Golf Club Pros : Leisure: Members of the posh Riviera Country Club were ready to revolt when a Japanese group bought it. Now they can’t say enough nice things about the owners.

It was bad enough that unfamiliar Japanese investors bought the posh Riviera Country Club--an exclusive Pacific Palisades establishment steeped in traditions dating back to the Golden Era of Hollywood.

But then came the announcement two months ago that the new owners would banish motorized carts from the sublime fairways of the Riviera’s world-class golf course, requiring that they stay on paths. Some of the 600-plus club members, who include celebrities and some of Southern California’s business elite, were up in arms.

Coming as one of the first pronouncements by the new owners, it was a sign, some members feared, of more drastic measures to come.

Some felt that the ambience they had so learned to enjoy at one of the Westside’s premiere clubs was in jeopardy. Riviera members were abuzz about how the new owners of a club in Valencia had added a Japanese restaurant and sushi bar, Japanese bath complex and Japanese instructions to the signs on the course.

Speculation was rampant. Would their club be next? Would the leisurely golf games and the chummy days and nights at the clubhouse be the next to go? And would the traditions fostered by decades of family ownership of the club give way to profit-minded motivations by the Japanese investors?

Au contraire. The members now say they are happier than ever. And they admit--a bit sheepishly perhaps--that their xenophobia has been overcome by a love they share with the new owners, that of hitting a tiny, dimpled ball hard enough, and far enough to end up in a tiny hole in the ground.

Not long ago, the members criticized the Japanese for buying the Riviera in particular and investing in the United States in general. Now, members gush about how the Japanese’ reverence for golf will return the Riviera club, the golf course and even the sprawling Spanish-style clubhouse to their original splendor.

New owner Noboru Watanabe, senior managing director of the Marukin Corp., even plays a few rounds with “the boys” when he stops by from his home base in Japan. Watanabe is said to be beside himself with glee over the Riviera being the host of the 64th annual Los Angeles Open golf tournament, starting Feb. 19.

The change in ownership may even exemplify what is best about “the emerging global marketplace,” according to one of the members.

“Originally, we were 100% against the sale,” said member Paul Savage, who sits on the members’ board of governors. “We didn’t know who these people were.”

“But now that we know them,” he adds, “there has been a great turnaround among the majority of members. They have been absolutely fantastic.”

Just months ago, many members--who paid as much as $25,000 to join--were in an uproar over the golf cart rule. They especially feared that some of their elderly and infirm colleagues would have to take their golf games elsewhere, since they relied on the carts to help them get around the massive fairways of the 18-hole course.

“There was great anger about the carts, sure,” Savage recalls. “There are members who have been here 30 years,” and they resented it.

“There was a great apprehension by almost everyone, you know, at the time about the Japanese’ buying of America in the first place,” Savage says.

“We didn’t know what the future would hold,” recalls Joey Rosenberg, last year’s chairman of the board. “The Japanese have bought other clubs here . . . and it really has negatively impacted on the membership and ambience of the clubs.”

With its traditions and reputation as a Los Angeles landmark, putting a sushi bar at the Riviera would be tantamount to sacrilege, the members say.

Located off Sunset Boulevard below the Santa Monica Mountains, the Riviera is a place where legends such as Ben Hogan and Arnold Palmer tested their mettle on the fairways, and stars like W. C. Fields, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and Clark Gable teed off.

Over the years, Hollywood’s elite frequented the palatial clubhouse, complete with lavish dining room, two ballrooms and luxurious hotel suites. Legend has it that Errol Flynn was once arrested there after stealing the badge of an off-duty policeman during a dinner party.

The Riviera has served as host of the U. S. Open and other PGA tournaments on occasion. Hogan has had such spectacular luck there that part of the course is known in golf circles as Hogan’s Alley.

The idea for the club originated at the end of World War I, when members of the Los Angeles Athletic Club--including the grandfather of current athletic club managing partners Frank and Charles Hathaway--decided to build a club for returning servicemen. Since then, it has become recognized around the world not only as a top-flight golf course but a place where Hollywood’s stars gather, an American icon.

So it was not surprising that members were outraged and confused in May, 1988, when it was first disclosed that a mysterious group of Japanese investors intended to buy the Riviera for $108 million.

At the time, the United States was reeling from the news of Japanese purchases of American real estate. Japan-bashing was in vogue.

Of particular note to the members were stories about the Japanese’ obsession with golf, a pastime that in their native country is so exclusive that a single club membership costs as much as several million dollars.

The Japanese had already acquired as many as a dozen courses in California and Hawaii, but probably none as high-profile as Riviera.

David Shulman, director of real estate research for the Salomon Bros. investment banking firm, even speculated then that, “It may be cheaper for them to fly over to play golf at the Riviera than it is for them to play golf at home.”

Adding insult to injury, club owner Laaco Ltd. for a long time refused to identify the new purchasers. Outraged, the members rallied together and even established a legal defense fund to protect their rights.

Laaco, which still owns the downtown Los Angeles Athletic Club and the California Yacht Club in Marina del Rey, later announced that the still-undisclosed buyers had decided to scale back their purchase plans and intended to buy only a 49% interest in the club and the adjoining Riviera Tennis Club.

Marukin, a large Japanese real estate company, was disclosed as the mysterious investor in September, 1988. And last September, Marukin exercised an option to buy Riviera outright, and assumed full ownership of the 168-acre club.

The initial secrecy, and the ambiguity over the deal, scared the club members. But Watanabe and his father, Kaneo Watanabe, immediately pledged to honor the club’s traditions while improving the course and the clubhouse.

Watanabe could not be reached for comment for this article. But his on-site representative, Yasushi (Joe) Masaki, recalls, “There were a lot of bad, nasty comments and rumors, and some resistance by members.”

The new owners, however, set to work pacifying the members, telling them of their plans for improvements.

Of primary concern was that in recent years, the golf course had slipped a few notches from its place as one of the nation’s 20 premiere courses, according to Rainer Gehres, the new general manager of the club under Marukin.

Gehres says the strict golf cart rule was instituted as part of a comprehensive plan to restore the course. “It had dwindled a bit in the past. . . . Drastic measures were necessary,” he said in a recent interview.

The rule, implemented Dec. 15, was anything but popular at first. The members, Gehres said, “were not enthusiastic. A number of them were concerned.”

In fact, the board of governors rejected the rule in a lopsided, but symbolic vote.

Soon, the new management team was dispatching crews to begin trimming the dense eucalyptus trees just off the fairways, and was spending time and more than $100,000 meticulously manicuring the course. The tender winter grass began looking better almost immediately. The new owners had agreed to give special cart privileges to members with handicapped parking permits, and the board voted again last month, this time to support the cart rule.

Indeed, the new rule prohibiting carts on the fairways has helped conditions at the course so much in just a few short months that the members now swear by it.

The owners have added employees, spruced up the 23 tennis courts at the adjacent tennis club, installed a new marble floor in one ballroom and brought in a renowned chef for the restaurant. They even froze memberships, to allow the club’s roster to thin out by attrition and give the members more room and privacy.

In fact, Watanabe and his company have done such a good job overall in terms of sprucing things up that most members are simply gushing with compliments.

Many members now say Noboru Watanabe’s devotion to the game of golf is the reason why improvements to the course have been so meticulous.

“Noboru Watanabe is an avid golfer,” says Rosenberg, “and he loves this course.”

Gehres adds that: “The owner is so proud of this. Some people love Picassos, others love golf courses.”

Masaki, Watanabe’s on-site liaison, agrees. He says Watanabe was a leader of his college golf team in Tokyo, and often watched the U. S. Open and other televised golf tournaments held at the Riviera. Once, he even watched the Los Angeles Open from the sidelines at the club.

“He has always dreamed of playing here,” says Masaki. “That small dream came true, but also the bigger dream that he could own such a club. It was a personal motivation.”

Watanabe says buying the Riviera was meant to be a highly visible first move into the recreation field by Marukin, which is in the final stages of building a lavish club in Tokyo that it plans to call the Riviera Sports Club, according to Masaki.

Rosenberg, admittedly one of the staunchest critics of the sale, concludes that maybe he and other members were wrong in the beginning. “We weren’t happy that foreign investors bought the club,” he says, “but the changes that are being made have made it not that bad. I think to be objective about it, you have to take each instance and each purchase individually.”