George,
I think somebody posted this on GCA already, but here is the rough draft of a recent column I did for the San Mateo Times on the subject:
The United States Junior Amateur is coming to the Olympic Club this summer, and partly in preparation for it, the club is undergoing the most drastic modifications of their historic golf course undertaken since Sam Whiting redesigned the golf course in 1927.
Readers who have played or watched the various tournaments over the years will be shocked at the changes, mostly the result of removing hundreds of trees and acres of brush.
The history of how the course evolved is interesting in that the Lake Course has come nearly full-circle, 80 years after it was first laid out by Willie Watson. Though the Olympic Club’s Lake has long been known as an arboreal parkland, in recent years the layout had become badly overgrown.
Whether this contributed to a drop in rankings on both the Golf Digest and Golf Week “Top 100" list is a matter of speculation, there is no doubt that narrow, excessively penal golf courses have gone out of vogue in favor of more strategic layouts.
So what are the main changes? To begin with, massive tree removal to reopen the vistas on the leeward side of the hill overlooking Lake Merced.
Originally, the club purchased the land from the struggling Lakeside Country Club in 1917 and put the wheels in motion to superimpose a new course atop the existing layout. At the time, the property was made up almost entirely of sand dunes, with only a smattering of foliage.
After WW I, it was decided that the club would need two courses to accommodate the boom of interest and Willie Watson constructed both the Lake Course and what was then known as the Pacific Links - later changed to the Ocean Course.
Ironically, the Lake Course was considered the lesser of the two and went largely ignored by the press in favor of the spectacular Pacific Links, routed mostly on the bluffs overlooking the ocean. Unfortunately, this marquee layout did not last past the winter of 1930, where torrential rains washed most of the course into the sea.
The club opted to do some major redesign work of the Willie Watson courses and brought in Sam Whiting to reroute many of the holes and undertake an ambitious tree planting program once the fairways were established.
In this way, it can be said that the Olympic Club’s courses were built in reverse. Usually, tree-lined layouts are cut through existing forest, but Whiting converted the dune-scape into a parkland course with thousands of pines, cypress and redwood trees.
Golf courses are like gardens in that they need to be pruned and controlled, and as happened to many Golden Age courses, trees became sacrosanct in the minds of many members who ceased to view them as plants that needed to be controlled.
This condition of overgrowth eventually choked off most of the air and light essential for growing grass - as well as making the course almost impossible for anyone lacking the skill to hit the ball archer straight and long on the perpetually damp fairways.
Now, visitors will find a completely different aesthetic, and one that brings back the flavor of the original layout. The Lake Course wriggles, twists and writhes down the hillside, but the experience was disorienting because every hole was hemmed in by dense thickets. Now, for the first time in more than 50 years, the sparkling vistas that surround the golf course are in full view.
The wind, never much of a factor in the strategy of the golf course now demands golfers allow for firm fairways and swirling ocean breezes. In some measure, the native grasses, planted in place of the unkempt brush strongly resembles Shinnecock Hills.
The removal of so many trees on a highly ranked course is not unprecedented, but with the exception of Oakmont, site of six U.S. Opens, this is the first time in recent memory a “Top 25" club has had the courage and vision to admit their golf course was becoming a dowager and take drastic action.
In some respects, the improvement California Golf Club attained by removing more than a thousand trees emboldened the club to restore the course. It has been suggested that “Cal Club” is now in the same class as Olympic and San Francisco Club.
In conjunction with the tree removal, the club is considering the idea of extending the golf course with the construction of new tees. Following the U.S.. Junior this summer, Olympic has been honored with another United States Amateur Championship in 2008.
Is another United States Open in the works after that? Perhaps, but players in future championships will find the Lake Course looking and playing more as a strategic links, instead of a claustrophobic march through a dripping wet forest.
</button>