The Los Angeles Country Club: South Course

The South Course at The Los Angeles Country Club is the club's shorter and more strategic 18, routed through the Benedict Canyon corridor alongside the better-known North. Original routing work by W. Herbert Fowler was taken up by George C. Thomas Jr., who, with construction superintendent William P. Bell, rebuilt both courses in 1927 and 1928.

The Los Angeles Country Club traces its beginnings to 1897, when a group of Angelenos organized the city's first club and fielded an initial layout staked out by Joseph Sartori, James Tufts, Norman Macbeth, and Charles Orr. By 1911 the club had moved to its present site just west of Beverly Hills, occupying what is now a rare stretch of undeveloped ground in the middle of the Los Angeles basin. The property offered room for two full 18s, which eventually became the North and South Courses. In the years after World War I, the membership hired the English architect W.

Herbert Fowler, who supplied drawings and plasticine models for each hole. George C. , the Philadelphia-born amateur who had recently relocated to Los Angeles, supervised construction on Fowler's plans. Thomas then returned with William P.

Bell in 1927 and 1928 to rebuild both courses; the South Course as it plays today carries that Thomas and Bell imprint, working over routing lines that trace back to Fowler. The pair's collaboration here parallels their work at Riviera and Bel-Air, cementing Thomas's reputation as the defining architect of golden-age Southern California golf. The South is shorter than the North and has historically been viewed as the more playable of the two, though it shares the canyon-and-barranca vocabulary that Thomas favored. Members use the South as their everyday course; through the 1960s and 1970s it frequently hosted club events and regional amateurs while the North entered a long period of seclusion.

An extensive renovation of both courses was completed in 1996 and 1997, restoring character that had been softened over the decades. S. Open. The club's broader profile brought fresh attention to the South Course as well, which has continued to serve as the second of the two Thomas-era layouts on a rare large stretch of intact golfing ground in Los Angeles.