California Golf Club's quartet of one shotters help make the course a stand-out with MacKenzie's bunkers providing the strong appeal to the 200 yard twelfth.
Eventually, better times returned and by the mid-1960s, the California Golf Club once again wanted to make sure that they offered the best course possible and the day’s biggest name in golf architecture, Robert Trent Jones Sr., was brought in. His work is discussed below though little of it remains today, and the California Golf Club proudly hosted the United States Senior Amateur in 1970.
In 2005, the California Golf Club board decided to address the nematode problem that was afflicting the greens just as it was at other leading clubs in northern California. Given that the greens needed to be rebuilt and thus the course would be closed, the California Golf Club board mulled over what else needed attention. Certainly, the course didn’t drain particularly well in the winter. Also, the bunkers in general had become tired and there were several competing styles as no one would ever confuse a Jones bunker for a MacKenzie one.
Sensing this was a one-time unique opportunity to make major improvements to the course, the California Golf Clubsolicited proposals and fourteen different architects responded. One of the fourteen, Phillips Design, didn’t even submit a plan but rather gave them a sense of the opportunity that it saw by looking at the land where the new seventh hole now sits. This bold vision of Kyle Phillips impressed the board and ultimately it led to his being hired.
As we will see below, his proposal differed in substantial ways from the other proposals/architects that the California Golf Club considered. In particular, the front nine had seen several events conspire against it since the days of MacKenzie and Macan. To bring the front nine up to a similar quality as the back, Kyle Phillips‘s plan needed to be dramatic and indeed it was. Its two key elements were for the practice area to be relocated as well as for five (!) entirely new holes to be created. To Kyle Phillips‘s everlasting credit, three of the new holes (the third, seventh and eighth) are among the best on the course and as a result, the members now have an active debate as to which of the nines is better.
Just as important, Kyle Phillips knew when to leave well enough alone. No outside events had materially impaired the back nine as they had the front. Thus, there was a sense that the California Golf Club possessed a relatively untouched nine that featured MacKenzie’s own indelible stamp. Armed with a 1938 aerial, Kyle Phillips focused on realizing as much of MacKenzie’s playing spirit as possible on the back. In doing so, two small man-made ponds that had been added by the California Golf Club in the early 1990s were mercifully removed and the fifteenth green was slid to the right by thirty-five yards.
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