Riviera afraid of 34?

[Joe Hancock]

edit - wrong thread

No, no...I heard ya.....

[JJShanley]

Does Riviera call #1 a par five because they don’t want a par 34 front?
At 491 downhill they even force a layup on the tee shot and still have a straightforward second shot.

Have you played Riviera, Mike? Rolling Green #7 struck me as a similar proposition, although with a longer run out on the tee shot. And it's followed by a real tough par 4.

[mike_malone]

 I get to LA but play Rustic Canyon. If I can only do one top course I would choose LACC.

[Tal Oz]

In a laughable move, during the 2017 US Am they made the 1st a par 4. During a match play tournament smh

Isn't it more laughable to refer to a hole as a par 5 when every player in the event expects the reach—and actually hit—the green in two with an iron? Today it's the easiest hole relative to par by 0.55 shots. As a par 4, it would be the toughest hole relative to par by 0.02 shots. I know which way makes more sense to me.

Matt, I still think George Thomas' intent of having a short 5 long 4 start is important to maintain.

Or is that just a result of him having to route two holes of approximately the same length to get back to where he wanted to place the third tee?

Maybe so Ally, but he didn't have to do that a few miles down the road at LACC North and yet it's also a short 5/long 4 start.

[Matt_Cohn]

I noticed on Google Earth, there seems to be a tee on #2 that I hadn't noticed in the past at about 510 yards. I don't think they're playing it at all this week.

[Carl Rogers]

With the number of very hard holes at Riviera, an "easy" opener should not be unwelcome.

[Tom_Doak]

I noticed on Google Earth, there seems to be a tee on #2 that I hadn't noticed in the past at about 510 yards. I don't think they're playing it at all this week.

Are you sure it's a new tee and not the old one?  The second hole was *also* a par-5 when Thomas built it.  Same for the 2nd at LACC (North).  They weren't changed to par-4 holes until the 1980's, although the Tour played #2 at Riv as a 4 well before that.

[Matt_Cohn]

I’m not sure. Does anyone else know?

[Matthew Rose]

It looks like the newer back tees on #12 occupy that area now anyway.

[Michael Robin]

Tom is correct, that tee, even though it has been re-built over the years, was used as part of the Par 5, Par 5 start for many years. The course was par 72, then switched back to a par 4 that mimicked how the 2nd hole was set up by the Tour and that back tee was removed for a period of time. It plays at about 530 yards, and back in the early 80s when I played it in High School and in the time of persimmon, it took a big poke in the afternoon wind to just get to the fairway. It was a really good 3 shot hole. Although, I do remember playing a morning round with our #1 player at Palisades High, David West, who was Jerry West’s oldest kid and a scratch player. He hit driver, driver on the green and roared like a lion so loud that the Pro came over from the range to tell him to quiet down until David told him what he just did. The Pro then roared too.


I do like it as a Par 4 far more though.

[Michael Robin]

Matthew, a story about the “new” tee on 12. Back in the day, the current Blue tee was as far back as you could go, which was about 420. But, that land always beckoned the better players at the club to want to build a tee back there and have it be a “Tiger Tee”, which was what it was known as even before Mr. Woods was born. This group of players talked the Superintendent into mowing that area so they could try it out. It lasted about a season, before the Super didn’t want to maintain it anymore, but it ultimately did get located by the Fazio group as a way to lengthen the hole. It can stretch to like 491 now if you get all the way back, and it’s really scary as you pretty much are aiming straight out of bounds. Really awkward look back there. Thank goodness it’s only in play 1 week a year!

[Steve Burrows]

Matthew, a story about the “new” tee on 12. Back in the day, the current Blue tee was as far back as you could go, which was about 420. But, that land always beckoned the better players at the club to want to build a tee back there and have it be a “Tiger Tee”, which was what it was known as even before Mr. Woods was born. This group of players talked the Superintendent into mowing that area so they could try it out. It lasted about a season, before the Super didn’t want to maintain it anymore, but it ultimately did get located by the Fazio group as a way to lengthen the hole. It can stretch to like 491 now if you get all the way back, and it’s really scary as you pretty much are aiming straight out of bounds. Really awkward look back there. Thank goodness it’s only in play 1 week a year!

Michael, I heard a story about that back tee as well. The PGA Tour was hesitant to use it after it was first built; they thought that the hole would be far too difficult from back there.  During the event one year, the Tour set-up guys had the tees further up as usual, but right before play got to the 12th hole, former Superintendent Paul R. Latshaw picked up the markers and walked them to the back tee and set them up himself.  He figured that once one group played from there that the Tour would be obliged to leave the markers there for the rest of the round.  This may sound like an old wives tale, but for those of you who may know Mr. Latshaw, it's not necessarily out of character.

[Michael Robin]

Steve, well I don’t know that story in particular, but I do know the Tour avoided the tee for the 1st season, and then it was in play the next year. Mr Latshaw absolutely ran things as he saw them, but he was flat brilliant in turning Riviera around to having superior agronomy practices. 


This might be for a different thread that should be specifically about Mr Latshaw, but I was telling this story recently to several Tour Players, when I related how Paul was hired to come in after the PGA in 1995, where the greens were...problematic. He did 4 large tyne aerifications, added a ton of sand, encouraged Poa Annua to take hold, and by the LA Open in Feb of 1996, He had the course in PERFECT shape. No one could believe that Riviera had turned around that fast, particularly the Tour Players, but Paul and his team led by Paul Jr, Paul Remina, Steve Thomas and a band of young Asst’s from all over the country, just made it happen. It just goes to show what the right agronomical practices, with the right people executing can do in a very short time. Riviera has basically been in fantastic shape ever since, and current longtime Super Matt Morton is a disciple of that Latshaw lineage.

[Lynn_Shackelford]

Everything Mike says is true, especially about Latshaw.  He took out a lot of trees around the 9th green to improve air circulation.  I encouraged him to keep removing trees.  He said, "yes, you don't have trees on a football field do you?"
Two things about 12.  Originally there was a massive bunker about 50 yards off to the right from the front tee.  I am thinking it was originally placed there(before trees) to help keep errant tee shots from going onto the 11th hole.  As for the back tee, was there one originally placed there back in the 1920s?  That would have made 12 a three shorter, sort of in line with Thomas' course within a course.