For three years, I lived within a roughly two-hour drive from Rustic Canyon Golf Course. From the moment I moved to San Clemente, California, I was told constantly to get up to the public track in Moorpark with the fast greens, bouncy fairways and breezy walk. I knew I should have, but I’m here now to confess that I failed to listen. And that was an enormous mistake. I considered myself a ball-knower. But after playing 63 holes at Rustic this past weekend, it’s clear my résumé was woefully incomplete.
It took none other than Gil Hanse to finally get me out there. Back in January, I listened to Hanse, one of the course’s designers, rave about Rustic to the nearly 550 members in the Broken Tee Society App during the BTS Tour announcement show. When he described it as a public course “with little ego,” it bruised mine. I knew I had to be there.
Fast forward to Moorpark this past Monday morning, where I shook hands with my partner for the morning best-ball session: Jim Wagner—Hanse’s design partner and co-architect of Rustic Canyon alongside writer Geoff Shackelford. We were joined by Quinn Collins and Jeff Wicks—two California natives who estimate they have played more than 1,300 combined rounds there. If that wasn’t enough, Tommy Naccarato was set to ride along beside us. In addition to being an online golf course architecture legend, Naccarato is a longtime collaborator of Hanse and Wagner’s, and was integral to the building of Rustic. He set the pins for our event and dissected every hole location, hump and “goddamn cart path” we passed. “Would you believe me if I told you there was 200 feet of elevation change here from the back to the front?” Naccarato asked me. “No,” I replied. “It feels like a flat golf course.” He simply grinned and drove off.
Despite being surrounded by more local knowledge than all of Golf Club Atlas combined, I proceeded to putt like Matthew McConaughey in 1993: dazed and confused. For 36 holes I stood crosseyed, hands on hips as every 6-footer broke precisely the opposite way I predicted, completely lost as nipped wedges bounded over greens into hell. “Everything generally breaks toward the front gate, but we’re going up the canyon here,” was a real statement that was uttered and actually proved to be true. This is no indictment of the group’s attempt to steady my hands. It’s a celebration of the full Rustic Canyon experience: thoughtful, nuanced and just as engaging on the 1,301st time as the first.
The best example of this, according to Wagner, is the driveable par-4 third hole. Measuring in at just over 300 yards, it plays much shorter. If you can carry the cross bunker and mounds at 240, your ball will bound down the canyon to the green. With the pin in the back right, Wagner opted to take on the left side of the split fairway to open up a better angle, but tugged it into the street. I bailed out right and had a 40-yard pitch over the greenside bunker. Directly where my eyes told me I needed to land it, just on the backside of the bunker and short of the green, sat a hump just big enough to catch my attention. Do I fly it over it? Bump it into it? My high, soft floater of a pitch caught the backside of the knob and shot past the green long right.
“The thing we tried to do was create strategy,” Wagner told me. “Nobody would think that little bump means anything. Who the hell would even notice it? But it influenced your shot. That’s Rustic Canyon.”
Wagner and the crew also wanted players to think off the tee. And even if my results didn’t show it, it was love at first sightline on every tee box. I appreciated that each one allowed and encouraged nearly every variation of flight and trajectory—just as long as you avoid the cross bunkers and rattlesnakes. High fade on No. 1. Low draw on 2. Iron on 4. Whatever floats your boat on 5. It was far from the rip-headcover-smash-repeat process that we find at so many new golf courses. And the same goes for your second shot. Good approaches are rewarded. Approaches with the wrong shape are punished. “You know, pretty much every men’s club player here fades their irons into the greens,” Collins told me as yet another one of my 6-iron draws trickled off the back and out of sight.
After 18, Collins and Wicks were the only pairing under par for the day and took home hardware for their efforts. Wagner and I finished at +6, and were in dire need of a palette cleanser. “The only reason I came is the In-N-Out truck you guys brought,” Wagner told me with a smile after we both bogeyed the last. It had been some years since Wagner had returned to Rustic (the last was when he and Hanse were updating LACC in advance of the 2023 U.S. Open). At one point he thought he had made par on No. 18, only to be reminded that it was a par 4, not a 5. He then remembered that they couldn’t put the tee where they wanted originally. The stories flowed from there.
There was a good one about kids at Cobbs Creek in his hometown of Philly back in the day: “They would steal your ball off the sixth fairway, then sell it back to you on the seventh tee.” The flood that wiped out Rustic’s original fourth hole. The thought behind another little hump on the right side of the 12th fairway. And the original head pro at Rustic, whose last name was Whiff. “Terrible fucking name for a pro.”
A famous In-N-Out Double-Double with extra spread did its job and soon 80 of us were back out on the course for an afternoon of free play. Rustic to ourselves. No tee times and no rush. I found myself playing at sunset in a sevensome with all ages—someone even had their nearly 2-year-old out with us. At one point we asked if a single behind us if they wanted to join or play through: “I have enough kids at home, so I’m just going to enjoy being alone for a bit.” Respect.
We have been fortunate to run 156 Broken Tee Society events since 2017. Until this weekend, the one that surprised me the most was Glen Arven in Thomasville, Georgia. I had minimal expectations and frankly had never heard of it (this was the pre-Mason Howell era). I loved it, and immediately felt like I should have been paying dues at Knows Zero Ball Country Club. Glen Arven is secluded and private—if they want you to know about it, then you’ll know. Rustic Canyon is different. Folks there don’t just want you to know about it, they need you to. And the little ego truth is this: It’s as good of a golf course as anything in the Los Angeles area. A product worth every minute of dueling with LA traffic to get there. It makes you think, it makes you feel, and while it might beat up your scorecard, the walk won’t beat you up physically.
Don’t be like me. If you live anywhere remotely close to Rustic Canyon, or if you have a chance to play it during a visit, get in the car and go. Don’t play once, play 36. Walk. Play it on the ground and let the bumps have their way. Trust that it will break to the gate. Or up the canyon. Afterward, get a Double-Double Animal Style with a whole grilled onion and a shake. That’s what a ball-knower would do.
