Texas Children's Houston Open

Memorial Park Golf Course



The Olympic Club: Lake

San Francisco, CA Private

Overview

It seems fitting that, in a town where every house is a cliffhanger, every U.S. Open played at Olympic has been one, too. For decades, the Lake was a severe test of golf. Once it was a heavily forested course with canted fairways hampered by just a single fairway bunker. By 2009, the forest had been considerably cleared away, leaving only the occasional bowlegged cypress with knobby knees, the seventh and 18th greens were redesigned and a new par-3 eighth added. Despite those changes, the 2012 U.S. Open stuck to the usual script: a ball got stuck in a tree, slow-play warnings were given, a leader snap-hooked a drive on 16 in the final round, and a guy name Simpson won. If the past was predictable, the future of the Lake Course might be more mysterious after Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner completed a remodeling in 2023 in preparation for the 2028 PGA Championship.

About

Holes 18
Length 7050
Slope 141
Facility Type Private
Year Opened 1924
Designer Sam Whiting/(R) Robert Trent Jones, ASGCA/(R) William R. Love/Gil Hanse & Jim Wagner (RM, 2023)

Awards

100 Greatest
Best Courses in Every State

Ranking history:

100 Greatest: Ranked since 1966.
2023-'24 ranking: 35th.
Previous ranking:
34th.
Highest ranking:
10th, 1985-'88, 1991-'92.

Best in State: Ranked fourth, 2011-'14. Ranked fifth, 2015-'22.
2023-'24 ranking: Sixth.
Previous ranking: Fifth.

Panelists

Ratings from our panel of 1,900 course-ranking panelists

4.8

100 GREATEST/BEST IN STATE SCORES

Shot Options
7.8621
Character
8.0095
Challenge
8.1286
Layout Variety
7.7511
Fun
7.503
Aesthetics
7.8115
Conditioning
7.7124

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