Annandale Golf Club - California

Located just outside Pasadena, Annandale Golf Club was founded in 1906, with Willie Watson setting out an 18-hole course for the membership. Billy Bell then served the club as caddy master before putting his own stamp on the property in the mid-1920s.

This happened when Colorado Boulevard was extended, splitting the original Annandale routing in two and forcing the club to locate the entire course on the north side of the highway. Bell redesigned the bunkers and built the “canyon holes” – 14, 15 and 16 – to replace holes lost in the move.

Forty years later, the construction of the Ventura Freeway alongside the boulevard cramped some of the holes and shortened others, interfering with the flow of holes and leaving the club with the somewhat awkward configuration of five par three holes.

Early in the new millennium, Brian Silva was hired to address these shortcomings and he oversaw an intensive 10-month refurbishment program to install new irrigation and drainage systems, rebuild all the greens, restore the bunkers in Bell’s style and re-grass the fairways in Bermuda.

To address the unwanted arrangement of five par threes, Silva changed the par three 17th hole into a drivable par four and converted the 6th hole from a short par five to a tough par four. Annandale’s also the first in Southern California to use a four-way blend of hybrid bluegrass in 47 acres of rough that were sodded.