Column: U.S. Open comes to L.A. course no one could go to and few even knew existed

It was to be announced Wednesday that the summer of 2023 will be big on the Los Angeles sports scene. And that’s in addition to the expected announcement that July that we will be getting an NFL team in 2030.

Our fair city, home to the best weather and some pretty nifty golf courses, will play host to the 2023 U.S. Open. That has long been rumored. Now it is official.

But where, you say? Our loveliest layouts have long hid their perfect greens and picturesque fairways behind gates and walls of heavy shrubbery.

The site will be the Los Angeles Country Club, right there across the street from the Beverly Hilton Hotel. On Wilshire Boulevard, no less. Certainly one of the more hidden golf Shangri-Las in the country. The address is Los Angeles. The feel is Beverly Hills.

We have eight years to speculate about traffic and crowds. The annual PGA Tour stop at Riviera each February locks up part of the Westside like a hotel room safe. Traffic moves, but only in increments of 10 and 15 feet.

The word is that the parking will be at UCLA and entry will be via shuttle bus. That’s a decent plan, especially because that’s UCLA’s 100th anniversary, and graduation, normally during the June dates of the U.S. Open, will be off campus.

Presumably, all angles of this have been taken into consideration by the U.S. Golf Assn. and L.A. Country Club.

“We’re in for a real treat,” said Mike Davis, USGA executive director.

Presumably, he was talking about golf and not the corner of Wilshire and Santa Monica.

Golf at LACC can really be special, assuming the USGA doesn’t tinker too much with the challenges and wonderful feel of the North Course. The USGA tends, in these events, to seek ways of sticking pins in golfers’ eyes.

“The course will have generous fairways,” Davis said, “and it will be firm and fast. It will give the players lots of options.”

We hope Davis means options on three-woods or four-irons, not Valium or a psychologist’s couch.

The USGA has taken heat for having held only two U.S. Opens in Southern California, and only one in Los Angeles, the 1948 Open, won with a record 72-hole total of 276 by Ben Hogan at Riviera. The other SoCal was in 2008 at Torrey Pines in La Jolla, when Tiger Woods limped through an 18-hole Monday playoff to win his 14th, and currently last, major title.

Great theater: Hogan with a record, Tiger limping. That’s what we do. We are Hollywood. We inspire Showtime. If you bring it, we will come.

In fairness, the USGA didn’t just figure that out. It tried for a while and the LACC finally said yes.

Traffic and congestion aside, this could be a nice boost to the club’s image. Heretofore, it was a place that nobody could go to, even if they knew it existed or where it was.

Its less-than-open history can be softened a bit with a week of TV cameras and gushing commentary by announcers. Just showing off the beauty of the place is worth a lot in positive public relations. Once the pros leave, watch how much more LACC gets mentioned alongside the great golf courses in the country. It does now, but this is new-wave branding.

This action by the LACC appears to indicate a transition from old-money trust funds to younger members. They play better and want more for the game, not just their club.

The legacy changes. The second sentence about the LACC will no longer automatically go to Randolph Scott being rejected as a member because he was an actor and Scott responding with his classic line: “I have 50 movies to prove that I’m not an actor.”

The legacy will be less about how long it took to admit the first black member, NFL wide receiver Gene Washington. Jews and women were kept out. Like many golf country clubs, money and stature ruled.

The late Jim Murray, The Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning sports columnist, once penned this about the LACC: “Membership is a Hoover button, a house in Pasadena and proof positive that you never had an actor in your family.”

When the USGA sought LACC as the site for the Walker Cup, and the club said yes, the door was no longer ajar. It flew open. That Walker Cup will be in 2017, and it will be more than just a test event. The Walker Cup is the closest thing to an amateur version of the Ryder Cup.

John Chulick, LACC president, was accurate in his assessment of Los Angeles’ attraction to this sort of thing, especially considering success with two Olympic Games and the annual Rose Bowl joyfest.

“This city loves to host major events,” Chulick said.

LACC, as well as Riviera — usually open to big tournaments — has now put golf into that community equation.

After that Walker Cup, the U.S. Open will be only the fourth USGA event at LACC. The first was the U.S. Women’s Amateur in 1930, the second the U.S. Junior Amateur in 1954.

So, the summer of 2023 will bring Showtime and traffic. It will be a headline a minute. A player stranded at Wilshire and Bedford for four hours will miss a tee time. Jordan Spieth will be going for his 46th major title.

And it will all be in our town, excitement central, site of an NFL-promised Super Bowl. In 2041.

Follow Bill Dwyre on Twitter @DwyreLATimes