Terrell C. Drinkwater History of the Los Angeles Country Club 1898-1973, Unknown publisher, 1973, 1897, 127 pp.
Foreword
Three years before the turn of the Century, a few sportsmen decided that Los Angeles should have a golf course. They cleared some raw land on the then outskirts of the City, dug nine holes with butcher knives, planted tomato cans and started to play. This was the humble genesis of The Los Angeles Country Club.
From Browns to Greens (A History of The Los Angeles Country Club, 1898-1973)
By Jack Beardwood
“Would ye care, laddie and lassie, to ken of cracks and crocks, of foozles and hummers, of knickerbockers and shirtwaists, of featheries and gutties, of creeks niblics, of trolleys and surreys and of wheels?
“Be ye curious that your forebearers of The Los Angeles Country Club played five course afore ye and that four clubhouses echoed to the joys and dismays of their golf?
“Would ye like to savor their ways and know your golfing heritage?”
—Colonel Bogey
It all started in 1897 with nine tomato can golf cups, oiled sand greens and fairways so rocky, bumpy and bare that today every lie would be considered virtually unplayable.
The initial clubhouse was a partially burned out, roofless, floorless windmill.
The Club’s first course, a nine hole links located on 16 rented acres at the corner of Pico and Alvarado, was on a former dumping ground for tin cans and kitchen rubbish.
Genesis of The Los Angeles Country Club came from two men: an Englishman who, despite a partially paralyzed left side, [p. 2] played to what in those days was a scratch handicap, and a Californian whose first love had been tennis. The name of the tennis buff who became a self-styled golf “nut” was Edward B. Tufts.
In a series of 88 articles, My 27 Years of Golf in Southern California, published by the old Los Angeles Evening Herald in 1925-26, Tufts recounted the start of golf in Los Angeles and the creation of the eventual Los Angeles Country Club this way:
“It was during the summer of 1897, I was living in Santa Monica, which was way out in the “sticks” at that time, and among the residents were a great many Englishmen . . .
“They had a small polo club and in the latter part of the summer they put nine cans in a piece of absolutely bare ground . . . put down some sand greens, took benches . . . put chicken wire on the backs and set them conveniently for hazards.
“Being president of the Southern California Tennis Association at the time, I spent most of my time playing tennis at the beach.
“These Englishmen, being very anxious to get the game of golf started, were naturally looking for converts—anybody they could get. And I guess that’s why they picked me. One day one of these gentlemen approached me.
“I say, Mr. Tufts,” he stated, “have you ever played golf?”
“I heard something about the game but never enough to get interested so I answered ‘no’’. . .
“A very short time later I was initiated into the game of golf and I’ll never forget my experiences . . . The tournament in which they had entered me in was an 18-hole affair—twice around the nine holes. They very carefully nursed me around, everybody doing everything they could to make me like the game, and on top of it all they gave me an immense handicap and . . . I won a little silver cup . . .
“To this day I still accuse them of fixing it so I could win. Anyway, they accomplished their foul purpose and I have been a ‘nut’ on the game ever since . . .
“That autumn . . . I met another Englishman, Walter M. Grindlay. He was partially paralyzed on his left side but was an [p. 3] ardent golf fiend. I had a real golf bag by this time and ready to play at every opportunity but opportunities were few and far between because the nine-hole course at Santa Monica was the only one in the district and that was a great distance from Los Angeles at the time.
“One day I bumped into Mr. Grindlay . . . We fell to discussing our respective golf games and finally agreed that it was time Los Angeles should be put on the golfing map.
“After a couple of trips into the ‘country’ we discovered, out in the far backwoods of Los Angeles, 16 acres bounded by Pico on the north, Iowa on the east, Alvarado on the west and Sixteenth Street on the south, an excellent piece of ground, the property of Mark Jones of an old Los Angeles family.
“The house which was originally on this ranch had burned down, leaving nothing but the foundation and the top of the wooden windmill had also burned off. This sat on top of the property which is now (1925) Alvarado Terrace.
“This didn’t look like a very good spot to me because it was formerly used as a garbage dump, but Mr. Grindlay and Mr. Jones (E. Conde Jones) didn’t kick, so I stuck with them.
“One Saturday afternoon (after a modest rental arrangement had been made), the three of us went out with rakes and shovels and raked and moved the garbage away from enough spots on these 16 acres and, following the instructions of Mr. Grindlay, laid out nine holes.”
Tufts then told how they had no golf cups so they walked two miles to the closest grocery store.
“Let see some of your biggest cans of tomatoes,” Grindlay stated as the groceryman came over to wait on us . . .
“In one hand he (Grindlay) had a ruler and in the other a can of tomatoes. He was getting the exact measurements of each container. We had an old book on golf and after looking through the pages we finally found what we wanted and purchased nine cans of the best tomatoes.
“And now,” continued Mr. Grindlay, “let us have a couple of butcher knives. [p. 4]
“All the way back Jones was trying to figure out what we were going to do with tomatoes and butcher knives, but Grindlay merely trudged on . . . We arrived at our golf course in due time and again set to work getting it ready to play.
“Grindlay gave us each a butcher knife and in the center of each of our bumpy greens we dug a hole about six inches in diameter and about six inches deep.
“While we were busily engaged digging these holes, Grindlay opened the cans, poured out the contents . . . and then we took (the cans) around to the nine greens and inserted them into the holes we had dug.
“But we weren’t ready yet. We had to have a clubhouse, some place to dress and rest after a round on the links. So we picked on the old windmill which was partially burned down. First we put in a new floor, fixed up the roof a bit and brought in some old benches . . .
“With the clubhouse fixed and our golf course finished, which took us about four days altogether to build, we were set to play.
“Previous to this we had sent east and had been able to get a limited number of very peculiar looking golf clubs. These were queer shaped things, with spliced handles on the wooden heads, but they worked all right with the old gutta percha ball on hard ground.
“The three of us made several trips over the links, scoring fairly well, and we were well satisfied with our work . . . The garbage, cans, etc. which had cluttered up the links had been pretty well cleared away by this time and the layout was taking on this aspect of a ‘real’ course . . .”
Thus Tufts described building of the Club’s first course. It was named, appropriately enough, The Windmill.
How the Wiindmill Links was built and the enthusiastic way golf was started in Los Angeles was reported by Walter Grindlay [p. 8] in the July, 1898, issue of Golf, a prestigious English periodical. It added some footnotes to Tufts’ report:
“We mapped out a nine-hole course,” Grindlay wrote. “. . . The ground was as hard as the best macadam, very rough and covered with short, wiry, dried up and altogether un-putt-over-able burr clover.
“In a country where it rains in a deluge three or four times a year, and not at all the rest of the time, turf greens were obviously impossible, so we started to make . . . browns . . . but it soon became clear that the soil of California, stiffened by 10 months uninterrupted sunshine, was a very rebellious material . . . The greens are small and hard to stay on, and lies through the green are not of the best . . .
“The tees were marked out with the enameled iron ads of an enterprising tobacco merchant . . . and the youth of Los Angeles turned out and played their first games of golf.
. . . .
In 1930, Darsi L. Darsi, who brewed a popular Los Angeles golf column, The Green Tee, reported, while reviewing the history of women’s golf in Southern California, that “more than 460 rattlesnakes” had been killed on the Catalina course in 1897 . . .