We’re at the mid-point of the 2018 edition of the Masters. Billed as “a tradition like no other,” the Masters has already provided great memories. Tom Watson won the par-3 contest at age 68. Tony Finau made a hole-in-one, celebrated, blew out his ankle, and shot 68 on opening day. A 15-year-old named Nicklaus made a hole-in-one. Jordan Spieth found his putting stroke. The defending champ, Sergio Garcia, made an unlucky 13 on the 15th hole and won’t be repeating as Masters champion. It will only get more dramatic this weekend.
Perhaps the most riveting golf of the short major championship season was the LPGA Tour’s first major of the year contested in Palm Desert last weekend at the ANA Inspiration, formerly known as the Dinah Shore. After 72 holes of great golf, spectators were looking forward to a three-way sudden death playoff featuring Jennifer Song, Imbee Park and Pernilla Lindberg. All three women birdied the final hole to get into the playoff. If you thought that was great golf theatre, then you were wrong. The best was still to come.
It took eight playoff holes during the course of two days before Pernilla rolled in a fast-moving birdie putt to take home her first major title. I’d like to say that I was impressed by the fact that she made every putt she had from 8 feet when she needed to, yet the same was true of Inbee Park, holder of seven LPGA major championships. It was the best golf I’ve seen all year.
On a different note, I had an eye-opening experience at a golf course earlier in the week. This past Monday, the high school golfers of the Coastal Mountain Conference South traveled to Petaluma Golf and Country Club for one of their weekly tournaments. Petaluma GCC is a new edition to our schedule, taking the place of Aetna Springs, which sadly closed this past January.
I had zero knowledge of Petaluma GCC. I had never played there before. On occasion, I could look up to the south and west from the 18th green at Adobe Creek and would see some ribbons of green on the hillsides. People in the know told me it was Petaluma GCC. I checked out their website and got quite the surprise. The website had a six-minute video that not only featured a travelogue-type viewing of the course itself, but also showed old-time footage from the 1930s of the original Goat Hill Invitational at PGCC. There were old-time cars in the background, the male golfers wore ties, and the film was a most entertaining look at the golf scene at Petaluma Golf and Country Club some 90 years ago.
Arriving at Petaluma GCC at midday on Monday, I was immediately struck by the uniqueness as well as the beauty of the facility. The high school golfers could no longer play at Aetna Springs, one of the top nine-hole golf courses in America, and yet suddenly we were at a locale that sure looked to me as if it too were one of the top nine-hole golf courses in America. Sitting atop the hills just west of Petaluma, one can see the meandering Petaluma River as well as the traffic that was backing up on Highway 101. The golf course itself was a clever mix of three par-3s, four par-4s, and a pair of par-5s. There were multiple tees for each hole and there were distinctly different angles to the greens from one set of tees to the other. The most profound difference was the par-3 sixth hole. One time through, you play to a level landing area surrounded by five bunkers. The next time, the hole played decidedly uphill and suddenly you had to carry the two right bunkers, which were now right in front of you. Wind was a factor
The clubhouse was an old-style building designed by Brainard Jones, a well-known architect some 100 years ago who designed many of Petaluma’s finest residences. Yet when it comes to the design history of the golf course itself, that part of the story has a gaping hole. When I asked some of the members and one of the pro shop staff about the course’s architect of note, they didn’t have an answer for me. Neither did the golf course’s website. With a little bit of research, I realized that they are not alone. While Petaluma Golf and Country Club is a classic old-style beauty of a golf course with loads of character, no one seems to know who was responsible for its original design. It has pedigree. It wasn’t built by two guys with a tractor.
The Northern California Golf Association website as well as its annual Blue Book fail to list the PGCC designer. The same is true of the bible of golf course architecture, the 650-page Architects of Golf written by Geoffrey Cornish and Ron Whitten. It includes biographies of architects as well as the designers of note for every course in the world. Cornish and Whitten mention the redesign of Petaluma GCC by Gary Roger Baird in 1983, but there is no mention of the original course architect. By the way, Whitten is the longtime architecture editor for Golf Digest. He is also one of the co-designers of Erin Hills, the site of the 2017 U.S. Open.
In the early 1920s, there were few golf course architects of note working in Northern California. Dr. Alister Mackenzie and his protégé Jack Fleming wouldn’t arrive in our area until 1927 when they began work on the Meadow Club, soon followed by Northwood and then Pasatiempo. Billy Bell Sr. was working on both courses at Castlewood in 1923, but his biography is extensive and it makes no mention of any projects in Petaluma.
Based purely on appearance, I’m of the uninformed opinion that Willie Watson may have had a hand in the design of PGCC in 1922. While in the Midwest at the turn of the century, he was involved in iconic designs such as Onwentsia, Bellerive, Ravisloe, Olympia Fields, Interlachen and Lake Geneva. He was stationed in Los Angeles during World War I and then stayed on the West Coast after the war to design a number of Bay Area courses, including Harding Park, the Lake and the Ocean Courses at the Olympic Club, Orinda, Diablo, and Mira Vista. Petaluma GCC has a similar look to Orinda Country Club, a hilly course on the eastern side of Grizzly Peak in the East Bay. The biography of Willie Watson from the Cornish and Whitten book is sparse at best, with no date of birth, no year of death, and only minimal information on one of the godfathers of American golf course architect. It’s surprising how little is known about Watson, similar to how little is known about the beginnings of Petaluma Golf and Country Club.
Nonetheless, Petaluma is a hidden gem that completely shocked me with its design values, traditional layout, and its gorgeous setting in the hills of Sonoma County. In some ways I shake my head at my lack of knowledge regarding an outstanding Redwood Empire classic nine-holer.
