On Thursday, the U.S. (golf) Open began as the Justice Department mulled a pending merger between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, which is owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. Great wealth, as it happens, is also a theme of this year’s U.S. Open, and not just because of the Saudis. That’s because it’s being staged on the most expensive piece of undeveloped and privately owned land in the United States. The venue is, Sam Farmer wrote June 11 in the Los Angeles Times, “the greatest course people have never seen.” Especially certain sorts of people.
If you grew up on the West Side of Los Angeles and were Jewish, African American, or a woman, you knew all about the Los Angeles Country Club. It was founded in 1897, before there was a West Los Angeles (or even much of a Los Angeles), and it relocated to its present site in 1911 as part of the adjacent area’s evolution from a lima bean field with a few oil wells into a housing development (later a small city) called Beverly Hills. The country club is freaking enormous: 313 acres of manicured greenery situated in a residential neighborhood now overrun with millionaires. (A typical golf course is less than half that size.)