After decades of waiting — and a year of careful negotiations — the U.S. Open is finally headed back to Los Angeles.
The U.S. Golf Assn. will announce early Wednesday morning that Los Angeles Country Club has agreed to host the 2023 national championship.
The deal culminates a long courtship in which the USGA wooed the revered — and traditionally aloof — club, hoping that membership would someday open its gates to the world.
“This is a wonderful thing for golf,” said Tom O’Toole, the association’s president. “Just a special opportunity.”
Officials said the arrangement required concessions from both sides, and a pivotal vote by LACC members.
“Our club may have been very private in the past,” said John Chulick, president of the board of directors. “But the world had changed.”
The U.S. Open is one of golf’s four major championships, along with the Masters, British Open and PGA Championship. Its last time in this city was 1948, when Ben Hogan won at Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades.
Riviera tried on more than one occasion to lure the tournament back but ran into a stumbling block.
The modern Open had become an extravagant affair involving tens of thousands of spectators and acres of corporate hospitality tents. Its sheer size had outgrown a course with a relatively small footprint and limited street access.
“Riviera is a gem,” O’Toole said. “But it certainly doesn’t have the operational capabilities that a Los Angeles Country Club does.”
Several major surface streets feed into LACC, which is situated at the edge of Beverly Hills. The intersection of the 10 and 405 freeways is only a few miles away.
More important, the club stretches across 325 acres. The tournament will be played on its North Course, with the South Course devoted to all those tents and trailers.
The USGA had kept LACC in its sights for at least 26 years, dating to when O’Toole joined the association. But, he said, “at the end of the day, we needed an invitation.”
Club leadership kept rebuffing overtures, even though LACC had been amenable to professional tournaments in its early days.
The North Course hosted the Los Angeles Open five times from 1926 through 1940. When co-founder Joseph Sartori died in 1946, that tradition “seemed to languish,” Chulick said.
LACC became known as a cloistered enclave, its grounds hidden from view by thick foliage and trees. In a star-driven town, leadership was hesitant to accept Hollywood celebrities as members.
Read more by David Wharton at LA TIMES
