Terrell C. Drinkwater History of the Los Angeles Country Club 1898-1973, Unknown Publisher, 1973, 127 pp. 1973, 1946, 1927, 1920s, 1898, 1897, 1890s,
Coronado probably started in late 1896 or early 1897, was the posh California winter vacation resort for wealthy easterners and mid-westerners. One of its most regular and enthusiastic visitors was A.G. Spalding who was to become a dominant figure in the manufacture of golf clubs and balls. It was reported that Spalding “insisted upon fine golf” and in 1898 Coronado got the first grass greens in Southern California.
The Los Angeles Country Club was not to get grass putting surfaces until World War I. Builders and boards of most Southern California clubs felt it would never be possible to raise grass hardy enough to withstand the constant foot traffic and the hot California sun.
Good sand greens, it was felt, would be more practical. As for grass fairways, the Los Angeles aquaduct was still far in the future [p. 9] and there was no irrigation for fairways. The word “greens” was inherited from Scotland and the eastern part of the United States. In Southern California they, as Grindlay inferred, should have been called “browns.”