The Long Goodbye

Whitsett was never just another course to me. It was my spot. My sanctuary. Where I’d go whether the day was all-time or falling apart. 

I saw everything out there: holes-in-one that turned strangers into lifelong friends, wild games of H-O-R-S-E on the driving range, even a heart attack right in the middle of a round. (She survived, thankfully.) Whitsett wasn’t about scorecards. 

It was about the experience. It was a patch of grass that always felt like home.

And now it’s gone. What was officially known as the Weddington Golf & Tennis Club, a par-3 course on a right-triangle-shaped sliver of land between Whitsett Avenue and Valley Spring Lane in the San Fernando Valley, dated back to the 1950s. 

It became an L.A. institution we locals knew simply as Whitsett. A local prep school bought the property a few years back and finally closed the club’s doors in 2024.

I was introduced to it by accident. While pursuing a career as a dancer, I heard my friends talk about sneaking in a quick nine after classes. I had played golf when I was a kid, then left it behind, but I was starting to get the itch again. 

I tagged along one night and found something more than just a quirky little course along the L.A. River. I discovered a group of people who loved the game, and they helped rekindle mine. The same people I wanted to be around in my dance life were out there banging golf balls, too. That communal overlap lit something up in me. 

Whitsett brought me back to golf and sparked what I fully expect to be a lifelong chase of that little white ball. It taught me that golf is never just about the shots you hit—it’s also about the places that shape you and the people you share them with.

When the new ownership gave us an official closing date, it hit hard. 

I couldn’t just let Whitsett go. So I went every single day for four months straight, camera in hand, trying to capture as much of its magic as possible. 

Those last rounds felt heavier than any I’d played before. 

Every tee shot, every walk to every green, was saying goodbye to a part of me. 

But my memories, and these images, remain.