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Braemar Country Club: East Course

Courses at Braemar Country Club:East CourseGuldhal Course
4001 Reseda Blvd, Tarzana, CA 91356

Designed by Ted Robinson Sr. · Est. 1963

Redesigned by Lanny Wadkins (2023)

The Guldhal Course at Braemar Country Club in Tarzana combines the U.S. Open and Western nines of Ted Robinson Sr.'s original 27-hole design, producing an 18-hole layout of 6,119 yards that plays through the hillside terrain of the Santa Monica Mountain foothills. Named in honor of Ralph Guldahl — the club's longtime head professional and three-time major champion of the late 1930s — the Guldhal Course offers a slightly more forgiving character than its East Course counterpart while retaining the strategic demands of Robinson's classic California design. The facility is now operated as Mulholland Hills Country Club following a major renovation and rebranding by Invited.

History

Braemar Country Club in Tarzana was founded in 1952, initially established in the Sepulveda Basin before relocating to its current 27-hole campus in 1962. The club's founding generation named it after Braemar, the Scottish Highland village celebrated for its own golfing traditions, a nod to the predominantly Scottish-inspired social culture of California golf clubs in the postwar era. The founding professional who left the most enduring mark on Braemar was Ralph Guldahl, the club's head golf professional for two decades, whose back-to-back U.S. Open victories in 1937 and 1938 placed him among the accomplished players of his generation.

Braemar's three nine-hole courses — the Masters, Western, and Canyons nines — bear names that honor Guldahl's competitive legacy. The course was designed by Ted Robinson Sr., one of Southern California's most recognized golf architects of the postwar period and the designer of dozens of California clubs. Robinson's 27-hole layout makes use of the rolling terrain in the San Fernando Valley foothills west of Los Angeles, threading holes through natural arroyos and incorporating the mature California oaks and sycamores that mark the transition between valley floor and hillside terrain. The routing rewards precise positioning off the tee, with narrow corridors and elevation changes that make each nine distinct in character despite sharing the same site.

Braemar hosted a number of Southern California Golf Association amateur events over the decades and developed a competitive membership culture consistent with a club built around a professional of Guldahl's stature. The course was later renovated by William F. Bell to modernize certain infrastructure while preserving Robinson's original design principles. In the early 2020s, Invited — the national private club operator formerly known as ClubCorp — invested more than $22 million in a comprehensive transformation of the Braemar property, including a major renovation of the golf courses.

Lanny Wadkins, a World Golf Hall of Fame inductee and former PGA Champion, was retained to redesign the Western and Masters nines as part of this project, with the club simultaneously rebranding under the Mulholland Hills name. The renovation preserved key elements of the Robinson-era architecture while upgrading turf management infrastructure, expanding cart path networks, and modernizing the practice facility. The 27-hole configuration at Braemar gives the club significant scheduling flexibility, allowing members to rotate through different nine-hole combinations for variety without sacrificing access to tee times during peak periods. The course occupies one of the more elevated sites in the San Fernando Valley, with views extending across the valley toward the Santa Monica Mountains on clear days — a visual distinction that Robinson incorporated into several approach corridors on the Canyons nine.