
Louis Berrien – Annandale, Del Monte, Beresford, Salt Lake, Wilshire, Fox Hills, Santa Monica!
SCGA Women’s Amateur Championship 1900
The first official Women’s Championship of Southern California was held under the auspices of the Southern California Golf Association in 1900 at the 9-hole, 2,291 yard, Pasadena Country Club Links at Oak Grove (NLE), over two days in January 1900.
Pasadena CC was the first golf “country club” in Southern California. It was founded in 1897, and the course opened in 1898. Its first professional was W. H. “Bertie” Way, formerly of Westward Ho!, England, Shinnecock Hills, Meadow Brook and Detroit Country Club. Over the winter of 1899-1900 he was doing double duty at Pasadena and Los Angeles Country Club.
The women’s championship contest at Pasadena was played over two days. It started with an 18-hole medal play qualifier for the four lowest scores. Then 18-hole match-play, and an 18-hole final.
The first Southern California Women’s Champion was Mrs. Jean W. Bowers, who beat Mrs. John D. Foster 5 and 4. Both ladies from Los Angeles CC. Mrs. Hugh Vail won the medal. Jean Bowers won again the next year at Los Angeles CC.
The Women’s Amateur Championship was run by the SCGA tournament committee from 1900 to 1920, when they formed a women’s sub-committee, and soon after, the Women’s Auxiliary of the SCGA. The Auxiliary ran the tournament until the Southern California Women’s Golf Association was formed in 1934.
The 1934 Women’s championship was played at San Diego Country Club at Chula Vista in May.
“Miss Helen Luscomb, sweet girl graduate of U.C.L.A. just a year ago, today became the new Southern California California golf champion. She defeated Mrs. Kenneth Carter, San Gabriel champion, 4 and 2, in a scheduled 36-hole match.” Helen won on her home course.
The Southern California Women’s Amateur Championship was held every year until World War II. After that it gets complicated!
To be continued…
©2022 golfhistoricalsociety – jib jones
Altadena Country Club – Pasadena Golf Club 1911-2021
William Watson of Pasadena, Chicago, and St. Andrews, Scotland, started designing the original Altadena Country Club in February 1911 for J. B. Coulston, president of the National Bank of Pasadena and owner of the Maryland Hotel.
Coulston headed a group of hotel men and other “capitalists,” who had sold their Pasadena Country Club to H.E. Huntington, and hoped to ease overcrowding on the Annandale and Hotel Raymond links by forming a land association and buying 134 acres of the old Allen Ranch in Altadena as a replacement. They named it the Altadena Country Club.
The new clubhouse, 6466 yard eighteen-hole sand-green golf course, and two cement tennis courts, opened on December 28, 1911. Unfortunately, a freak sandstorm in February of 1912 blew the roof off the clubhouse, sending furniture flying in all directions, and greatly damaged the golf course. The next year a three day rain storm flooded and nearly destroyed the course, sending debris into Pasadena. Urgent reconstruction of the Rubio Wash channel through the course to control flooding delayed Watson’s full restoration of the damage, so they built a temporary nine-hole course north of Mendocino Street.
The restoration work was finished at the end of 1914. Watson himself became professional in 1915, while continuing to manage the Hotel Huntington (Pasadena CC) course.
The Altadena Country Club joined the Southern California Golf Association (SCGA) in 1915, and entered SCGA Team play in 1916.
In 1920, J.B. Coulston and the California Hotel Company bought the Altadena Country Club, and planned $500,000 in improvements, with three eighteen-hole golf courses, and named it the Pasadena Golf Club.
In a break with William Watson, George O’Neil, “golf expert of Chicago,” (Toledo CC, Beverly CC), and of the Pasadena Country Club, who had laid out Annandale Golf Club with Arthur Rigby (Los Angeles CC, San Gabriel CC, Santa Anna CC, ) and Al Naylor (Hotel Green, Annandale GC, San Gabriel CC), was hired to layout the new courses. His assistant was Jack Croke, of Chicago’s Exmoor club. Croke built the new course with William P. Bell, who had previously been Caddiemaster, and then Ground Superintendent, at Annandale Golf Club.
The first nine-holes of the new Pasadena Golf Club opened on October 31, 1920, and the second nine in December. It was the first golf course in Southern California with real undulating grass greens. William P. Bell became Superintendent of Pasadena GC in 1921, and Bell and Jack Croke teamed up to rebuild the greens at Annandale in 1922, and at the new Rancho Golf Club in 1923.
The Pasadena Golf Club was taken over by the bank in 1932, renamed the Altadena Golf Club, and open to the public until 1945, when the land and buildings were sold to Westmount College. They were denied the right to build their school on the property, so they split it up and sold it, selling 60 acres of the golf course to Los Angeles County.
L.A. County reworked the remaining nine-holes of the 1920 course and the Altadena Golf Club opened for play in 1950, officially opening in 1951, and continues to be operated by L.A. County 110 years after it started.
©2021 jib jones – golfhistoricalsociety
Whittier, La Habra Heights, Hacienda Country Club’s 100th Anniversary!
The Whittier Country Club was founded in 1920 by real estate developer and ex tennis champion Alphonzo Bell. The new Quaker Colony golf course was designed in the summer of 1920 by Scotch American course architect and golf equipment supplier, William Watson of St. Andrews, Chicago, and Los Angeles, on 151 acres of land owned by Bell in the center of the 3600 acre La Habra Heights subdivision.
In December of 1920, Alphonzo Bell formed the Hacienda Land Company and the Hacienda Country Club, and was looking for a “pro” to build the Watson designed course. He asked old tennis friend Ed Tufts of the local golf association and the Los Angeles Country Club for help. Tufts and legendary golf course architect George C. Thomas Jr., visited the site and made valuable alterations to the Watson design while making a plan for a modern irrigation system.
By Christmas Bell hired visiting English professional Charles Mayo to supervise construction of the course. Mayo was the former playing partner of British Open champion George Duncan, and had been lured to the USA in the summer of 1920 by Chick Evans to be the new professional at the Edgewater Club in Chicago.
In December Mayo was in Los Angeles, managed by D. Scott Chisholm, and playing in the opening exhibition match at the Wilshire Country Club and winning the big professional tournament at Pasadena Golf Club. By February, after a trip to San Francisco for exhibition matches, Charles completed construction of the first nine holes at Hacienda. A visit to the course that month by renowned grass expert William Tucker confirmed the work was completed, but with temporary greens.
Bell then hired John S.C. Shaw as Greenkeeper, and the nearly 300 members started playing the temporary course under the professional Perry Gaile. Shaw would carry on construction of the second nine to Watson and Mayo’s plan.
The new Bermuda greens and fairways of the first nine holes were officially opened on September 19, 1921, and the Hacienda Country Club joined the Southern California Golf Association (SCGA) in November.
Aside from real estate development, Alphonzo Bell also invested heavily in oil drilling. He was in over his head in debt when he opened the Hacienda Country Club in September. Fortunately his Bell No. 1 Oil Well in Santa Fe Springs exploded into gushing flames in October and forced Bell and his family to move to the Beverly Hills Hotel in the middle of the night just days after the Hacienda opening!
Once the well was brought under control it produced 2,000 barrels a day. Liquid money!
The Hacienda club had twelve holes in play in 1922, but the opening of the full eighteen holes was not until December 22, 1923. The official eighteen-hole opening featured an exhibition match between Willie Hunter and home pro Harry Pressler, who defeated George Kerrigan and Dick Linares, 2 and 1.
Soon after, Alphonzo Bell would concentrate on his new oil bought investments, the 1,700 acre Bel-Air subdivision, and his later purchase of the Santa Monica Mountain Park Company, and had little to do with Hacienda Country Club after 1924.
©2021 jibjones golfhistoricalsociety
The Virginia Country Club’s 100th Anniversary at Los Cerritos!
At Rancho Los Cerritos in Long Beach, on September 1, 1921, a day after the new Hunt & Burns clubhouse was dedicated, the new William Watson designed grass-green golf course of the Virginia Country Club opened to its members.
The club had voted to move from Los Alamitos after ten years, leaving their old Arthur Rigby designed links to become Recreation Park municipal golf course.
The Virginia Country Club of Long Beach incorporated in 1909, and like many California golf clubs, was started by land and hotel owners working together to bring people to their cities and resorts. It was Hotel Virginia manager and avid golfer Carl Stanley who led the committee to find a location for a country club and golf links. The committee chose Los Alamitos due to its large lake and forest of Blue Gum trees, plus its location on the electric train line to Huntington Beach.
After Long Beach, Stanley become the long time manager of the Hotel Del Monte, where he stayed in charge from 1915-1941, fathering the Pebble Beach golf links and other Del Monte Properties golf courses.
©2021 jib jones – golfhistoricalsociety