Orinda Country Club Concept

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WILLIE WATSON

It happens every year a U.S. Open is played at San Francisco’s Olympic Club. The question is always asked, just as it was last year, and the answer always brings another question. Usually it’s those from out of town who note that this golf course has no water hazards, no out of bounds, only one fairway bunker . . . here is the shortest golf course to hold the Open, and yet it is such a wonderful test of golf. Tough, deceptive, but fair—a masterpiece

Who is the architect? Is this a Tillignhast? An Alister MacKenzie? No, but the architect was equally famous in his time, and knew both men well. Willie Watson was the architect. He was commissioned to design the two courses at Olympic in 1923. Willie Watson? Never heard of him, what else has he done?

Watson came to the United States from Scotland in 1898. He spent much of his time with James “Pop” Smith (a famous golfer from Carnoustie, Scotland) and his clan at Claremont Country Club in Oakland, the same course Alister MacKenzie, another friend of Smith’s from the old country, called home when he first came to the States.

Though Watson’s name is not as renowned these days as it was in the 1920s, his work has stood the test through time. Watson also designed Interlachen in Minneapolis, Hillcrest and Annandale in Southern California, Fort Washington in Fresno.

The Bay Area is blessed with a good portion of Watson’s work, due to his kinship with Smith at Claremont. He designed Harding Park in San Francisco, Diablo CC in Danville and Berkeley CC (now Mira Vista CC) in Richmond. He had a hand in the redesign of Claremont, with MacKenzie. But the golf course that well could be Watson’s real masterpiece sits quietly and peacefully in a secluded canyon east of the Berkeley Hills.

Orinda Country Club, much like the reputation of its designer, is appreciated and savored by those who know, but lurks in relative anonymity in the mainstream of today’s world.

Edward deLaveaga, the founder of the town of Orinda, conceived Orinda Country Club early in the 1920s and wanted the best architect in golf to design his course. Watson had the international reputation at the time, and he happened to be nearby, designing the Olympic Club, so deLaveaga commissioned him.

Watson took the job because he was strapped for cash. Olympic proved to be more of a challenge than he bargained for—erosion and landslides on the Ocean course (which he though to be his masterpiece) during and after construction had almost tapped him out. He took the Orinda job to keep his cash flow going.

But, Watson almost quit early on in a clash with deLaveaga, who was insistent that his clubhouse be built on a cliff by the reservoir he had built, with the lake on one side and a magnificent view of the San Pablo Valley on the other. Watson was equally insistent that the ninth hole should return to the clubhouse and the 10th tee should be nearby, that the clubhouse had to be in the valley—there was no way both nines could return to the clubhouse on that cliff.

The two argued until Watson ran out of money, and had to give in. That is why Orinda has 18 contiguous holes, the ninth hole out in the canyon, nowhere near the clubhouse.

The clubhouse opened on Aug. 29, 1925, though only five holes of the golf course were open for play. The full 18 holes at Orinda opened in 1927, just in time for the anxiously anticipated NCGA Championship, which would inaugurate the course the next spring (at that time, amateur golf received far more press coverage that the pros). Renowned golf writer Robert Hunter reviewed the course in The Links magazine in 1926, giving the course his highest rating. He compared the par-3 15th hole to the Redan, the most famous par-3 in the world at the time, at North Berwick, Scotland.

Watson was accustomed to the praise, and he pointed to the land as the reason for his success. He was an architect who believed that the golf course was always there on the land, he just had to find it. He did not believe in artificial construction. True to form, the course at Orinda simply follows a landscape that was always there, bending down through verdant oaks from the elevated first tee, around a bend to follow a canyon around and behind the clubhouse along Miner Road, then back and up to the clubhouse.

Little was done to prosecute the land, outside the planting fairways and greens. There are three creeks on the land, which Watson used well. Six times the course crosses Lauterwasser Creek, twice San Pablo Creek, and twice Cascade Creek.

The 186-yard, celebrated 15th hole was located where two of those creeks meet. This was an area where the local Costoanoan Indians had a village long ago, a considerable time before deLaveaga came to the land. To honor those Native Americans, Watson put no bunkers by the 11th green on the opposite side of the creek form the 15th. Instead, he builds mounds around the green and called them Indian Burial Mounds. This was also the area where Watson thought the clubhouse should be. Perhaps it was a final dig at deLaveaga that he called the hole “Graveyard,” though the name also had an apt fit with the native heritage.

Orinda earned its place on the map with the press coverage of the 1928 NCGA Amateur Championship, which was won by an unknown 17-year-old named Lawson Little Jr. on the 36th hole of match play against the superstar of his time, Dr. jack Wolf. Little, who became a prominent pro, would go on to the win the U.S. Open in 1940. The highlight of the tournament was a hole-in-one by Little on the 120-yard eight hole in the final round, the first hole-in-one to be photographed..

Photographer A. D. Mills, using a large, weighty black box with an oversized lens, a camera that made a sound like a rifle shot when it took picture, captured Little’s shot just after impact. In anger, Little turned to the photographer and shouted, “You ruined my . . .” then he heard the shouting by the green and realized his ball had gone into the hole.

Ironically, there have been no major golf championships at Orinda since that 1928 NCGA Championship. The course became a favorite of golfers such as Byron Nelson, Sam Snead and Ben Hogan, who annually practiced at Orinda the week before they went down to Pebble Beach for the Crosby. Tony Lema frequented the course for practice and when he won the 1964 British Open at St. Andrews, he took the cup to Orinda for display. The players knew this was a great course, but time eventually took its world-renowned reputation. Somehow Orinda got lost in the shuffle as the media grew, forever looking for the new.

Until 1988…

Orinda was once again tested by some of the finest players in the game in the year, as host course for the Pac-10 championship. Members wondered if their 6,352-yard, par-72 course-it had changed very little since the 1927 opening (the only meaningful change was moving the first tee from the area where the back parking lot is now to an area down by the pro shop)-could withstand the test of players such as reigning U.S. Amateur champ Billy Mayfair. Surely, Frank McCann’s course record of 64, set in the finals of the 1954 club championship, was in jeopardy.

Orinda may be short, but it packs a punch, like most Watson designs. Only one player in the Pac-10 Championship managed to shoot in the 60s, mike Springer with a 68. Orinda proved its mettle against time.

Six weeks before the U.S. Open at Olympic last year, Orinda once again was tested. Because the scores were so high in the 1988 Pac-10, this time officials kept the rough down. But the high-tech drivers and golf balls of today’s world were still no match for the 1927 Watson design in the 1998 Pac-10 Championship. Freshman Paul Casey of Arizona State won the title with a 5-under-par total of 283, including a 76 in the first round and a closing 66.

Orinda took its toll on second place finishers Dan Arroyo of Cal, who closed with a 77, and Joel Kribel of Stanford, who closed with a 76. Arroyo had the low round of the tournament, a 65 in the second round.

Players were unanimous in their praise of the golf course, their comments bearing an eerie similarity to what the world’s best say about Olympic: Benign on the surface, looks like it can be torn apart but it can’t, fair but tough. After 40-plus years, the old course record 64 was broken recently by Chris Manfrin, an Orinda member and former Cal golfer, who shot a fine 63

There was praise for the character of holes like the 11th, a 442-yard downhill par 4 that bends to the left (a difficult fairway to hit) with a creek 70 yards in front of the green, which is surrounded by Watson’s Indian Burial mounds. There was praise for the dogleg-left fifth, an extremely tight par 4 which travels downhill through the oaks, then back up to a large green with a humpback in the center. And the 521-yard uphill 18th, which can be reached in two, but is more easily negotiated with a lay-up (a half-wedge is very difficult to gauge on such a steep slope) was widely praised as an ideal finishing hole. The signature 15th was also praised as a hole to remember.

While these players talked about Orinda, it was clear that the course had passed what may be the true test of the character of a golf course-whether you can remember the holes after you’ve played a round. On contemporary courses, so many holes are similar. At Orinda, every hole has its own character. It’s easy to remember.

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