Golf: Santa Ana Country Club to celebrate centennial

Richard Dunn

SANTA ANA HEIGHTS - It has been a long and storied journey through

the first 100 years of Santa Ana Country Club, the oldest golf club in

Orange County.

Next month, the club, one of the few remaining golf-only private clubs

in Southern California, will officially celebrate its centennial.

To mark its turning to another chapter, Santa Ana Country Club last

fall completed a remodeling project of its terrace room, card room,

trophy case, hallway and men’s locker room.

In September, there will be tournaments and parties and jubilees, but

before members hold up their champagne glasses, the club is hosting an

event that hopes to last one-tenth of Santa Ana Country Club’s span.

The second annual Jones Cup will be played Tuesday, beginning at 1

p.m., at the venerable golf course, which has occupied the same real

estate since April 1923.

From the turn of the 20th century to the industrial revolution, from

the Roaring ‘20s to the Great Depression, from World War II to the

transitional years of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, Santa Ana Country Club is

deep in style and rich in history.

In the beginning, 1901, California’s appetite for golf grew like the

orange groves in Orange County.

In one year, 43 new courses were built in the Golden State, including

the first site and precursor to present Santa Ana Country Club.

In 1899, there were five original clubs in the Southern California

Golf Association -- Los Angeles Country Club, Riverside Polo and Golf

Club, Redlands Golf Club, Pasadena Golf Club and Santa Monica Golf Club.

Of those clubs, only Los Angeles and Redlands exist today.

But, at the turn of the century, California enjoyed a golf boom and

folks in Orange County were eager to grab a share of the game’s good

life. They formed Santiago Golf Club in 1901 and the first golf holes

were played in Orange County, albeit oil-soaked sand for “greens” and

native soil, or hard dirt, for fairways.

The club’s original 14 members, led by President R.S. Sanborn, leased

acreage from James Irvine in the Peters Canyon area, a small valley two

miles southwest of present-day Irvine Park, and the pioneers laid out a

nine-hole course. The oiled sand for greens were about 30 feet in

diameter.

Then, with livelier golf balls demanding longer yardages and more

clubs popping up in Southern California, Orange County’s original golf

settlers didn’t want to be left behind in pursuing more desirable

locations.

In 1912, the members made a bold move to a 160-acre site at the

Castaways along the Newport bluffs, where homes now line the area on the

west side of the Upper Newport Bay.

The property, renamed the Orange County Country Club, was again leased

from Irvine. At the time, golf course designer C.H. Anderson of Pasadena

said the picturesque Newport Heights layout would have no peer in

California. The Orange County Country Club also boasted of an ocean

breeze.An excerpt from the Newport News in April 1914, read: “The Orange

County Country Club overlooking Newport Bay continues to be the chief

attraction of the pleasure-loving people of Orange County and is

attracting attention not only over Southern California, but its fame is

beginning to penetrate east as it is a fact that from a scenic standpoint

the course has it over anything in the country. The course is also

‘sporty’ enough to try the ability of the most expert players.”

In a World War I fund-raising effort in 1918, the club hosted an

18-hole tournament, with a medal awarded to the winner by John D.

Rockefeller.

But the game of golf was changing and members of Orange County Country

Club didn’t want to miss out on the boom of growing, and maintaining,

grass on the golf course.

For members of Orange County’s first golf club, their spectacular site

on the bluffs lacked viable water supply for an irrigation system, so a

search began for a new site that would have water for the turf areas.

In April 1923, it was announced that Orange County Country Club would

move from the Castaways to a new location, for irrigation purposes, in

Santa Ana Heights at Newport Boulevard, its current location. Courses

everywhere in California were converting to grass fairways and greens and

the local folks didn’t want to be left behind.

The club paid $71,000 for the Santa Ana Heights property and renamed

itself Santa Ana Country Club.

Scotland’s John Duncan Dunn was the original architect and course

designer, but the course has undergone numerous remodeling efforts

throughout the years.

While the old Castaways links became a public course and charged 50

cents a round, Dunn’s original design on the new plot at Newport

Boulevard included a six-hole “Ladies Course,” but the course was never

built and the land became a point of controversy for years.

The new Santa Ana Country Club, with its highly acclaimed Spanish

renaissance style clubhouse, held its first championship in 1925 and was

admired as the new home of the area’s “Who’s Who” in the social scene.

Art Rigby, an Englishman with an accent right out of the old country,

was the first professional at SACC and the first pro in Orange County.

Charter member George Shattuck recorded the first hole-in-one on the new

golf course.

In the first club championship, John Tubbs defeated Hector Robinson on

the 20th hole. In 1927, Robinson lost again in the finals on the 20th

hole, this time to “Easy” Ed Holmes Jr., who won his first of five

straight titles. Holmes would finish with a club-record six

championships, his last coming in 1933. It was a record that stood for 53

years, until Bill Selman won his seventh club title.

In the late 1930s, Bob Fernandez was a driving force that helped keep

the club from “going under” by selling memberships for $5 (pay as you go)

up and down the streets of downtown Santa Ana.

In the 1940s, Santa Ana Country Club played host to several

celebrities, including Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Randolph Scott, Fred

Astaire and Mickey Rooney, to help the war effort.

SACC, located across from the Santa Ana Army Air Base, held a gala and

golf exhibition on Oct. 25, 1942, for the Army Emergency Relief Fund, an

event featuring some of the biggest names in Hollywood and golf.

During the war, Ben Hogan and Joe DiMaggio, both stationed at the

Santa Ana Army Air Base, played golf at Santa Ana Country Club, while Sam

Snead, stationed at Camp Pendleton, would occasionally travel north to

play Hogan at SACC.

In summers following World War II, many Los Angeles area residents

would vacation in Newport Beach, and, among them, club members at

Annandale, San Gabriel, Oakmont, Los Angeles and Wilshire, along with

others.

These golfers became regular summer guests at Santa Ana Country Club,

and, inevitably, a competition was born: The Santa Ana Invitational. The

first event was played in August 1949 and won by Dr. Bud Taylor and guest

Bob Allen of Red Hill Country Club. The club hosted its 53rd annual

Invitational last week.

In the 1950s, Santa Ana was Orange County’s only private golf club.

Memberships were $500. Electric golf carts also became popular in the

‘50s, and, at first, players owned their own carts. It was a practice

that was discontinued in 1955, when the club recognized the income to be

made from rentals.

In 1957, the club played host to the Southern California Amateur

Championship, when Al Geiberger, now on the Senior PGA Tour, defeated

SACC’s own Dick Foote for the title. Foote once beat Deane Beaman in 1956

for the Western Golf Association Junior Championship in Ann Arbor, Mich.

In the turbulent ‘60s, Santa Ana Country Club seemed to reflect our

nation’s turmoil. There were physical changes in the land, emotional

issues dividing the membership, a nearly fatal condemnation suit on part

of the property and a controversial sale of an area adjacent to the No. 8

fairway.

In September 1965, the club’s board of directors held its first

discussions on possible annexation of the club and its land by either

Costa Mesa, Santa Ana or Newport Beach. Because of property taxes, zoning

restrictions and assessment valuations, the members were concerned, but

the club remained an unincorporated part of Orange County -- as it is

today.

In 1966, memberships ranged from $4,500 to $6,000, and, six years

later, the highest price paid for an equity membership was $9,500. By

1980, however, the highest price for an equity membership was almost

$30,000. Today, the price can reach six figures.

The club changed with the times in the 1970s and ‘80s, becoming more

of a “country club” as competition increased. The walls of SACC’s

original clubhouse (circa 1925) came tumbling down in the summer of 1970,

its first major overhaul of the facility.

The late Gerald Hall, along with present-day Director of Golf Mike

Reehl, are two of the pros and managers who have dedicated their

professional lives to Santa Ana Country Club.

The club’s junior champion in 1977 and ‘78, Dennis Paulson, has become

a star on the PGA Tour, while Marianne Towersey, who grew up playing

SACC, has won 17 women’s club championships, a record for Newport-Mesa

community golfers (men or women).