Terror at LACC

Something was going very wrong. Disasters, embarrassments and, worse, double bogeys seemed to follow every group. The stares had turned from curious to angry. A gathering of the game’s best players could not tame this pint-size beast, and there was only one man to blame: the greatest architect in Southern California golf.

No one playing in the 1926 Los Angeles Open at Los Angeles Country Club’s North Course particularly cared that George C. Thomas Jr. was the savant who’d dreamed up Riviera, Bel-Air and Saticoy, among many others. Of more immediate concern was that he had helped W. Herbert Fowler build the 121-yard, par-3 17th at LACC, which protruded from the side of a hill between two thickets of trees, with a small green severely canted from back to front. They also knew Thomas was responsible for setting up a treacherous pin on the green’s narrow left side. When a player—whom Thomas later had the courtesy not to name but described as a “noted expert”—dumped his tee shot behind a tree, took three more shots to reach the green, then four-putted to card an 8, Thomas knew he was in trouble. “Everyone was finding fault with the sloped green which I had built, and the flag that I had placed,” Thomas wrote in his 1927 book, Golf Architecture in America.

Despite this gnashing of teeth, the 17th was clearly one of Thomas’ favorites. In his massive America book, he wrote several pages on “Little 17,” more than on any other hole. He supervised the build of Fowler’s design from 1921 to 1922, and in the years that followed, the 17th quickly gained a reputation in Southern California golf circles. According to a 2021 biography of Fowler by Derek Markham, A Matter of Course, locals dubbed it “the Terror.”

Yet Thomas found it a rather simple puzzle to solve. “When the play commenced,” he wrote of that day in 1926, “there was only one safe line for that hole, which was to pitch to the right of the flag in the widened center of the green, where a shot of ordinary merit would hold. Yet in spite of these danger signals near the pin, man after man in that Championship played straight for it. Only a few thought enough about the speed of the ground to try the center path of safety.”

Macdonald Smith—brother of U.S. Open champions Willie and Alex, and winner of 25 tournaments during his impressive career—was able to see the hole through Thomas’ eyes. By the time Smith stepped to the tee, a large crowd had gathered to watch the big numbers pile up. Thomas held his breath. In his book, he fretted, “Would this man also fail to play the safe line and ruin his chance to make the winning score, thereby adding more criticism to a green which was very difficult that day?”

Smith rose to the challenge. He carefully dropped the proper tee shot into the center of the green. Thomas was even more impressed with what happened next: “Then, to make assurance doubly sure, he did not take a chance of over-running the cup with the heavy wind behind his ball, and slipping down the slope beyond. He saw the increasing speed of the green and deliberately short putted on his second, laid his third absolutely stone dead, and then dropped the ball in for a four. I never admired Macdonald Smith so much as when he proved to that crowd of golfers that the uncommon and tricky conditions existing could be met by the man who played with his head as well as his hands.”

So, it could be done. But it wasn’t enough. In 1927, club officials embarked on a dramatic revamp of the North Course. The good news for Thomas: He was tabbed to lead the effort, along with Billy Bell. The bad news: His precious Little 17 would have to go.

“That hole might have been the impetus for the significant change that Thomas undertook,” Gil Hanse says. “The carnage that occurred there likely set in motion some of the conversations at the club about making alterations.”

Those changes turned LACC North into one of the great courses in the world, a jaunty but challenging roller-coaster ride through the surprisingly steep hills and valleys of this exceptional patch of land in Beverly Hills. Despite numerous accolades and entreaties from the outside, the club remained private to national tournaments over the ensuing decades. But, in the early 2000s, things began to change. The first domino was hiring Hanse, Jim Wagner and Geoff Shackelford in 2010. Their mission: Return the course to Thomas and Bell’s 1927 vision. The reviews of their work, along with the 2017 Walker Cup and 2023 U.S. Open, proved how well they’d accomplished the task. But their version also included a huge risk: bringing back Thomas’ beloved little one-shotter.

The club liked the idea, with one caveat: It had to remain outside of the North’s standard 18. It would exist as a bonus hole and a nod to the club’s early history.

The next step may have been even more difficult than getting the green light: finding the thing. Shackelford’s extensive research led them to what they thought was the resting place of Little 17’s green. But, after more than eight decades dormant, the hill along what is the current 17’s right side was thick with gnarled underbrush and mature sycamore trees.

“We had a few false starts,” Hanse says. “It was back in the woods, and we could barely see anything or make anything out of the hole. We stumbled around in there for a while and finally latched onto what we thought was the green site. Then we started to carefully clear it because we didn’t want to destroy what could’ve been on the ground beneath it. Sure enough, we found the green.”

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Through archival photographs, they were able to piece together the green’s full shape and its bunkers. Then Hanse and Wagner managed to use the existing tee box on the adjacent second hole to weave in a teeing area that pointed to the new hole, which now plays to roughly 110 yards. Hanse and Wagner design new holes from scratch the great majority of their time. The delicate work of finding a lost hole was something new and thrilling. 

“There’s some magic in that process,” Hanse says. “It’s part golf design and part archeology. It was a lot of fun.”

That’s not a word often associated with the hole formerly known as the Terror, and the reincarnated version retains its teeth. Hanse and Wagner knew that creating a softened version wouldn’t do the club’s history any justice.

“Because it wasn’t going to be part of the regular routing, and used [instead] as more of a novelty, we felt justified in keeping it severe,” Hanse says. “So the green is still tiny, and the penalty for the miss is still very random. The caroms off the right side of the green can send you anywhere. You could be in the bunker, you could be in the barranca, you could be stuck behind a sycamore tree or you could be totally fine. It’s a wild hole.”

Its new life as an extra hole has been nearly as great a success as the restoration itself. On Tuesday of U.S. Open week in 2023, players were encouraged to play Little 17 as part of a charity shootout. The hole got plenty of airtime, and Rory McIlroy and Brad Faxon were clearly impressed.

In July 2024, I learned the hard way just how right Hanse is. The regulation No. 17 at LACC North is no small matter—it’s an unrelenting par 4, where the hill and barranca run up the right side of the entire hole and an armada of bunkers guards the front of the green. By some miracle, I found the surface in regulation and had taken a deep, relieved breath when my member playing partner turned me to the right: “Check that out.”

Little 17 jutted out from the hill like a petulant child sticking out its tongue at us.

“How do you even hit it?” I asked in disbelief.

“Most of the time, you don’t,” he replied.

We finished big 17, with everyone in our foursome taking furtive glances back at what awaited us. The putts dropped, and we walked over to Little 17’s tee box with wedges and handfuls of extra balls. The ghost of Macdonald Smith did not walk with us. One after the other, we launched balls at the green, only to watch them ricochet all over the hill.

My second try felt pure. A lovely, flighted wedge, arcing toward the center of George C. Thomas Jr.’s devilish creation. And then—was that the hint of a Santa Ana wind? My ball suddenly dove, landing instead on the front of the severely pitched green. It hopped once, spun just enough and rolled hard off the front into some gnarled vines. I’d never been so angry to relive golf history.