Many of the greens were designed to receive a running ball banked off flanking mounds or ridges. This entire region of northwest Los Angeles, all the way to the Santa Monica Mountains, was treeless agricultural land in the 1920s, and Thomas’ design accentuated the property’s openness, especially the upland holes of the second nine, by constructing broad fairways that could be played along different lines using slopes and high points to maneuver shots depending on how aggressive the player wanted to be. Holes 10 through 16 circle atop an upland that tilts toward the course’s lower sections, and 17 returns to the flats along the barranca. Numbers two through eight drop to a lower section of land and then work their way toward the top of a shallow canyon and back, weaving over and along a broad, dry barranca that can intercept shots on five of the holes. The par-5 first and par-4 18th, the only parts of the Fowler course that remained, roam side by side across the clubhouse plateau. The North Course plays through three environments. Los Angeles Country Club falls in between. At Riviera he could route the holes any way he wanted over a largely featureless plain between two palisades, using a barranca and manufactured features to create the course’s strategic compositions. In the canyons of Bel-Air he routed the holes the only places he could-in the valleys-but used the foothill slopes and shoulders to exciting effect (the financial luxury to link the disparate sections via tunnels and elevators inside mountains plus a suspension bridge over the top certainly helped). He was a master at incorporating natural terrain and grade changes when available and constructing elaborate bunkers and other architectural apparatuses when not. Thomas’ genius was his ability to design strategically complex holes on distinctly different sites. The North Course, 16th on the Golf Digest America’s 100 Greatest Courses ranking, is one of the great triumvirate of courses George Thomas designed in Los Angeles in the 1920s, with Riviera and Bel-Air Country Club, each built with William P. Architecturally, if not in tournament clout, Bodenhamer is correct.
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