Terrell C. Drinkwater History of the Los Angeles Country Club 1898-1973, Unknown publisher, 1973, 127 pp., 1898, 1897, 1890s, 1900, 1900s, 1927, 1946,
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.
This year the Club observes its diamond anniversary; a good time to record its history. Fortunately for all, a true citizen named Jack B. Beardwood who is a fine member with a love of golf, a devotion to the Club and a great writing talent agreed to undertake the research and writing of the history of our first seventy-five years. He named it From Browns to Greens. He has produced an excellent and entertaining history. For his many painstaking hours of hard work all of the members of the Club are most grateful to Jack B. Beardwood.
The folio of beautiful color photographs inserted in the center of the book is the generous gift of member MacDonald Becket. We thank him.
A social golf and tennis club is not the easiest corporate enterprise to plan, develop, direct and operate. For three quarters of a century many men and women have worked hard, often without much recognition or thanks, in the many activities of the Club. Countless officers, directors, committee members and their chairmen, general managers and their executive staffs and numerous loyal and devoted employees have all made contributions to the preservation, continuity, improvement and success of our Club. Each one is entitled to appreciation. As a total result of these efforts, we enjoy one of the finest clubs in the world.
Over the years the inspiration, guidance and leadership for the Club have been provided by our twenty Past Presidents. To these outstanding gentlemen this history is respectfully dedicated.
June, 1973 Terrell C. Drinkwater, President
[Some of these presidents may have a close connection to Santa Monica, but the founding and fostering of the game of golf in Los Angeles seems to be closely connected to Santa Monica and Ocean Park. KR]
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.
Tufts was a partner in the Tufts-Lyons Arms Company, a large sporting goods store. He was a chubby, gregarious man, a sports enthusiast who, once he hit a few golf balls, took on a new sports mistress whom he ardently pursued for the rest of his life. He was on the Club’s board of directors from its inception until his death in 1927. He was a co-founder, in 1899, of the Southern California Golf Association and personally handled the handicapping of all [p. 5] players in the SCGA until 1912. Tufts, the undisputed father of golf in Southen California, was president of the SCGA from 1912 to 1927. Rare was the day when Ed Tufts, affectionately known as “Uncle Ed,” wasn’t at The Los Angeles Country Club.
It was while Tufts, along with Walter Cosby, was trying out the just created Windmill links that the second man who was to have such a tremendous and lengthy impact on the Club entered into the picture.
He was a small, dark, stern-looking young banker, Joseph F. Sartori, and was to become the Club’s organizational and financial leader for 49 years. He was on the Club’s board from its founding until his death in 1946. Sartori served as president of The Los Angeles Country Club from 1912 to 1946, an unprecedented 34 years. He was, with Tufts, co-founder of the SCGA, its president from 1903 to 1905, and a longtime member of SCGA’s board.
While Tufts served golf, both in the Club and throughout Southern California, Sartori served the Club. For almost 50 years the man who was almost always known respectfully as “Mr. Sartori,” ruled the Club as, in the best sense of the term, a benevolent dictator.
As Tufts told the story, Cosby and he were playing one of the Windmill holes bordering Pico, then little more than a dusty road, when Sartori and a friend, Joseph E. Cook, rode by on their bicycles. The two cyclists were invited to try their hand at the game.
Sartori hit his first golf ball and, according to Tufts, the shot “turned out to be a lulu” and Sartori was hooked.
The smart residential area of Los Angeles in the 1880s and 1890s was the West Adams district and Tufts got a half dozen of the younger male residents interested in the new fangled game. They organized a voluntary organization, the Los Angeles Golf Club. Mark S. Severance was elected president and Conde Jones secretary. Tufts became the one-man handicapper and Sartori was chairman of the Green committee, a euphimism if there ever was on since there was hardly a green weed, let alone a blade of grass, on the area selected for Los Angeles’ first golf links.
The course was now almost ready to play. The nine greens, each 22 1/2 feet in diameter with their tomato can holes in the exact [p. 6] center, were topped with sand containing an admixture of oil to keep them from being too fast and bumpy. The flagsticks were low, carpet covered rollers, a larger version of today’s paint rollerss, which golfers were permitted to use to smooth the oiled sand between their balls and the tomato can cups.
A floor was laid in the windmill. The wooden structure, which tapered as it rose, was only 12 x 16 feet at its base. Before members of the voluntary association put a roof on it, second floor, reached by crude stairs, was built to serve as a ladies’ locker room.
. . .
“The Windmill clubhouse, Tufts wrote, “made up in originality what it lacked in spaciousness.”
In December, 1897, the voluntary association, which called itself the Los Angeles Golf Club, sent to 29 persons an invitation to join Windmill Links . . .
. . .
The inner core of the group, those who had worked to get the course ready or to create the voluntary association, were Tufts, Walter Grindlay, Sartori, Jones, Severance and H.W. Vail.
. . . [p. 7]
Tufts recalled the opening day, “a day I’ll never forget. It was a brilliant afternoon—an afternoon of golf, sunshine, garbage cans and colors.
“Everybody who turned out, about 30 of us in all, thought that it was absolutely necessary to wear red jackets, and many of the players even wore red flaming coats with brass buttons. Some of these even had green lapels and cuffs on them, so you can judge for yourself how brilliant the 16 acres used for a garbage dump for years really appeared . . . At any rate, everybody was enthusiastic and our little club went over with a bang . . . ”
Most of the members arrived on their bicycles, the remainder on the Pico line trolley cars of the Los Angeles City Railway. A number of spectators watched from Pico, some openly ridiculing the players.
According to the Los Angeles Examiner, there were “laughers and scoffers.”
“It’s a game like shinny, fit only for the rough and boisterous,” the paper quoted spectators as saying. “It’s not a serious sport; neither skillful nor strenuous. A fad, chased by butterflies of fashion for a season; then it will be discarded like a tiresome toy.”
Except for high scores and dusty golf clothes, the day was a tremendous success. Apparently, no tournament was held on opening day at the Windmill; at least there were no prizes. A luncheon was served, under a flapping canvas tent top and on a dilapidated pine table surrounded by folding wooden chairs. Most of the golfing men wore knickers cut more to the style of baseball pants rather than the later voluminous “plus fours,” long wool socks with wide, patterned bandas and hobnailed boots hooked and eyed above the ankles. Doffing their jackets, the ladies played in long sleeved shirtwaists, ground-scraping, solid color skirts and laced shoes that came halfway up their calves. Mark Severance, Club president, shed his coat to play in a white turtle-neck sweater which would be highly fashionable in 1973 [sic].
“Nine holes for golf,” said the Examiner, reporting on the new course, “and nine hundred holes for gophers.”
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. The club at this date (July, 1898) consists of over 100 members of both sexes and golf has come to Los Angeles to stay.”
Although Windmill Links was the first golf course in Los Angeles, it was not the initial one in Southern California. There is some dispute regarding the first course. Some claim it was Coronado; others Catalina Island. And, of course, the crude Santa Monica course preceded Windmill.
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, woulf 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.”
Both Coronado and Catalina were “resort” courses. Coronado was quite exclusive but Catalina, built by the Banning Company, at that time owners of the island, was vigorously promoted and open to everyone. It was considered one of the “sportiest” courses in the United States. Catalina had a separate, special clubhouse which, for that time, was considered “ritzy.” Members of L.A.C.C. often went to Catalina in large numbers for Catalina’s almost constant tournaments.
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 and that on one trip lady golfers from Los Angeles made to the island in 1898 “two parties were washed overboard (from the Catalina steamer) but saved in heroic rescue.”
Just how bucolic golf was in those days was illustrated by a story appearing in the Los Angeles newspapers not long after Windmill opened. It read:
“Ed Tufts of Los Angeles was playing with a friend recently. When he drove from the third tee he sliced the ball badly and sent it to one side of the fairway. The ball stopped in front of a grazing cow and Tufts came up just in time to see it disappear into the bovine mouth.
“When his opponent had made his stoke, Tufts untethered the cow and with many sounding thwacks of his club (drove) the beast to the third green.
“There he made the cow drop the ball and neatly holing it announced that he had made the hole in two strokes.
“His opponent calmly finished the hole in seven strokes and claimed victory.
“But I make it in two!” protested Tufts, gleefully. [p. 10]
“No, you didn’t!,” declared the other. “You made it in 39. You hit the cow 37 times, for I counted every stroke.
“And Tufts conceded the hole.”
Since golf courses could be prepared in three to five days, they were springing up all over
Southern California in 1898 and 1899: two at Riverside, Rubidoux and Riverside Golf and Polo club; two at Pasadena, the Hotel Green course and Pasadena Country Club; at Redondo Beach; the Pachappa Links in Arlington, Riverside County; a second course, Ocean Park, at Santa Monica; Hemet; two courses at Redlands, La Casa Loma and Redlands Country Club; the Country Club of Santa Barbara.
They were sprouting too in Northern California: Del Monte on the Monterey Peninsual; Burlingame, San Rafael, Oakland.
. . . [photos]
[p. 21] . . .
“On a Saturday afternoon” in January, 1898, the first tournament ever held in Los Angeles.
. . . It was at the May, 1898, tournament “in which the fair sex was for the first time permitted to compete.”
By the summer of 1898, the little Windmill course was overly crowded . . . key members began looking for another site [which] they found at Pico near Hobart Boulevard. . .
[p. 22] . . . the voluntary association decided to incorporate . . . 50 year tenure, to promote social intercourse through “the promoting, maintaining and enjoyment of golf and other open air sports.”
. . .
For almost 48 years all directors’ meetings, . . . were in Sartori’s office in the Security Savings Bank, Second and Main. Most applicants for membership went to Sartori’s office to be approved or rejected by Sartori alone, for membership .
. . .
[p. 23] The articles of incorporation were filed October 3, 1898 and were quickly approved in Sacramento.
. . . The Los Angeles Country Club’s second course, named Convent Links, opened for play on September 9, 1898. It was located on a strip of vacant lots, owned by Percy F. Schumacher, extending from Washingto to Pico, and intersected by the railwas tracks running to Santa Monica. The course got its name because a big brick convent, still standing today, was on one boundary. Another neighbor was Rosedale cemetery.
. . .
[p. 25] The railway tracks running through the course caused some difficulty and a local rule was made that any ball hit onto them was “mandatorily unplayable” with no penalty.
“This rule,” remembered Tufts, “was enforced to prevent the club from losing its members, who persistently insisted on playing out of the tracks and railroad ties, and the (railway) did not have [p. 26] the respect for golfers that they should, as their cars came by at 40 miles an hour.’
Women players had to hoist their long and cumbersome skirts as they crossed the tracks or struggled up the steep slope to Mesa’s green. Tuft’s described their clothes:
“A tiny straw hat with about a two-inch depth and a four-inch brim perched atop a mesa of hair and pierced generously with dangerous spearlike hat pins, a white shirt waist with high neck and long sleeves and a heavy gored skirt billowing to the shoe tips. An elastic contrivance was used in connection with this skirt to hold the skirts secure when making a drive. These skirts were a great handicap to women as the wind blew them about, causing interference with play.”
As for men’s golfing clothes, a reporter made these observations:
“A cursory glance over the links in the various events played this year is all that has been necessary to convince one that knickerbocker, fancy coats, silk shirts, etc., have been relegated to the background. The sensible costume to wear in playing golf we recommend as follows:
“Stout hunting shoes with nails, heavy woolen sox, a well fitting pair of long khaki trousers, a woolen shirt and a hat with brim wide enough to keep off the sun.
“If one chooses to give a little dash to the costume, a big silk handkerchief wound around the neck and knotted in front can be worn. This is a comfortable and very attractive novelty.”
One reason for the desertion of fancy knickers, long and patterned golf hose and colorful jackets probably was the condition of western courses at that time. They were either extremely dusty or muddy. The hazards were full of rocks and clods . . .
. . .
[p. 27] . . .
The number of men and women playing golf was increasing rapidly as the 18th centruy approached its close. The January 8, [p. 28] 1898 issue of Country Club Golf . . . the tournament . . . was a revelation of the supreme futility of the game—which is not at all the frivilous and inane pastime it has been accused of being . . .
. . .
Caddies in the early days were young boys, most of them high school youngsters but some of them less than ten years of age. The golf bags were small . . . [p. 29]
. . .
The proposition came up, but was defeated, that caddies should be paid according to time spent on the course rather than 10 cents per nine holes.
. . .
An editorial, Golf, Los Angeles Morning Herald, April 17, 1899 . . . the Los Angeles Country Club has enlarged its membership to 400 . . .
[p. 30]
[p. 43] . . .
Because the new clubs were having so many invitational tournaments, a uniform golfing organization in Southern California was urged. Tufts and Sartori were the leaders in bringing this over-all group—the Southern Californis Golf Association—into being.
On July 29, 1899, at the invitation of “Uncle Ed” and “Mr. [p. 44] Sartori . .
Clubs forming the SCGA and golfers present at the initial meeting were: The Los Angeles Country Club, Sartori and Tufts; Pasadena Country Club, J.B. Miller; Riverside Polo and Golf Club, C.E. Maud and R.D. Osburne; Santa Monicsa Golf Club, M.G. Burmeister; Redlands Golf club, A.E. Sterling.
SCGA’s first officers were: Maud, president; Sartori, secretary; vice presidents, J.B. Miller and A.S. Auchencloss, Redlands; treasurer, Roy Jones, Santa Monica. The executive committee was to consist of Maud, Sartori, Miller, Tufts, and Osburne. A year later, Tufts was named “Official Handicapper,” a post he held from 1900 to 1927. Sartori was SCGA president in 1903 and 1904. Tufts becane president in 1912 and served until his death in 1927.
. . .
[p.46] Play commenced on the Club’s Pico at Western course on November 4, 1899, and it was one of the top social events of Los An- [p. 47] geles that year. Crowded trolleys, smartly drawn surreys snd Victorias and tinkling-belled bicycles converged on the new and handsome clubhouse. Bruce Jones, a black man who was to become one of the Club’s storied characters, was waiting at the end of the streetcar line with his one horse wagon to transport members the half mile or so over unpaved Pico to the Club grounds. Six persons, eight if they jammed together, could ride in Bruce’s rig. The rides cost five cents each and passengers usually matched nickels all the way to the clubhouse to see who paid the bill.
On opening day the Pico-Western clubhouse was festooned with colored streamers and on a corner of the front vernanda an orchestra played popular tune of the day: “Little Annie Rooney,” “Sweet Marie,” “There’ll Be a Hot Time in The Old Town Tonigh” as well as old favorites such as “The Blue Danube.”
Silk petticoats rustled, tweeds mingled with tulle, bright colored golfing jackets reappeared and some of the men players who competed in the day’s golf tournament even wore ties.
. . .
[p. 48] . . .
[p. 53] . . .
In 1900 Santa Fe [Railroad] published its first annual Golf in California booklet. It used some hyperbole in an effort to lure eastern golfers west “when winter locks the club house gates and drive shivering caddies home” . . .
. . .
What did Golf in California have to say about The Los Angeles Country Club?
“Foremost among the clubs of Southern California stands the Los Angeles Country Club, an organization whose regular features embrace golf, tennis and trap shooting. The grounds are located within a short distance of the heart of the city and are reached by electric car or over beautiful drives by private conveyance.
“So rapid has been the growth of the club that in August, 1899, the old nine-hole course was abandoned and new grounds secured. [p. 54] where, on 106 acres as pretty ground as one could wish to drive a ball over, a new eighteen-hole course was laid out.”
A new clubhouse had been built . . . the investment represents about $36,000 . . . Huge ditches cross this property at two points, and these, with five artificial bunkers, form numerouse and dangerous obstacles. The land is rolling ot a high degree, bordering almost on chasms and table lands, consequently the course is exceedingly sporty.”
. . .
Famous men were coming to Southern California in the winters so they could play golf.
John D. Rockefeller, the titan of Standard Oil, whose puckered mouth and 10 cent tips were famous, spent some time at the Hotel Green in Pasadena
“. . . the competing players were so busy watching the multmillionaire that . . . scores suffered terribly . . .
. . .
[p. 76] [A new rubber ball was questioned] . . . but “the exhilaration of a long drive overcomes this disapproval.”
Years later Tufts admitted he used the new rubber ball for long holes but “sneaked in a guttie for short holes. As this (rubber) ball became perfected it revolutionize [d] the entire game . . . including links, implements, and dispositions.”
An abortive event which was to determine the present location of The Los Angeles Country Club occurred soon after the start of the 20th Century. Just beyond the tiny village of Beverly Hills, Sartori had acquired an option on about 3,700 acres of Rancho San Jose de Buenos Ayres, commonly called the Wolfskill Ranch. It extended roughly from the present intersection of Wilshire and Santa Monica westward to approximately what is now the San Diego Freeway. The Wolfskill ranch home sat virtually where the Mormon Temple now stands, just above the Santa Monica-Overland intersection
Sartori, a lawyer who had moved into banking when he came west from Iowa . . . was now bullish about the westward growth of Los Angeles, particularly between Los Angeles and Santa Monica.
[Sartori’s investors refused to invest in the huge Wolfskill piece], feeling the land was suitable only for growing barley and barley would be unprofitable on land costing $150 per acre.
[But] by 1904 some members of the Club decided to look for another golf course site, that the Pico-Western property was not suitable for a permanent home. The soil was heavy with adobe and playing conditions were difficult be the weather wet or dry. Very preliminary thought was being given to having grass fairways and adobe resisted the growth of grass. Even trees struggled to grow. It was also felt that the Pico-Western acreage, now that clubs were improving and the new type of balls could be bit farther, was too restricted.
As the Club started its search, Sartori thought again of the Wolfskill Ranch . . . [p. 77] he offered Wolfskill $1,000 cash for a 30-day option on 320 acres, approximately the present size and location of the Club’s land, at $150 per acre.
The next day Sartori loaded four Club directors into his recently purchased phaeton automobile and they chugged along Wilshire past the La Brea tarpits with their surrounding barley and bean fields, beyond the trolley station, named Morocco Junction, that served Beverly Hills, to the point where the Los Angeles and Pacific streetcar ran west along what is now Santa Monica Boulevard.
Continuing on Wilshire, then a narrow, two-lane, unpaved road, Sartori’s high-bodied, big-wheeled car crossed what is now the east boundary of The Los Angeles Country Club. From their high seats, Sartori and his four directors—Albert Crutcher, then (1904) president of the Club; Percy Wilson, past president; Ed Tufts and Frank Hicks—could generally survey the proposed acreage.
The south boundary abutted 2,100 feet of the railroad right-of-way. Santa Monica Boulevard had not yet been built. Looking over what is now the South Course the undulating acreage, except for a few sycamores along a dry stream bed now near the property’s western border, was bare . . .
. . .
[p. 78] Sartori spent most of Christmas Day, 1904, his 46th birthday, writing a circular to be distributed to Club members. It went out Dec. 28.
The circular proposed that a new corporation, the Country Club Realty Company be formed with a capital stock of $100,000, divided into 1,000 shares of $100 each, 550 shares to be sold at par, sales to be limited to members of the Club. No one member or family would be permitted to buy more than 10 shares. That would raise $55,000 with $48,000 going for land, the balance for “paying taxes, making improvements, etc.” The 450 unsold shares would remain in the corporation’s treasury.
The Club was to have the right of selecting and purchasing 130 to 150 acres of the 320 acres at $150 per acre providing such a transaction was found to be legal. If it was not, the 130 to 150 acres would be rented to the Club on a long term lease basis.
Within a week some 60 members had subscribed to the stock, raising the required $55,000. The Club came close to being again forced into a rental situation when it was found that a non-profit corporation organized for social purposes could not own more than 50 acres in rural areas. But Club members went to work on legislators and in 1905 the acreage impediment was removed.
With the legal hurdle cleared, a second circular, dated October, 22, 1905, was distributed to the membership. The Realty Company offered to sell the Club 140 of its 320 acres for $22,300 payable over an eight year period.
“No other tract of land,” said the circular, signed by the entire board, "has been offered or found adjoining an electric line, less distant, so reasonable in price, and within the means and ability of the Country Club to buy . . . It is believed, that in the near future, the influence of the Club will cause the construction of a good road to these grounds . . ." The board recommended purchase of the land and “prompt development of the new property for Club purposes.” Members voted almost unanimously for the proposal.
The Country Club Land Association, which had purchased the Pico-Western property just so it could be rented to the Club, was selling the property, purchased for $250 per acre, to subdividers for $2,250 an acre. [p. 79]
[p. 79] . . .
On June 19, 1907, the Board wrote Club members a long letter . . . providing money necessary to erect a clubhouse and improve the grounds, finish paying for the grounds . . . the clubhouse will be built on the most modern and commodious lines, and apartments will be provided for members who wish to stay over night or during the week . . .
Sartori and Tufts were in their element again, planning layout of the Club’s fourth course along with Charles Orr and Norman Macbeth . . . They were determined to design the “toughest” 18 hole course in Southern California.
[p. 81] Drawing of “Uncle Ed” Tufts [ -1927]
[p. 92] . . . Sartori, in a late October, 1910 letter to his wife, showed he was following construction of the new clubhouse quite closely . . .
“. . .
“Many people were out there this afternoon. We must have a big automobile barn, or garage, and don’t know where to put it. Between this and the California Club (of which Sartori had just been elected president) and the tax amendment and other businesses your husband has his hands full . . .
Meanwhile, the course’s 18 greens and tees were being leveled and the fairways mounded and ditched. Sartori, Tufts, Macbeth and Orr reluctantly decided it would be impossible to have grass and fairways because of lack of water. Tees would remain asphalt and greens oiled sand.
Tufts was already experimently with fairway grass at Pico-Western.
“Along in 1910,” he wrote in 1925 in a special article, California Turns the Trick, for the SCGA, “it occurred to me that bermuda grass, the curse of Southern California lawns, might, with care, be used for fairways. We planted a patch . . . at the Country Club.”
The bermuda was watered, allowed to completely dry out, watered again. It was recuperative and tough. “In the spring [p. 93] (1911) it came up green and strong. Here was grass that would not only exist but would thrive in California heat.
“So we piped our fairways (at the Beverly Hills course) for sprinkling systems. We drilled wells to provide adequate water supplies and we planted (in 1911-1912) our dirt fairways to bermuda. With care and with water the grass grew and within a year’s time the dirt course at the Los Angeles Country Club had been converted to turf.