Riviera Goes Retro

Tucked away in Riviera Country Club’s grand, rambling clubhouse, up a flight of stairs from the ornate lobby, is a small room lined with shelves. Not much more than a closet, it holds sketches, photographs and artifacts from a dimly recalled past.

Black-and-white pictures show an unusual double fairway on the eighth hole and a long bunker guarding the left side of the seventh, elements washed away in a 1939 flood. Old drawings illustrate original greens long since eroded or modified.

When the club embarked on a mission to polish its faded reputation--pining for the days of Ben Hogan and Sam Snead--this archival storeroom was the first stop. “Looking at those photographs, we decided to restore part of the original design,” said Michael Yamaki, the club’s corporate officer.

Then they went a step further. Or, some say, in another direction.

They sought to update the layout, lengthening and toughening several holes to accommodate the modern player who hits the ball longer and straighter than Hogan might ever have imagined.

Club executives hope this $1.3-million project, which involved six holes, will help them in their bid to host the 2008 U.S. Open. At the same time, however, they have heard grumbling from a noted golf historian who likens their work to “putting a mustache on the Mona Lisa.”

The first true test comes this week when the PGA Tour arrives for the Nissan Open beginning Thursday. Everyone involved--including officials who award the U.S. Open--will be watching.

“Any time you do anything to a course like this, there are people who want to criticize,” head pro Todd Yoshitake said. “We’re interested to see what the pros say.”

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The pros started all this.

Never mind the stately eucalyptus and sycamores, or the folklore surrounding “Hogan’s Alley.” In 1995, the Tour came to Riviera for the PGA Championship and handed the club a very public embarrassment, players ridiculing the greens. A Japanese corporation that had taken ownership a few years earlier decided that changes had to be made.

First came a renewed effort to improve turf conditions. Next, Riviera began working with Fazio Golf Course Designers, one of the so-called “Open doctors” known for helping courses get selected for the U.S. Open.

Tom Marzolf, a senior design associate with the North Carolina-based firm, was aware of the course’s heritage but did not expect to find so much documentation. Aerial photos chronicled the work of George C. Thomas, the original designer, and the effect of storm waters that overflowed the famed barranca, badly damaging several holes.

“You could see all the intricacies of the bunkering,” Marzolf said. “The subtleties of the landing areas, the contours, the elevated greens.”

The depth of old hazards could be gauged by shadow lines on photographs. Details were such that when workmen began digging to re-create the lost bunker along No. 7, they hit sandy remnants of its long-buried predecessor.

Modernizing the course was not as straightforward.

Marzolf pored over newspaper accounts of past tournaments, looking for clues about which clubs players used from various lies. Yoshitake called upon Snead and others to compare how the course played before technological advances in clubs and balls.

On the ninth hole, which once required caution, most of today’s players could easily carry the fairway bunker. On second shots where Hogan might have hit a four-iron, big hitters now pulled a nine from their bags.

“We wanted today’s players to hit the same club as the great players of the past,” Marzolf said. “We wanted to put that four-iron back in their hands.”

The designer had numerous conversations with club executives about how this might be accomplished. The United States Golf Assn., which oversees the U.S. Open, also got into the act, touring the course and commenting on “the good, the bad and the ugly,” as a USGA spokesman put it.

All the while, everyone realized that any changes might spark a controversy reminiscent of a 1940s party in the main ballroom where Errol Flynn tried to pick up another man’s wife and was arrested.

“We wanted to keep the integrity of the course,” Yamaki said. “How do you do that? I guess everyone has a different opinion.”

The most dramatic changes were made to holes that border the barranca, the ones that took the brunt of the epic storm.

On No. 7, the humped fairway is now guarded by the restored penal bunker on the left and the barranca on the right. A shot to either side will find trouble.

On No. 8, workers added 46 yards and re-created the obliterated right half of the split fairway. Players can still go left, choosing to lay up in front of a bunker or try a power fade, leaving a wedge to the green. The right side leaves a shorter iron shot.

“Depending on the pin placement, the golfer now has a better angle with which to approach the green, which has been slightly enlarged to accept such shots,” Yoshitake said.

In Tuesday’s practice rounds, the tee for the eighth hole was at its farthest point, some 462 yards, so the right fairway was the one the players used.

“If it were up some, it might make a difference,” Brent Geiberger said. “But with the tee all the way back, the play is to the right fairway.”

The official length for the eighth is 433 yards, but unless the weather changes, it’s likely the pros are going to play the hole from its longest point.

On No. 13, the tee has been lowered and the barranca comes back into play, guarding the left side and the newly extended back portion of the green.

Along the way, designers also added as much as 50 yards to Nos. 9 and 12, where Humphrey Bogart used to watch tournaments leaning against a sycamore and sipping from what the late Times columnist Jim Murray referred to as “a Thermos filled with God knows what.” The tee on No. 5 was returned to the top of a small hill, which brings the wind into play and asks most golfers to hit a slight fade rather than a draw.

Yoshitake downplays the recent work, saying Riviera is known for its variety, notably the pot bunker in the middle of the sixth green and the blind tee shot on No. 18. He refers to new additions as “polishing the jewel.”

But he gets an argument from Geoff Shackelford, who has written two books about designer Thomas and the club’s history. An unapologetic traditionalist, Shackelford has spoken out against modifications to courses such as Augusta National, Inverness and Oak Hill.

“I’ve seen good restorations and bad ones,” he said. “Riviera just didn’t do a good job of fitting features in.”

In particular, he criticizes the enlarged green on No. 13 and a new, crowned front on No. 8. He says that when No. 7 had its original bunker, the fairway was not humped, so there wasn’t as much risk of bouncing into sand or barranca.

The historian sees the modifications as part of a trend: As stronger players with better equipment manhandle older courses, as scores dip lower and lower, clubs react by stretching their holes. They add gimmicks that force players to lay up, thus nudging the leaderboard back toward par.

The victim in all this, he says, is strategy. Designs are thrown out of whack as length takes precedence over classic quirks, those tricky situations where a golfer must choose between playing it safe or going for broke.

“Tour players just hit it dead straight,” he said. “You don’t see decision-making and you don’t see shot shaping. It’s just not as interesting.”

Club executives, he believes, could have taken a less-invasive approach to their U.S. Open bid.

“They could say this is Riviera, this is Hogan’s Alley,” he said. “They could add some back tees and grow the rough everything would be fine.”

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The USGA will not decide on a site for the 2008 Open until its executive committee reconvenes in June. With Torrey Pines also in the running, the decision could be delayed until fall. But with the pros rarely hesitant to voice their opinions about playing conditions, Riviera should get an idea of where it stands this weekend.

Several lesser-known players, participating in Monday’s invitational pro-am, gave high marks. The big names had yet to arrive.

“That’s something I’ll be holding my breath about,” Yamaki said.

Marzolf will be on hand, charting shots, gauging whether the course plays the way he envisioned. Sitting down for a conversation with Shackelford at an industry convention in Florida last week, he is open to criticism. “It’s OK to have different thoughts on the course,” he said.

Maybe the only people who will not openly express themselves are club members who know they can be unilaterally expelled. A few years ago, a one-time greens committee chairman was kicked out after complaining to a golf magazine about maintenance practices.

Yoshitake insisted he has heard mostly raves from his membership. Sitting in the club’s elegant dining room, nursing a soda, he pointed out that Thomas returned several years after the course’s 1927 opening and tinkered with holes, adding a new twist here, a bunker there.

“The problem is, he passed away,” Yoshitake said. “Who’s to say that he might not have come back and done something else.”

In his absence, club executives and modern designers took it upon themselves to interpret his intentions. The archives, locked away in an upstairs room, provided a research tool and inspiration.

The black-and-white photos reveal what Riviera once was, the first course west of the Mississippi selected to host an Open in 1948. The architectural sketches hearken to an era when Hogan referred to No. 4 as the “greatest par three in America,” when the pros ranked this layout among the nation’s best.

“I think people are confused about why we did this,” Yoshitake said. “We love this golf course. We’re looking for that respect.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Nissan Open

When: Thursday through Sunday.

Where: Riviera Country Club, Pacific Palisades.

Schedule, tee times: Thursday--First round, 7 a.m. Friday--Second round, 7 a.m. Saturday--Third round, 8 a.m. Sunday--Fourth round, 8 a.m.

TV: Thursday and Friday, 1 p.m., USA. Saturday and Sunday, noon, Ch. 2.

Tickets: Ticketmaster (877) 614-6245.

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Riviera Country Club Remodeled

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