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Technically, Whan was at The Olympic Club, at a memorable U.S. Women’s Open, as the LPGA commissioner. This week, in the little New Jersey burgh of Liberty Corner, he’ll start his transition into his new job, as the CEO of the United States Golf Association, succeeding Mike Davis. But at Olympic, people were still calling him Commish.

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“At an LPGA event, I’ll walk the driving range and know every last player,” Whan said Sunday night in a phone interview. “At Olympic, 30 percent of the players I didn’t know at all. And that’s part of the beauty of any U.S. Open.”

Consider Sunday’s final threesome, Lexi Thompson, Megha Ganne and Yuka Saso.

Thompson, who made a bogey on the last to finish a shot out of a playoff, was a central figure in Whan’s 11 years as commissioner. “A friend sent me a photo of her signing autographs when it was over,” Whan said. “That’s who she is.”

Whan knew nothing about Ganne, the low am, and was charmed about everything he did learn about her. “Stanford is going to have some team when she gets there,” Whan said.

Saso, of the Philippines, the winner, Whan had met once, briefly. “Not a country with a deep golf tradition, but you can imagine how that will change now,” he said.

He flew home on Friday because that’s what he always has done at U.S. Opens. Not to Orlando, as he has done for the past decade, but to Newark. Late last month, Whan and his wife moved to a home on a golf course called Hamilton Farm, about five miles from his new office.

He watched the weekend golf unfold on Golf Channel, on Peacock, on NBC, then back to Golf Channel. Asked to summarize his biggest takeaway from the week, Whan said, “Venues matter.

“Here was a course that had hosted a series of historic men’s majors. Olympic added in every way. It mattered. To the fans, to the broadcasters, to the players. There was a bigness to the event. There was a bigness of the stage.”

The last group alone was a tournament onto itself. Thompson’s back-nine 41, when all she needed was 39 to win, it was painful.

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Then there was Ganne, Jersey girl, making a putt on the last to take the low-am medal by a shot — at age 17. How spectacular.

And then, of course, the headliner from that group, Saso, 19, the first Filipino golfer, female or male, to win a major, doing it in a playoff. So unexpected. Your 2021 U.S. Women’s Open champion. 

“I’ve said this before about Lexi, but you’re not going to have days like that unless you’re good enough to be there in the first place,” Whan said. “She’ll get her name on that trophy before she’s through.” It only seems like Thompson has been around forever. She’s 26.

That a player from the Philippines and a player from Japan, Nasa Hataoka, met in a playoff is old hat for anybody who follows women’s golf closely. As for the fact that the winner speaks three languages, ditto. But Whan knows that for sports fans who only follow the men’s game, this seems remarkable.

“I remember when I was at Rio, for the Olympics, and at a press conference and the first question I got was, ‘How cool is it, to have all these players from so many different countries?’ And I answered the question but I thought, ‘At our next LPGA event, we’ll have more countries represented.’ Women’s golf is borderless. But 30 years ago, would anybody have predicted that?”

Not likely.

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Everything that does not evolve dies. 

The timing of this event was ideal. The times are changing. We seem to be living in a time when people are craving fairness, equality, equal opportunity, in golf and beyond it. Whan knows that women’s golf is a perfect stage for the pursuit of fairness, equality and equal opportunity. Golf is ripe for all those things. This U.S. Open wasn’t you go, girl — it was you go, period.

Whan was at the end of a long week and about to start another one. He should have been tired. He wasn’t. His foot was on the gas.

“I have a tournament next week, so we’ll take it from here,” Lexi Thompson said, wrapping up her week with a brief press session.

Whan, in a longer session with this reporter, was saying the same with a thing. He was saying, That was something. He was saying, Onward.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com

NEWSLETTER

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The post Tour Confidential: U.S. Women’s Open, Jon Rahm and Covid-19, Brooks-Bryson appeared first on Golf.

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1. Nineteen-year-old Yuka Saso of the Philippines defeated Japan’s Nasa Hataoka in a playoff to win the U.S. Women’s Open at the Olympic Club. Saso became not only the youngest Women’s Open winner (joining Inbee Park, who was the same age to the day when she won the U.S. Open in 2008) but also the first Filipino major winner. What most stood out to you about Saso’s performance?

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Michael Bamberger, senior writer: She held up to the moment. Yes, Lexi had a collapse for the ages, but Saso had to be there to take advantage of it. Usually, you lose before you win. She didn’t. 

Sean Zak, senior editor (@sean_zak): An opening was created for her, and she pounced. Seems emblematic of her game — that she can pounce. She made consecutive doubles to play her way out of it, but she didn’t collapse. She battled back for a hard-fought 73, which she probably would have signed up for at the beginning of the day, too. It’s not about how, it’s about how many.

Alan Bastable, executive editor (@alan_bastable): I was touched by Saso’s post-round interview, when she tearfully thanked her team of supporters and said that she will strive to be better. Better?! She just won her sport’s biggest title — at 19! They’ll be dancing in the streets in Manila. Her humbleness was so charming.    

Dylan Dethier, senior writer (@dylan_dethier): Her second putt on the second hole of the playoff, after she’d rammed the first one some 8-10 feet past the hole. I have never made one of those comebackers in my entire life, but she rammed it in the middle to extend the playoff in the biggest event in the game.

2. For much of the final round, it looked like Lexi Thompson’s day. Thompson had a four-stroke cushion with just eight holes to play, but she let her lead slip away, ultimately missing out on the playoff when she failed to get up and down from a greenside bunker on the 72nd hole. Simple/complex question: What happened?

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Bamberger: The easy answer would be to say Olympic happened. And Olympic is funky. Hogan and Arnold and Payne Stewart will all tell you that. But Lexi’s game, as great as it is, is out of the smash-and-pitch game. That’s not Olympic. The course and the moment caught up to her, sad to say.

Zak: I think Bamberger is right, but there’s more. The course and moment did catch up to her, but in harsher terms, she got yippy. She got quick. She got caught thinking about the score for the first time Sunday. It all leads to Johnny Miller’s favorite word: nerves. 

Bastable: Lexi said the wind got her, but the putter seemed like the biggest culprit. From the first green, Lexi’s stroke looked shaky — credit to Brandel Chamblee, who noted that Thompson’s first putt of the day was nowhere near the center of her putter face. The closer Lexi got to the hole, the more uncomfortable she looked over the ball. U.S. Open pressure is no joke, even if you’ve been there many times before.

Dethier: A little bit of everything. Drives increasingly found the rough. Approach shots started coming up short. Putts got wobbly. To close out that tournament, in front of that crowd, on that golf course, after a year without fans, was a really tough position. That’s what made it unfortunate to watch.

3. Where does Lexi’s Sunday rank on the major meltdown meter?

Bamberger: South of Greg Norman at the ’96 Masters by a length.

Zak: It’s definitely up there. It all happened on the back nine, and after a par on 10! The final eight holes. With a pair of par-5s in the final three holes. And the 18th that allowed her to play iron off the tee. One mistake begetting the next. It’s pretty high, even if that hurts.

Bastable: Thing is, similar to Norman’s collapse, there was no signature meltdown moment. Sure, there was the double at 11, but, mostly, it was a slow burn paired with some strong play (and surely Lexi heard the roars) from a couple of other players nipping at her heels. Most stunning moment had to be the putt at 18 — that’s an insanely fast putt, which I thought would help ensure that she’d get it the hole. Nope, not even close. Many props to Lexi for keeping her chin up (smiling, laughing even) through what had to be an excruciating couple of hours.

Dethier: I have no data to back this up, but it feels like we’re often accustomed to players with four- or five-shot leads bleeding a couple shots down the stretch, giving the illusion of a close tournament before they ultimately right the ship. Think Phil at the PGA. That’s what I was expecting midway through the back nine. But then the ship never righted. No. 17 was the most surprising — bogey on a birdie hole, especially for long-hitting Lexi. Anyway, I have no idea where it ranks historically. But I’m confident it’s the most painful blown lead I’ve seen since I took this job.

4. The Olympic Club, as it has in so many men’s Opens past, delivered in its debut as a Women’s Open site. How would you assess how the USGA set up the Lake Course for this championship, and are there any takeaways for future U.S. Women’s Opens? 

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Bamberger: U.S. Open courses, through the years, have been defined by their trees. The Lake Course has trees. Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

Zak: A tough event where the greens were firm, the rough was long and few scores under par? Sounds exactly like a typical U.S. Open. My real takeaway is major kudos to the USGA for hosting this event here. The first Women’s Open at Olympic. The first Women’s Open at Pebble will take place in two years. About damn time! Ask the best women in the world what they want, and a lot will tell you they want a piece of all the tracks that have hosted the best men in the world. GIVE. THEM. THAT. 

Bastable: Zak nailed it, and I loved how juicy they kept the rough. When Lexi can advance a ball only 40 yards, you know that’s some gnarly spinach. Fairly certain I couldn’t hit the 18th fairway with a large bucket. Come to think of it, the 18th green, too. Fabulous USWO swan song for Mike Davis. 

Dethier: They got creative with the yardages, varied the looks and kept the course tough but reasonable, which meant we saw birdies and doubles aplenty. It went swimmingly! If you’re into par, four under seems like a proper U.S. Open final score. And to Bamberger’s point, Olympic has zero penalty areas, which can make it tricky for viewers to distinguish between holes — but the setup and the broadcast kept it fresh. And the trees.

5. Meanwhile, in Ohio, Patrick Cantlay won the Memorial in a playoff over Collin Morikawa. But the story that dominated the weekend unfolded on Saturday when Jon Rahm was forced to withdraw from the tournament after 54 holes — with a six-stroke lead — after testing positive for Covid-19. Rahm was notified of the test result moments after he walked off the 18th green Saturday. “It’s kind of the worst situation for something like that to happen,” said Patrick Cantlay, Rahm’s playing partner. What did you take away from this surreal episode?

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Bamberger: Reading the fine print, it would seem that Rahm did not get vaccinated, or was not fully vaccinated (two weeks past second shot, in most cases). Too bad for him. The Covid-19 vaccines are a miracle of modern science.

Zak: My takeaway — thanks to the mentions of a popular tweet — is that there is still a lot of people who don’t know what they don’t know about vaccines, about Covid-19, about the PGA Tour’s rules about vaccines and Covid-19. Perhaps that’s Twitter, but I think it speaks for a lot of non-Twitter users, too. Subscribe to a newspaper and read it.

James Colgan, assistant editor (@jamescolgan26): That we (and the PGA Tour, for that matter) aren’t out of the woods yet! And that’s OK. And also that the Tour’s protocols exist for a reason, and maybe they ought to look at extending them indefinitely for unvaccinated players rather than lapsing them at the end of June.  

Bastable: That this happened more than a year since the PGA Tour restarted is yet one more grim reminder of how this virus turned the world on its head.     

Dethier: There were no winners from this episode. The entire thing was just a huge bummer — for the tournament, for the fans, for the Tour, for Rahm, for our polarized online discourse. I cede the rest of my time to Senator Morikawa, out of California. Here’s what he said:

“People know the risks of not getting vaccinated versus vaccinated.” 

He added this:

“What I was seeing yesterday with how many people were judging Jon for doing this, doing that, like, it’s got to stop. Why are we judging people off that? Jon’s a great guy.”

6. Bryson vs. Brooks took another spicy turn last week. After DeChambeau was taunted by Memorial fans with cries of “Brooksy,” Koepka threw more gas on the fire by releasing a video in which he promised to send beer to any fans who had been ejected. When asked whether all the attention on Bryson and Brooks is good for golf, DeChambeau said, in part, “I’m happy that there’s more conversations about me because of the PIP fund” — aka the Tour’s Player Impact Program, which rewards players for generating engagement on social media. How much of the Bryson-Brooks rivalry do you suspect is being driven by the promise of a payday?

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Bamberger: None of it. Because we’re the ones driving it, and we’re not getting paid. We’re paying, if anything. Who do you think ultimately banks that PIP fund, those endorsement deals and all the rest? Not Brooksy! Not Bri-Bri! We do.

Zak: I think Koepka seems to be acting differently since the PIP was made public … but we all forget that the PIP has been known to players for much longer. So why now? I think the answer is that he genuinely does not like Bryson, for reasons Bryson shouldn’t necessarily have to answer for. The way he discusses his shots, the way he discusses his game, the sound his cleats make on pavement. Is BDC the most likable dude on Tour? Nope. Is Brooks? Nope. I’m ready for them to put this to bed. 

Colgan: This is a delightfully cynical question. I actually don’t think it’s being driven by a payday — at least not anymore. Bryson was clearly bothered by the taunting he received at Muirfield, and Brooks clearly loved it. Brooks genuinely didn’t love Bryson to begin with. Maybe he’s playing it up a bit for the PIP of it all, but I’m holding out hope my man Jim Herman is going to pull up the rear in those rankings, anyway.

Bastable: It all feels a bit silly and frivolous at this point. When you’re integrating sponsor activations into your smack-talk, it’s probably time to step back and cool the jets. 

Dethier: Brooks is after something far more valuable than money: Clout. Clout has no true dollar value. Except when it does.

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The post What it’s like to play the Olympic Club, host of this week’s U.S. Women’s Open appeared first on Golf.

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The Olympic Club was here when San Francisco was an old-world town, and it’s remained untouched on its perch atop Lake Merced even as the city around it has morphed into a gluten-free, chai-tea-sipping hipster haven. In all likelihood, the O Club will still be here long after our alien overlords kick everyone out of the Bay Area on account of the rent being too damn high.

Yet, in more than a century of golf goodness, likely only one dummy has rolled through the pearly gates in a souped-up, early-2000s Toyota Prius brandishing at least a dozen large, carefully applied anime decals. That interloper — the one with clubs in his lap, visible through the tinted windows just above the faded Naruto and Garfield stickers — was me in late-April, when I played the course for the first time.

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When my editor first tasked me with the herculean assignment of playing a super-elite private course in a part of the country I’d never visited for the U.S. Women’s Open preview day, I had a few talking points in mind. I was excited to learn about “West Coast golf,” and “the impact of the marine layer” — perhaps I’d even settle the great Bay Area burrito debate.  

Yes, I did test West Coast golf (awesome), I did have the finest burrito of my adult life (at El Farolito’s in the mission district) and I even learned a thing or two about Bay Area grocers (Mulberry’s in Piedmont is the finest local shop in all the land; the coffee is delectable). But when I caught the gate attendant stifling a laugh when he realized we had not, in fact, made a wrong turn, it hit me. The most impactful lesson of my trip was one I could have learned 3,000 miles closer to home: Sometimes, it’s worth springing for an Uber Black.

Here are 5 other lessons from my rollicking day at the Olympic Club.

The ‘it’ factor is no-joke

I haven’t had many luxe golf experiences, but the few I’ve had can’t compare to the O-Club. The red-carpet rollout was real, accentuated by a delightful breakfast on the patio outside the posh clubhouse. You can see it all from the tiny seating area — the golf courses, the Bay Area, even the Golden Gate. It’s hard not to burn with excitement looking out at what’s soon to come.

Inside the clubhouse, things aren’t much different. Large windows in the banquet hall overlook the Bay Area skyline, while the hallways are littered with iconography from the club’s lengthy history.

Neither is the ‘carnage’ factor

Olympic isn’t visually daunting off the tee, but it’s tight, winding, and its demands are remarkably precise. Miss a fairway by a few feet and you’re hacking it out of a tuft of rough. Hit an iron to the wrong side of the green and you’re lucky to escape with a three-putt. Blind approaches and heavily protected greens leave few areas for a bailout. I’m an 80s-shooter on an average day, and on a bad day at the O-Club, I struggled to keep my score below 100.

It’s not easy, but not impossible

If you’d like to record a decent score, might we suggest a different U.S. Women’s Open venue? But if you’d like to have an enjoyable afternoon with friends, you could do far worse than Olympic.

That’s because the course, even for its challenges, leaves players with plenty of room to miss on either side of the fairway. The yawning gum trees come into play on a handful of holes, but largely are only consequences of huge misses. If you’re able to keep your ball on the planet, it’s likely you’ll enjoy the challenge of the Lake Course, largely because it won’t penalize you with lost balls and impossible recoveries.

I’m not much of an architecture buff, but for my money, courses are at their best when they make the distinction of being hard, but not impossible. Olympic has that in spades.

Can(ted) handle it

If you’re planning to watch this week’s Women’s Open (which will be available largely commercial-free), pay attention to the slope of the fairways — you’re sure to hear plenty about them. The “canted fairways,” as they’re called, are the principle design feature of architects Sam Whiting and Willie Watson’s work at the Lake Course.

On dogleg-rights, the fairways slope to the right, on dogleg-lefts, they slope to the left. While the difference is negligible to the untrained eye, the small feature completely shifts the strategic value of the hole. A good drive to the wrong side of the fairway can lead to an awkward approach shot, which can lead to a big number.

Burgerdogs, dawg

Burgerdogs are, for the moment, this burgeoning golf food-reviewer’s pick for finest halfway house snack in the sport. They’re sure to give you a coronary, but these burgers-shaped-like-hot dogs from Hot Dog Bill’s halfway house are some of the most delicious, fulfilling artery-clogging snacks that have EVER existed in golf.

I entered the Lake Course under strict instructions from a handful of Bay Area locals to order “the works.” After some prodding, I received a franken-burgerdog — half-burgerdog, half-topping — replete with onions, peppers, pickles, mustard, ketchup, relish, hot sauce, and all other order of beautifully excessive accessory. It took me only a few minutes to scarf it down, and I’ve savored the taste ever since.

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The USGA announced Monday that it has awarded Creamer, the 2010 U.S. Women’s Open champion, a special exemption into the 76th U.S. Women’s Open field. The tournament — which is scheduled for June 3-6 — will be the first Women’s Open contested at Olympic Club in San Francisco, the famed five-time U.S. Open host.

“I really want to give a huge thank you to the USGA for allowing me to play this year,” Creamer told reporters on a press call Monday. “You know, it was very difficult not being able to go and play last year in the Open, and I was pretty bummed about it, so to be able to have this exemption for me and to come in and play, it means the world, especially in the Bay Area.”

The tournament marks Creamer’s return to major championship golf after an 18-month hiatus caused principally by a series of injuries. In the lead-up to Olympic, the 10-time LPGA Tour winner will return to competitive golf at the Pure Silk Championship at Kingsmill in late May.

“The pandemic hit, and I hate to say it, but for me it was almost a blessing in disguise,” she said. “Not playing in the U.S. Open and not playing in tournaments last year was not the easiest of decisions, but right now sitting here I have practiced a lot, more than I think I have in a very, very long time, and I don’t feel any pain, which to me, it’s worth it right now.”

Injuries are at least partially responsible for dashing the arc of a career that once seemed poised to dominate the women’s game — Creamer has won just one time since her 24th birthday, and says a severe thumb injury from 2010 still impacts her ability to grip the club.

“Oh, gosh. It’s been a long time [since I’ve been pain-free],” she said. “You know, you always think you feel good because you’re mentally telling yourself that. But truly, it’s been years. It has definitely been years.”

Creamer, 34, hails from nearby Pleasanton, Calif. and attended her first golf tournament at Olympic, the 1998 U.S. Open. Even if the Lake Course has undergone some tweaking in the time since that first visit, it promises to once again present a worthy challenge of a national championship.

 “I think the fact that the men have been there, they’ve hosted so many big tournaments and they’re going to continue hosting so many big tournaments, a Ryder Cup and all of that, it just shows that it’s a great track and it’s timeless,” she said. “It doesn’t matter how the game changes, they can keep it there and keep bringing the big-time events there.”

For her part, Creamer is up to challenge — and very glad to be back.

“It’s just a different layout, and the prestige and the names that have been on that trophy that have come from the Olympic Club are some of the greatest, and the stories that you hear, they’re amazing,” she said. “Of course, how could you not want the Burgerdog, too? I mean, that I am looking forward to. But it’ll be fun to challenge us in so many different ways because they could put tee boxes wherever they want there…

“It’s home. It’ll always be home,” she said. “I’m a Cali girl, and you can’t take that away from me just because I live in Orlando now.”

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What you need to know about Olympic Club’s golfing pedigree 

The Olympic Club wasn’t always known for golf.

The oldest athletic club in the United States, it was founded in 1860, in San Francisco, and built an early reputation for fielding elite amateur teams in football, basketball and rugby, among other sports.

Golf didn’t come until the fold until 1918, when the downtown-based club assumed control of the Lakeside Golf Club, on the western fringes of the city. Six years later, following the acquisition of additional land, that single course was expanded into two 18-hole layouts, the Lake Course and the Ocean Course.

To say the rest is history leaves a whole lot out.

In the near-century since, the Olympic Club has emerged as one of golf’s most storied venues, having staged two Tour Championships, three U.S. Amateurs, the U.S. Junior Amateur and the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball.

Then there is the U.S. Open, which the Olympic Club has played host to five times, all on the Lake Course, in 1955, 1966, 1987, 1998 and 2012. 

In the summer of 2021, the Olympic Club will welcome its first U.S. Women’s Open.

Olympic Club’s most famous U.S. Open moments

In the Olympic Club’s grand clubhouse, display cases brim with championship silver, sepia-toned still shots and other tournament memorabilia. On a wall just off the dining room, a written account of the club’s five U.S. Opens hangs below the headline, “Graveyard of Champions.”

Point being: While the winners of those tournaments were all worthy, they’re nowhere near as well known as the runners-up.

The register of famous second fiddles starts in 1955, when Jack Fleck, a little-known municipal course pro from Iowa, foiled Ben Hogan’s quest for a fifth U.S. Open title. With a final-round 70, Hogan appeared to be a shoo-in, so much so that Gene Sarazen, working as a commentator for NBC, congratulated him on his win. Not so fast. Playing behind Hogan, Fleck birdied two of his final four holes to force an 18-hole playoff, which he won by three the following day. Hogan was just one back on the final tee, but he hooked his drive into rough so tangled that it took him three shots to get back in the fairway. A black-and-white photo of Hogan trying to hack out of that trouble is part of U.S. Open iconography.

In 1966, the next time the U.S. Open took place on the Lake Course, Johnny Miller, then a 19-year-old amateur, finished T-8. But the bigger story that week involved Arnold Palmer, who played a painful role in one of the most shocking turnabouts in major championship history. Leading by seven with nine holes to play, Palmer staggered through that stretch in four-over par, allowing a hot-putting Billy Casper to catch him. Like Hogan before him, Palmer went down in a playoff the next day.

We could go on, but we’ll do so briefly.

In 1987, Tom Watson fell on Sunday to Scott Simpson by one, while in 1998, Payne Stewart closed with a star-crossed 74 (a pivotal moment came when Stewart’s tee shot on the par-4 12th hole settled in a sand-filled divot in the fairway, leading to a frustrating bogey), giving way to Lee Janzen’s second U.S. Open win.

Janzen shot a steely 68 that day, but he also had a bit of memorable fortune in his favor. On the 5th hole, his drive nested in a cypress tree and appeared doomed to stay there. But no. The ball dropped to safety just as Janzen had begun his march back to the tee box to reload.

Travel

In 2012, two past U.S. Open champions, Jim Furyk and Graeme McDowell, played in the final pairing on Sunday. But both came undone down the stretch, low-lighted by an instance on the par-5 16th tee, where Furyk smother-hooked a 3-wood into a dead zone in the bushes (just as Arnold Palmer had done on the same hole in the midst of his 1966 collapse).

The come-from-behind winner was Webb Simpson, who deserved the spotlight but wound up sharing it during a surreal trophy presentation, when a man in a colorful outfit who was later dubbed the Bird Man photo-bombed the proceedings, cawing for the cameras before being whisked off by security.

“Yeah, enjoy the jail cell, pal,” Simpson said, unfazed in his enjoyment of his victory.

Can you get a tee time at the Olympic Club? 

The Olympic Club is private, and while it’s not the city’s most exclusive course (that honor goes to nearby San Francisco Golf Club), it can be difficult to access if you don’t belong. The problem isn’t stuffiness. It’s supply and demand; with a large membership and limited guest tee times on the Lake Course, there just aren’t many slots to go around.

If you know a member, your best bet is to make yourself available on a weekday afternoon. Be flexible, and your member friend will find a way to get you on.

Meantime, you might ask that same friend to take you on the Ocean Course, the Lake’s less famous but more player-friendly sibling. Or the Cliffs Course, a superb 9-hole par-3 course that overlooks the ocean. You would not be alone if you walked away convinced that the shortest course at the Olympic Club is the most entertaining of the three.

What’s the Lake Course like?

Like a lot of championship layouts from the Golden Age, the Lake Course is hard but not find-your-ball hard. You can easily bogey all 18 without ever having to reload. The opening hole, which tips out at just more than 500 yards, played as a par-4 in the 2012 U.S. Open. But it’s a par-5 throughout the year, so you get a little breather right out of the gate, which is nice, since there’s not a lot of let up after that. 

Descriptions of the Lake Course’s defining traits invariably include mention of holes that dogleg one way but cant the other. That’s true of the par-4 4th, which bends left but tilts right. It’s also true of the par-4 5th, which shapes the other way around. The lay of the land on both leaves you with lilts and lies ill-suited to the shots you want to hit. And they aren’t the only ones.

In recent years, many trees have been removed or have died natural deaths (including the tree where Janzen’s ball nested). But the course still plays through stands of towering cypress and eucalyptus that find all kinds of ways to thwart you. The greens are small and well defended. A number of holes dogleg defiantly. Missing the fairway rarely comes recommended anywhere. But at the Lake Course, driving is especially important, even though there’s only one fairway bunker on the course. Fail to find the short grass and you’re in a dogfight to save par.

What else you need to know

—Though they don’t like to talk about signature holes here, members often speak of signature looks. The right side of the opening hole is one of them. It runs along a high point of the course, and from it, views give way to the ocean and the bay, with the Golden Gate Bridge glinting in the distance. To your right lies Lake Merced, and spreading on the other side of it, TPC Harding Park, a municipal course that will host the PGA Championship in August. 

—After the opening hole, you don’t see another par-5 until the 16th. As you walk from the 15th green, keep an eye out for a small, overgrown tee box. It was used in the 2012 U.S. Open to stretch the hole to 671 yards, the longest hole in championship history.

—Birdie-binges are uncommon at the Olympic Club. But feasting is encouraged. Alongside the 10th green is a shack that serves one of golf’s most celebrated dishes: the burger dog, which, as the name suggests, is a hamburger served on a hot dog bun. In short, it’s nothing fancy, but it’s also singular; try to recreate it on your backyard grill, and it just won’t taste the same. Ask for it with all the fixings. Depending on how well you know your host, you might want to ask for two.

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