In The Spirit of St. Andrews, MacKenzie made the claim that “In Southern California there are many good golf courses. By far the best of these is Max Behr’s course at Lakeside.” A seemingly hyperbolic line given that Riviera, LACC, and Bel-Air already existed. Perhaps overly enthusiastic towards Behr’s work because of an implicit rivalry with George C. Thomas Jr., Mackenzie did concede that “Lakeside had none of the natural advantages” of Monterrey or those other LA clubs, nevertheless he himself considered it “favourably with any inland course” because “the whole ground has been made undulating and the undulations have such a natural appearance that they have a close resemblance to real links land.”
The original 15th green. The two architects considered themselves, in Behr’s terminology, as part of a “Natural School” of architecture. For both, the architect’s “rearrangement of its surface must reveal that which appears real,” meaning that a course’s construction can enhance features and shapes inherent in its preexisting state, but the final result should appear no different than the surrounding terrain when it comes to textures and vegetation. Behr, however, was by no means a minimalist. MacKenzie commented that Lakeside’s site was once a “flattish” orchard, and following my round there I was surprised at the amount of elevation changes to the terrain on an otherwise perfectly walkable property. Multiple fairways heave and roll. Tee shots feature blind landing zones over crested fairway mounds, which yield thrilling reveals to see what kind of approach angle is afforded the next shot.
Restored 15th green at left, with diminutive alternative green in play on day photo was taken 
The 16th Rather than minimalist, it is better to understand Behr’s original Lakeside design as a manufactured links land. In its early years the course had short grass throughout the entire routing and very little rough. Instead, acres of turf were intercepted by expanses of faux-dune hazards, and a restrained number of bunkering placed along holes ‘line of charm’ to spur strategic play for good players. For Behr prioritized a sense of strategy over the penal:
"the golf architect […] is not at all concerned with chastising bad play. On the contrary, it is his business to so arrange the field of play as to stimulate interest, and, hence, the province of hazards is to chasten the too ambitious. The use of hazards otherwise is a corrupt use of penalty; an approach to the subject of strategy from the negative side; a dwelling of thought upon what the golfer should not do; whereas the concern of the architect should be positive and have solely to do with what the golfer should do. In other words, the mission of the architect is not that of a moralist the principal word of whose vocabulary is
don't." 
1927The appeal of links land was that its primary defense stemmed from short grassed contour, and Behr’s work at Lakeside provided similar variety and intrigue, a sentiment shared by Bobby Jones who, according to MacKenzie, “remarked that it reminded him of the Old Course at St. Andrews, Scotland, whereas, one played many championship courses of America the same way every day.”
As a result, Behr was no champion of rough. He believed that “golf should be kept an open battle; danger should beckon, owing to its proximity to positions of the highest interest; and the whole impulse of play should be forward with a sweep and a bang and not be, as it so often is, a tacking process.” The errant shot, in his estimation, would bound and roll to an increasingly difficult angle that, instead of being interpreted as penal, would rather afford a greater heroic opportunity for the next shot. Behr wasn’t interested in rough stopping short a wayward ball, and for him it “went without saying that trees lined to hem in fairways are not only an insult to golf architecture, but the death warrant to the high art of natural landscape gardening, aside from the fact that, of all hazards, they are the most unfair.”
The brilliance of links land, for Behr, was how “the fairgreen passed so imperceptibly into inhospitable country that it would have been difficult to draw a line where the one ended and the other commenced.” For him, the greatest fault in constructed inland golf courses stemmed from the establishment of clear mowing lines between fairway and rough. “It drew a line in our minds and, with it, the inception of a creed. The fairgreen became all that was good, and the rough all that was bad. Seeing no further than this, it must needs be that we must enhance the good, and how else than by making the bad worse? In fact, there exists today the fatuous belief that the excellence of a golf course is in some way bound up with the number of bunkers and difficulties it possesses."
Unfortunately in intervening decades—a fate shared by many clubs—Lakeside moved away from its single length links style and dune hazards. While the 1938 LA River flood permanently impacted part of the original routing, washing away a greensite that was on the south side of the river, years of tree plantings, green shrinkage, and growth of rough to replace the sandy hazards might have had a more significant detriment on Behr’s course. What was once manufactured links has since become a parkland aesthetic, its lush rough a stark environmental contrast to the dry, scrubby Santa Monica mountain range looming nearby.
Today Todd Eckenrode’s 2017 renovation was a step in the right direction. By all accounts, he did an admirable job expanding green complexes, reshaping bunkers, amending mowing lines and encouraging tree removal to help reveal the visual drama of the tumbling land. The reconstructed 15th green has the most scale of any complex on property, and serves as a taste of just how grand and compelling Behr’s original greens likely were.
The rough, however, remains. Fairway width did increase, but there has not yet been an attempt to recreate the sandy hazards that once slashed throughout the property. For a course that, in its original state, drew not only aesthetic but playability comparisons to St. Andrews, I do not believe Behr would appreciate that his old Lakeside today is more aesthetically aligned with Bethpage. It would be anathema to him to see the look of his lush course so divergent to its surrounding natural environment, though ironically he himself anticipated the mistake clubs would go on to make: “It is so easy to retreat within the order of the mind and escape the disorder of nature. And what is the result? Simply the imposition of ideas upon situations which are in no way fitted by nature to receive them.”
The 13thNow, I’m not judging the club for their rationale behind maintaining rough. The club and green committee can present the course as they themselves want it presented. It’s a wonderful place to play, with a rich membership history. But in an era when faithful restorations have become vogue, with an increased number of clubs choosing to be deferential yet again to their original architect, Lakeside can go further.
Why I feel it’s worth singling Lakeside out in this regard, as opposed to any number of Tillinghast or Ross clubs missing the mark, is both because of how limited Behr’s existing body of work is, and Lakeside’s singular potential. The more I’ve read from Behr, the more I think the architectural community would benefit were at least one of his designs to be restored to what he first built. Lakeside is already the closest towards achieving that. Despite the routing impacts from the 1938 flood, the property lines have changed negligibly overall, the full extent of most green pads could be expanded and/or recovered, and both LACC and Wilshire have already demonstrated how to beautifully reintroduce the ruggedness of Southern California’s natural sandscapes back into their courses.
The potential to fully reclaim the spirit of Behr’s work is apparent in Lakeside’s ground, which to me is a thrilling proposition. I can only hope the club continues working in that direction. Surely a golden age architect, who contributed not only to the game as a designer, but as a renowned player and gifted writer, deserves it. And what an opportunity for a club to put all doubts aside as to who is the best custodian to an unsung yet significant golden age architect and thinker.