San Geronimo Golf Course is in West Marin, about a half hour from the city. It s a great course in a beautiful setting, although they began building houses on the back nine a couple years ago, but opened in 1965. Turned out to be the last project he ever did, which would account for the longest spanning career of any golf architect to date (I believe), late teens thru 1965. The vast majority of his courses were in the Pacific North West and Canada.
The course has evolved from its original state; it closed in the late 70s/early 80s sometime due to financial difficulties, it reopened in 1985 with a new irrigation system and course alterations made, unfortunately, by Robert Muir Graves. It has had several different owners that have all attempted to create a self-sustaining private club, and none have been successful. It became fully public in the early 90s and just recently was bought out by American Golf. The biggest problem has always been an inadequate water supply. Nowadays they buy most of their water from the Marin Municipal Water District, a very pretty penny, and because of the remote location it has always been difficult to maintain steady levels of play. Although it saddens me to imagine how great the course was when it first opened, I still think its worth playing, and some of Macan’s original work still exists.
April might be tricky though, usually wet and rainy depending on the severity of the winter season, and in the past they were on a terrible aerification program that consisted of punching 2-3 greens per week over the course of 6-9 weeks, usually beginning in late March or early April, which always resulted in inconsistent greens for the following 2-3 months. They believed it to be a money saver, but I think with the new management and a new superintendent that has probably changed.
I used to play a lot of golf with one of the original owners/developers of the property and he used to tell me stories of how dry and hard and brown the fairways and greens were in the 70s due to a lack of irrigation, like it was a bad thing, and not knowing any better I thought it would have been terrible (you can’t blame me, I am an American). Now I think, wow, how cool it would be to play out there under such firm and fast conditions.