Played the recently opened Lake Merced GC today and it's everything I thought it would be when I posted here a few months ago during a construction visit. Another Gil Hanse triumph ! I had the pleasure and privilege of visiting with Gil a few times over the course of construction but he was always on a machine working his magic rather than glad handing the members. There's a good reason he's in such high demand. Mackenzie said (in a 1933 essay) that he "reconstructed" LMGC but did not elaborate beyond saying that his work reduced maintenance costs. Most of his work was buried in 1964 when Robert Muir Graves radically altered the course in anticipation of the freeway construction that took a piece of the property. With the help of club historian Mitch Lieber's extensive collection of old photographs, Gil brought back many of those original holes and gave the rest his own signature. Savvy golfers who wish to play the best places when visiting northern California will have to set aside an additional day in San Francisco. Olympic, SFGC, Cal Club, move over you've got company.