Los Angeles Country Club (North)

Overview: The North Course at Los Angeles Country Club occupies rolling ground in the centre of Los Angeles, where George C. Thomas Jr. and William P. Bell used bold landforms, angled greens and strategic bunkering to make an urban site feel expansive. Native-looking vegetation, broad changes in elevation and firm contoured targets give the routing a character that is easy to miss from the surrounding city. It is a course built around lines, slopes and recovered ground rather than visual excess.

History: The North Course opened in the early 1920s and developed into the defining Thomas and Bell design at LACC. In 2010, the club finished a five-year restoration using archived photographs, written documents and physical landforms uncovered during the work to recover the course’s earlier character. The restoration was intended to balance historical fidelity with the practical needs of a modern club. In 2017, the North Course hosted the Walker Cup, bringing the restored layout to an international audience.

Did You Know? The 2010 project was not based only on old drawings. The club describes the restoration team using both documentary evidence and landforms unearthed on the property, allowing surviving contours to act as historical clues. That approach is particularly important at LACC, where the North Course sits in a heavily urbanised setting but still preserves the physical logic of Thomas’s original design.