CARLSBAD, Calif. — As a kid growing up in New York who loved golf, Gil Hanse looked forward to the start of the PGA Tour and West Coast Swing season. Like many people hunkered down in the cold and snow, tournaments in Hawaii and Southern California awakened in him the sun and warmth to come and the long afternoons spent with a club in hand.
Deeply rooted in these memories is La Costa Resort & Spa, which hosted the Tournament of Champions and then the WGC-Match Play from 1969 to 2006. These events attracted the best players in the world, and any course could be forged a considerable reputation when the champions The roll is filled with big winners, including Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Tom Watson, Lee Trevino, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods.
This is what La Costa Hanse once knew. But now, after being disappointed to see the course fade into the background of golf’s consciousness for much of the past two decades, the famed architect finds himself with the opportunity to not only restore the aura and reputation of La Costa, but also to re-imagine it.
Hanse has many interesting projects in the works, but the task of completely redesigning the Omni La Costa Champions Course is high on his to-do list. In just 17 months, La Costa is set to host the NCAA Division I men’s and women’s golf championships. There is a three-year contract to host the 2024, 2025 and 2026 tournaments, but serious discussions continue to make the San Diego area venue the permanent home of the “Road to La Costa”-themed championships.
“The fact that this place is at the forefront of the golf world again is exciting for us,” Hanse told Golf Digest last month at a groundbreaking ceremony for the Champions Course that began a few years ago. weeks earlier.
“We all knew that La Costa hosted the best players in the world here. And now the people who go become the best players in the world will be part of the history of this place.
The work at La Costa will not be a slight touch-up of a previous facelift carried out on Dick Wilson’s original design more than a decade ago by architect Damian Pascuzzo and professional golfer Steve Pate. In fact, Hanse said the Champions Course (with some of its holes previously mixed with those of the Legends Course for PGA Tour events) will not be recognizable, other than the setting that older generations will remember.
Although the basic layout remains the same, most of the artificial ponds are removed and replaced with what Hanse calls “plausible and credible” Southern California features such as barranca, dry washes and native vegetation. Picture Hanse’s work on the North Course at the Los Angeles Country Club (host of this year’s U.S. Open), plus a few touches of Riviera, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what the architect and business partner is aiming for Jim Wagner.
“Our attempt is to place the golf course in the landscape instead of on top of it,” Hanse said.
The project took years of planning. John Fields, longtime men’s golf coach at the University of Texas, first started the brainstorm while attending the 2017 Walker Cup at LACC. As Fields watched the competition on the much-lauded redesign of Hanse, which will host the U.S. Open for the first time this summer, he spoke to golf writer and architecture enthusiast Geoff Shackelford, who contributed to the LACC project thanks to his knowledge of the original designer George C. . The philosophy and work of Thomas.
Fields had a question: With the NCAA Championship now regularly televised on the Golf Channel and with potential prime-time coverage on the East Coast, with good weather almost guaranteed in May, what would be a good location in Southern California to play in the tournament? (Understand, the championships have only been held once in California in the last 21 years, with Riviera hosting the men in 2012.) Shackelford mentioned La Costa…cautioning that it would need to be significantly renovated.
A few fields. One of the Longhorns’ biggest financial backers happens to be Bob Rowling, a billionaire who founded the company that owns the Omni properties and its many golf courses. Those layouts now include a Hanse-designed course at the Omni PGA Frisco Resort in Texas, which will host the PGA Championship twice over the next 12 years. Fields and Mike Holder, the former Oklahoma State athletic director and legendary golf coach, went to Rowling and pitched a redesign of Hanse at La Costa, specifically so the place could host the NCAAs . Rowling signed off, Hanse started the design work, and now they’re all watching the bulldozers raze the Champions Course to its bare bones.
“I’m very excited about it,” said Fields, who attended the groundbreaking at La Costa. Texas is officially listed as the tournament host in La Costa, and Fields noted that Hanse recently made a presentation for several NCAA men’s and women’s coaches, telling them they would compete on a course comparable to LA North and Riviera. “It surprised us,” Fields said. “It was like, ‘Well, my God, if he’s going to do something like that, we’ll have a place that would be remarkable.'”
Fields is among those leading the movement to make La Costa the permanent site of the men’s and women’s championships, the same way baseball teams play the College World Series each year in Omaha, Nev., and baseball teams softball dream of reaching Oklahoma City for their championship. Beyond the quality of the golf course, the weather and the television, Fields is part of a group of coaches who want the championship site to be played at a facility that is not home to a specific college program .
“It really has to be a neutral site,” said Mary Lou Mulflur, University of Washington women’s coach and member of the NCAA women’s golf committee. “I say this as an individual and not as a representative of the committee. People can say anything, but if you’ve been on a golf course 200 times and someone you play with has been there one or five times, that’s a marked difference.
A number of top Power Five schools have hosted NCAA championships in the past, and Fields is among those feeling a little burned by that arrangement, considering his Longhorns lost in the final game -play against Oregon at the Ducks’ home track. 2016. (Oklahoma State won on its home course in 2018.) Currently, the NCAA has had a three-year presence at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale and, as Mulflur notes, Arizona State has regular access to the facility.
Fields and Mulflur acknowledge that not all coaches agree on the idea of having a permanent site, or that La Costa should be that choice. But Fields believes he has a strong case for a Masters-style tradition in a recognizable venue that would be the tournament’s signature for years to come.
“You think about junior golf right now…if I’m a father of two, I’m going to come here and watch that,” Fields said. “You start setting records. You’re in people’s homes (on television) twice a year. Maybe one day there will be 10,000 watching men’s and women’s college golf. And you can enjoy San Diego…take them to the zoo and SeaWorld.
With his experience renovating some of America’s greatest courses, Hanse was an attractive choice for the job, and his resume was made even better by having designed the Rio de Janeiro course that hosted the men’s and women’s tournaments at the 2016 Olympics. Big winners Justin Rose and Inbee Park were the gold medalists, and Hanse is understandably proud of the symmetry of the results: both champions won with a total of 16 under par, for both men and women, three players finished double figures under par. , and six different nations reached the podium.
Obviously, Hanse did a lot of good to produce this tie, and the goal is the same for La Costa.
“The natural reaction is to just move the women up and the men back (on the tees),” Hanse said. “But this is not true. If they all land in the same place, they are not hitting the same club onto the green. If we’re asking men to hit a 7 iron onto a green, then we should be asking women to hit the 7. And it’s about how do we stagger the hazards so that they come into play for everyone? It’s an interesting puzzle.
Mulflur points out, for example, that it is important for Hanse to know in advance whether it is designing for men and women, because there are more hole placements required on greens during the NCAAs than in a four-round professional circuit event. When designing the putting surfaces, Hanse said the emphasis would be on slant and subtle breaks rather than large undulations. Setting green speeds will play a big role in making the game difficult for everyone, including the audience.
Gaining insight into the thinking of a great architect, Hanse cited seeing a mountain in the background move toward a player from right to left and then tilt the green from left to right. “All we want, and not in a mean way, is for the best players in the world to miss a putt by an inch,” Hanse said. “If we can pull off this subtlety – dare I say this trickery – then the best players in the world will be rewarded and appreciated for their thoughtful studies. »
As for the bulk of the layout, Hanse said he will use knowledge he gleaned from Thomas’ “course within a course” approach at LA North and some of the short-grass runoff areas of Alister Mackenzie at the Valley Club.
Speaking of Mackenzie, Hanse anticipated some influence at Augusta National. La Costa’s most recognizable hole is the over-water Champions par-3 16th, which is the site of the property’s most famous shot: Woods planting a dart from close range in the rain to beat Tom Lehman during of the 1997 TOC qualifiers, three months earlier. he won his first Masters.
While not a perfect replica, Hanse said the current straight appearance of the 16th will be changed to an angle that will more closely resemble Augusta’s par-3 12th, making the club’s selection much more precise. And yes, current plans call for one bunker in front of the green and two behind it, just like the Masters model.
Take all that into account and it’s no wonder the prospect of playing NCAA golf championships in perpetuity at La Costa has some coaches buzzing.
“If Gil does what he says he’s going to do with the course, I think it’s going to happen,” Fields said. “I think the big tours will want to play here. It’s such a beautiful site with a great hotel and spa. It’s simply a no-brainer.
