Hogan's Alley turns 100

One of my favorite all-time golf photographs was taken at Riviera in the 1950 Los Angeles Open. It pictures Ben Hogan putting from the edge of the sixth green and Sam Snead waiting impatiently, with the milling gallery behind them and a marine layer rolling in. It’s a big photograph and not just because the frame hangs five feet by four feet on a wall in my home. It tells an important story. Sam liked to complain about how slowly Hogan played. He used to say, “There were one-cigarette putts and two-cigarette putts,” meaning Hogan could smoke a whole cigarette in the time it took him to hit a putt, and on the tough ones, two cigarettes. I remember at Hogan’s funeral, Sam was overheard saying to another pallbearer: “I always liked match play. You know, Hogan never beat me at match play.” Bob Rotella could write a book on the mind games these two golfers played against each other.

Riviera is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, and a lot of golf history happened on that George C. Thomas masterpiece, so much involving Hogan that even now the course is known as “Hogan’s Alley.” In one 18-month stretch, Hogan won two L.A. Opens and the 1948 U.S. Open, all at Riviera.

But maybe the most dramatic golf ever played there was in that pictured 18-hole playoff with Hogan and Snead, significant because just 11 months earlier Hogan almost died when a Greyhound bus attempted to pass a truck on a narrow two-lane bridge in West Texas and hit his Cadillac head-on. Hogan threw himself across the passenger seat to save his wife Valerie just before the steering column punctured the driver’s seat and survived only after a 59-day hospital stay. In his first return to competition, Hogan led the tournament until Snead birdied the 72nd hole to force a playoff and, true to his word about head-to-head matches, Sam beat Ben, 72 to 76. Still, Hogan’s comeback was galvanized, and the Ice Man won his second and arguably greatest U.S. Open six months later at Merion.

I was at Riviera Country Club for the kickoff to its centennial this month. Nearly 1,600 clubs in the U.S. are celebrating their 100th anniversary in the decade of the 2020s, and I’ve been to a few, but I cannot imagine a grander occasion than the one held at Riviera. First, the club is owned by Noboru Watanabe and managed by his daughter Megan. No other private club that hosts major championships is completely controlled by an individual. David Kohler owns Whistling Straits (three PGAs) and Bob Dedman owns Pinehurst (four U.S. Opens), two esteemed institutions, but they’re resort courses. The Watanabe Family bought Riviera in 1989 for $108 million and have tended its historical course like a prized bonsai tree. "I will cherish this place, second only to my own life," Watanabe said.

Noboru is a venerable figure in Japan and lifelong golfer, now 86, but still taking up new passions like sailing and cooking. He’s also a concert pianist who played at the club’s gala with the violinist Anne Akiko Meyers. "I do it because I learned from the sea," he said. "The breeze never visits those who only sail in perfect weather. You have to flirt with a bit of storm if you want to experience those rare moments of divine alignment with the elements."

Riviera has a history of celebrity members from Humphrey Bogart and Walt Disney to modern stars like Larry David and Adam Sandler as well as businessmen from Howard Hughes to Irving Azoff. On an idyllic October evening, David Foster was the featured performer of many hits that won him 16 Grammy Awards; Owen Wilson, starring in “Stick,” the golf comedy series on Apple TV, sat across from me, and Ari Emanuel, the entertainment and media mogul, was at the next table. There’s no mistaking an L.A. vibe to the place which reveres creative talent that moves the culture.

But the club is best known for its golf history and architectural prominence. George C. Thomas is unconscionably not in the World Golf Hall of Fame, but should be. His other course designs include Los Angeles Country Club North and South, Bel-Air and Stanford. Tiger Woods made his PGA Tour debut at Riviera in 1993 as a 16-year-old playing on a sponsor’s exemption. Hal Sutton outlasted Jack Nicklaus at the 1983 PGA; Steve Elkington won the ’95 PGA; Hale Irwin won the ’98 U.S. Senior Open, Nelly Korda won the U.S. Women’s Open this past summer, and 62 L.A. Opens now known as the Genesis Invitational have been played at Riviera. The club is already preparing for hosting the 2028 Summer Olympics, but the crown jewel will be a return of the U.S. Open in 2031.

When you walk around the majestic clubhouse and course, your mind invariably flashes to a black-and-white era of the sport when spectators wore suits and fedora hats and the players were named Hogan and Snead.