Course Review - Olympic Club & St Omer Golf Club

All eyes in the world of golf focus on San Francisco, California, as the city's famed Olympic Club hosts the US Open Championship for the fifth time in its history. Founded in 1860, the Olympic Club claims to be the oldest athletic club in America and offers a wide range of sporting activities to its members who are known as Olympians. Golf was added to the menu when the club purchased the pre-existing Lakeside Golf Club in 1918.

Additional land was acquired in 1922 and the original 18 holes were replaced in 1924 with two new golf courses designed by Willie Watson and the club's superintendent, Sam Whiting. Less than a year later, severe storms damaged the courses beyond repair, and two new ones were built by Whiting, both opening for play in 1927. That original 1927 Lake Course is the one in use today, although extensive renovations and changes have taken place over the years.

Nestled on rolling parkland terrain adjacent to Lake Merced and the Pacific Ocean, the Lake Course offers views of the Golden Gate Bridge and is characterised by narrow fairways lined by majestic trees and small well-bunkered greens. This mighty midget – barely 6200m par 71 with no water hazards and only fairway bunker – was thought to have been made obsolete for Major Championship golf by advancing equipment technology since last hosting the Open 1n 1998. However, heavy often misty sea air, dense rye and bluegrass rough, overhanging trees and already restricted fairways, not to mention infernally deep dunkers that protect tiny greens with no safe bail-out areas have all come together like alchemy to provide a magical and demanding examination.

The Olympic Club is perched directly on top of the San Andreas Fault, and if history is anything to go by, the earth is likely to move mightily for someone other than the pre-event favourites. Dubbed The Graveyard of Champions after all-time greats Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson and Payne Stewart each came unstuck in the first four US Opens hosted here; perhaps the fifth time is the charm for the likes of a resurgent Tiger Woods and an in-form Rory McIlroy.

The highly regarded parkland layout of the St Omer Golf Club is 40kms south of the French port of Calais, and hosts the European Tour's St Omer Open for the 10th time on its 6250m Valley Course that was designed in 1990 by Dutch architect Johan van Heel. This is the only event of the year co-sanctioned with the European Challenge Tour.

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