LPGA Makes Date With Trump Course

Donald Trump raised more than a few eyebrows when he said Ocean Trails Golf Club would reopen as an 18-hole facility in April of next year, but it’s clear the LPGA is a believer.

The tour announced Thursday that The Office Depot Championship will take place at the course beginning with next year’s event.

Ocean Trails has been under construction since 1999, when a landslide sent the 18th hole crashing toward the Pacific Ocean. Every six months or so since, course officials have announced new scheduled completion dates only to change them.

More than five years later, the logistical nightmares continue, and the course still hasn’t been completed, but that didn’t stop Trump from signing a deal with the LPGA Tour.

Although the announcement was a resounding vote of confidence that Trump would get the course finished, it also set off alarms.

Les Evans, the city manager for Rancho Palos Verdes, said the course currently looks nothing like a golf course and was skeptical about the announcement.

“It’s not even close to ready,” he said. “Even [Trump] keeps backing off on the opening date. I have definite concerns about the course being ready for a tournament like that.”

The LPGA tournament, played the last three years in April at El Caballero Country Club in Tarzana, will switch to a Sept. 30 start in order to give Trump more time to get it ready.

Still, Evans is concerned about the lack of a driving range. Trump hasn’t yet secured a permit to build one, and it’s unlikely that the LPGA Tour would conduct a tournament at a course with no range.

Trump doesn’t have the necessary permits to hold a tournament at the course either, and he cannot get them until construction is complete.

Trump purchased the course at the bargain price of $27 million in August 2002 and has spent about $55 million in repairs and extravagant redesigns. Those projects are still underway and the course, which opened as a 15-hole facility in November 2000, has been closed since August for the redesign. But Trump remains optimistic that the course will impress come tournament time.

“Everything is on track for an April opening,” said Trump, who plans to rename the course Trump National Golf Club, Los Angeles.

“We’ve worked closely with the town and the Coastal Commission to make sure everything is in order, and I think we have the greatest course in California.”

Evans said Trump might have been better off waiting until 2006 to have the tournament. He added that even if the course is ready for the Sept. 30 LPGA tournament, it will be a rush job getting it finished.

“He’s been successful in the past in getting things done quickly, so hopefully he can do the same with this,” Evans said. “I’d hate for September to roll around and everybody be embarrassed.”

LPGA officials, while optimistic and excited about playing on an oceanfront course with dynamic views from every hole, expressed some concern.

Rob Neal, the tour’s vice president of tournament business affairs, acknowledged that he has not personally seen the course site, but a group of LPGA representatives did and were comfortable scheduling a tournament there even though construction is not yet complete.

“It’s a little bit risky, definitely,” Neal said. “We’ve done this before, sometimes with success and sometimes not. The good news in this case is that 15 of the holes were intact before the construction.”

Ocean Trails gained national renown for the June 1999 landslide that destroyed the 18th hole a few weeks before it was supposed to open. Former course owners Ken and Bob Zuckerman tried to rebuild but ran out of money and declared bankruptcy. A bankruptcy judge stripped them of ownership in February 2002.

Trump bought the 261-acre property six months later. He expedited the permitting process, waded through miles of red tape and settled a lawsuit over rent with the local school district, which owns nine of the acres.

The cause of that 1999 landslide is still debated, and geologists are studying whether it could happen again. Crews have erected huge underground walls to stabilize the ground, and Trump said that the 18th hole, now a 500-yard par four, is among the safest pieces of land in California.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “If the big one hits when I’m in California, I hope I’m standing on the 18th fairway at Trump National. It’ll be the only place in L.A. left standing.”

With Trump’s redesign plans finally approved, crews began in August on projects that include expanding fairways, lengthening holes and adding bunkers and lakes. The course was 6,833 yards from the back tees but will be more than 7,300 when it reopens.

Trump has transformed a tight, visually intimidating course with narrow fairways and environmental areas into a more user-friendly resort-style course with all of the hazards in view and more room for errant shots.

A six-handicap golfer who owns two other courses, Trump has had a personal hand in the redesign but also has enlisted the services of architect Tom Fazio to help rebuild a course originally designed by Pete Dye.

“It is a totally different course,” Trump said. “It’s wider, it’s longer, it’s bigger. I could have gone a less expensive route and rebuilt what was there and I’d still have a really good course, but this is something that is beyond that. I wanted to take this to another level.”

At first, Trump wanted to make the course private, but a stipulation in the land deed prevented that. Instead, the course will be a resort with green fees of $200 to $300. An upscale hotel is planned, as is a complex of more than 100 casitas -- small apartment-like hotel rooms.

Trump also is expanding the clubhouse to include a large balcony and is adding two extravagant waterfalls on the course -- a Trump trademark. Although he is determined to make the April opening, he said the course should begin public play no later than June 2005 and was confident it would be ready for the LPGA event.

“I guess his approach is very aggressive,” said Evans. “But I bet there will be a lot of gray hairs before September.”