The Riviera Country Club

The country club and course together cost $243,827 in 1926, one of the most expensive builds in golf to that point. George C. Thomas Jr., an amateur architect, drew it for nothing; William P. Bell built it. Ben Hogan won the U.S. Open here in 1948 and took the Los Angeles Open at Riviera in 1947 and 1948 — his 1942 L.A. Open came at Hillcrest — which is why the place gets called Hogan's Alley. Hal Sutton won the 1983 PGA Championship on it, Steve Elkington the 1995. The U.S. Senior Open came in 1998, the U.S. Amateur in 2017, and Nelly Korda won the U.S. Women's Open here in 2026. Olympic golf arrives in 2028, the U.S. Open in 2031.

The sixth has a bunker in the middle of the green — not beside it, in it. Where the ball lands decides whether you putt around the sand or chip over it. The tenth is 315 yards, a par four short enough to drive and sharp enough to punish the attempt. Barrancas, dry ravines, run through the property. Kikuyu, a grass out of East Africa, gradually invaded the course and now covers the fairways and rough. Mown tight it gives a clean lie; in the spongy rough it grabs a clubhead. The first tee is 75 feet above its fairway, and the eighteenth is a blind uphill drive to a green in a natural amphitheatre under the clubhouse. Hogan's three wins here came inside eighteen months.