How one of Southern California's oldest golf courses went from a sheep-mown pasture with sand greens to a beloved public course that has hosted legends and shaped the game in Long Beach for over 100 years.
Stand on the first tee at Recreation Park 18-Hole Golf Course on a clear June morning and let the scene settle around you. The smell of bent grass and Bermuda rises from the fairway below. Joggers pass on the path behind. Somewhere to the east, a mockingbird argues with itself in a eucalyptus. And if you stay very still — if you tune out the distant hum of 7th Street traffic and the cheerful noise of the city — you can almost hear the creak of a horse-drawn surrey, the crisp thwack of a gutty ball on a sand green, and the distant laughter of Long Beach's Gilded Age set arriving for a round at the most fashionable club on the California coast.
More than a century has passed since those first clubs were swung on this land. In that time, the ground beneath your feet has absorbed the footsteps of Walter Hagen and Tommy Armour, of Ben Hogan and Charlie Sifford, of Fred Couples and Xander Schauffele. Sheep once kept these fairways trimmed. Crude oil once kept the greens smooth. Today, a fleet of modern mowers and a full-time grounds crew tend the turf, and the course — still known affectionately to generations of Long Beach golfers as "Big Rec" — remains as vital to the life of this city as it was when it first opened on April 30, 1910.
This is the story of that course. It is a story about civic ambition, about the evolution of American golf, about the men and women who built something lasting on a pasture in Southern California — and about the city that has kept it alive for 116 years and counting.
Where It All Began — The Virginia Country Club
The story of golf in Long Beach begins, as so many California stories do, with ambition, real estate, and a very grand hotel.
By the early 1900s, the Hotel Virginia was one of the crown jewels of the California coast — a lavish oceanfront resort on Ocean Boulevard celebrated as one of the "five great hotels of the West." Its owner, D.M. Linnard — who also ran the prestigious Hotel Maryland in Pasadena — understood that a great resort required great amenities. And in Edwardian-era California, no amenity was more fashionable among the moneyed class than golf.
As early as 1905, plans were being quietly formulated among the hotel's ownership circle to establish a proper country club in Long Beach. The principal architects of that vision were Colonel Charles R. Drake, Linnard himself, the Bixby family — one of Southern California's founding dynasties — and the Hotel Virginia's manager, Carl Stanley. Together, these four men represented the full weight of Long Beach's civic and commercial establishment.
The Virginia Country Club was formally incorporated in 1909. In 1910, its founders signed a 10-year lease with the Alamitos Land Company for nearly 120 acres of open land near a eucalyptus grove, about seven miles east of downtown Long Beach — a site that occupied what is now the heart of Recreation Park.
To build and supervise the new course, the club hired Arthur Rigby of Carnoustie, Scotland — a club professional at the Los Angeles Country Club — who became the club's first golf instructor and course designer. Rigby's Scottish pedigree was no accident; in that era, if a golf course needed designing, you found a Scot. The course opened on April 30, 1910. It was nine holes. It was, by all accounts, spectacular for its time — and delightfully rustic by any measure.
Notably, Colonel Drake — the club's most influential backer — was not himself a golfer. He nonetheless purchased a dozen memberships at $25 each, with monthly dues of just $2.50, making them available to guests of the Hotel Virginia. Those guests were ferried to the course by horse-drawn surreys, completing a scene of Edwardian leisure that would not have looked out of place in a novel by P.G. Wodehouse.
As for Carl Stanley — the man most credited with making the Virginia Country Club a reality — he would go on to even greater things in California golf. From 1915 to 1941, Stanley served as the long-time manager of the Hotel Del Monte, where he became instrumental in fathering the Pebble Beach golf links and the other celebrated Del Monte Properties courses. The acorn of Virginia Country Club, it turned out, had been planted by a man who would help grow some of the finest golf real estate in the world.
Sand Greens, Sheep, and Splash Holes — The Original Layout
The original Virginia Country Club course was, in the language of golf historians, a "pasture-fairway" layout — which is to say it was a golf course in the truest, most elemental sense of the term. According to a 1949 issue of The Golfer magazine, the course "was built in the center of a pasture, with the clubhouse — a modest structure costing $3,500 — atop Reservoir Hill." The 116-acre site sat on the west sector of the old Bixby Rancho, and its maintenance regimen was as economical as it was organic: the sheep kept the fairways mowed.
From the Archives — The Golfer Magazine, 1949 "It was a nine-hole pasture-fairway course — the sheep kept it mowed. It had sand greens and the major greenskeeping expense was in the crude oil they used to keep the putting surfaces good."
Sand greens — common in early American golf, particularly in arid Western climates — required a different skill set from the modern golfer. Before each putt, players would drag a small rake across the surface to smooth a path to the hole. The crude oil treatment mentioned in The Golfer was a standard method of the era for binding the sand and creating a consistent, if unforgiving, surface. To play well on sand greens required an adaptability and feel that today's golfers rarely need to cultivate.
The club quickly grew in membership and ambition. As the membership swelled, the founders sought to elevate the course to match the club's social standing. They hired renowned Scottish architect Willie Watson — a figure of considerable distinction in early California golf — to expand and redesign the layout. By Christmas 1912, the course had grown to 18 holes and measured 5,121 yards. For the era, this was a respectable test of golf.
The redesigned layout had at least one hole that became the talk of Long Beach: the par-4 16th, christened the "Splash Hole." Its tee was perched on a pier extending out over a lake, forcing players to carry the water before tackling an uphill approach to the green. In an era when most American courses offered no such drama, the Splash Hole was considered genuinely thrilling — a feature that would have felt at home on a Scottish links, transplanted to the California sunshine.
By any standard, the Virginia Country Club in its early years was a genuine success: a course that offered real challenge, real beauty, and a social scene that made it the center of Long Beach's leisure culture. It was not destined to last in its original form, however. The lease had a clock on it — and that clock was running.
A City Inherits a Golf Course — The Transition Years
As the 10-year lease with the Alamitos Land Company neared its expiration in 1920, the Virginia Country Club's leadership faced a pivotal decision. The land was not theirs to keep, and the Alamitos Land Company had other plans for it. A special search committee was formed to find a new home for the club.
In 1920, the membership voted to relocate to a new 135-acre tract at Rancho Los Cerritos — adjacent to the Old Adobe ranch house, which stands to this day as a historic landmark. Meanwhile, in 1919, Colonel Drake and Virginia Country Club members had already been forward-thinking enough to construct a new 18-hole layout on the soon-to-be-vacated Alamitos grounds — the very course that would become Recreation Park's golf facility.
When Virginia CC's lease expired in 1921, the City of Long Beach moved quickly. The city leased the grounds and took an option to purchase them. On September 1, 1921, the Virginia Country Club formally opened its new course at Rancho Los Cerritos, designed again by William Watson and featuring the new luxury of grass greens, leaving behind the old Alamitos site and the history embedded in its soil.
Long Beach's citizens, it turned out, had a keen appetite for public golf. Following a voter-approved bond measure, the City of Long Beach officially purchased what would become Recreation Park in 1923 — a sweeping 229-acre parcel of parkland secured for the permanent enjoyment of the public. The price of foresight, as it so often is, was modest compared to what was gained.
The new municipal course underwent a series of significant improvements in the years that followed. In 1926, the greens were converted from sand to turf — a landmark modernization that brought the course into the mainstream of American golf and opened it to a much wider audience of players accustomed to grass putting surfaces. In 1928 (some accounts say 1929), a second, nine-hole course was added to the park, designed to serve beginners and accommodate the city's growing demand for recreational golf.
The 18-hole layout that Long Beach golfers know today was subsequently redesigned by William F. Bell, one of California's most respected and prolific golf course architects. Bell's fingerprints are on dozens of California public courses, and his work at Recreation Park gave the layout the structure and challenge that has endured into the 21st century.
The course was not the only landmark taking shape in Recreation Park during these years. In 1929, the park's now-famous Spanish Baroque bandshell was dedicated — itself a designated Historic Landmark. In 1933, when a catastrophic earthquake devastated Long Beach, Recreation Park served an entirely different purpose: the grounds became an emergency relief center, hosting feeding stations, campgrounds, and outdoor schooling tents for a shaken city. The park, in other words, has always been more than a golf course. It is a civic institution.
A Century in Milestones — Recreation Park Golf Timeline
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1905: Plans first formulated by Hotel Virginia owners for a country club in Long Beach.
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1909: Virginia Country Club formally incorporated.
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1910: 10-year lease signed with Alamitos Land Co. for ~120 acres. Original 9-hole course, designed by Arthur Rigby of Carnoustie, opens April 30. Hotel guests arrive by horse-drawn surrey.
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1912: Course expanded to 18 holes (5,121 yards) by Christmas, redesigned by Willie Watson. The signature "Splash Hole" par-4 16th becomes the course's most famous feature.
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1919: Colonel Drake and Virginia CC members build new 18-hole layout on the Alamitos grounds in anticipation of the lease expiring.
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1920: Virginia Country Club votes to relocate to Rancho Los Cerritos.
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1921: Virginia CC lease expires. City of Long Beach leases grounds and takes purchase option. Virginia CC opens new course at Rancho Los Cerritos on September 1.
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1923: City of Long Beach purchases 229 acres — including the golf grounds — following a voter-approved bond measure, officially creating Recreation Park.
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1926: Sand greens converted to turf — a transformative upgrade. Long Beach Open held at the site; Bill Mehlhorn wins.
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1927: Tommy Armour wins the Long Beach Open at Recreation Park.
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1928: Leo Diegel and Bill Mehlhorn tie for the January Long Beach Open; Walter Hagen wins the December edition.
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1929: Spanish Baroque bandshell dedicated in Recreation Park (now a Historic Landmark). Nine-hole course added to the park.
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1930: Joe Kirkwood Sr. and Olin Dutra tie for the Long Beach Open title.
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1933: Long Beach earthquake: Recreation Park serves as emergency relief center.
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1949: Long Beach Open returns at Lakewood CC. Ben Hogan wins.
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1950–51: Fred Haas (1950) and Cary Middlecoff (1951) win the Long Beach Open at Lakewood CC.
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1957: Charlie Sifford becomes the first African-American golfer to enter and win against white players in a PGA co-sponsored tournament, at the Long Beach Open — a landmark moment in American civil rights history.
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1989: Long Beach Open revived as part of the Long Beach Golf Festival, played at El Dorado and Recreation Park. Now the longest-running series of independent golf championships in America.
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2006: Skylinks Golf Course added to the Long Beach Golf Festival pre-cut rotation.
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2019: Taylor Montgomery wins the Long Beach Open.
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2026: The Long Beach Golf Festival celebrates its 100th anniversary — a century of competitive golf in Long Beach.
When the Greats Came to Long Beach — The Long Beach Open
For a brief, luminous period in the late 1920s, one of professional golf's most dazzling road shows came to rest on the grounds of what is now Recreation Park. The Long Beach Open was a PGA Tour event, and the names it attracted read like a roll call of American golf's founding fathers.
The Long Beach Open's roots reach back to 1923, when the legendary Walter Hagen — golf's first true celebrity, the man who put the "professional" in professional golf — claimed the inaugural championship. Hagen, with his debonair flair and his disdain for club locker rooms reserved for amateurs, was exactly the kind of figure who elevated a tournament's profile simply by appearing. His presence in Long Beach was a statement: this was a serious event, on a serious course, in a city that took its golf seriously.
The PGA-era Long Beach Open ran from 1926 to 1930, and its winner's list is a who's who of interwar golf greatness. In 1926, Bill Mehlhorn — one of the tour's most consistent winners of the era — took the title. In 1927, Tommy Armour, "The Silver Scot," added the Long Beach Open to a résumé that already included the U.S. Open, would later include the British Open (1931), and the PGA Championship (1930). Armour was one of the game's most complete players and one of its most celebrated personalities; his presence in Long Beach brought the kind of international prestige that a young California golf scene was hungry for.
The 1928 calendar produced two Long Beach Opens — a January edition that ended in a tie between Leo Diegel and Mehlhorn, and a December edition won by Hagen, who thus bookended the tournament's golden era with his name at the top of the leaderboard. Diegel, for his part, was no ordinary competitor: he would win back-to-back PGA Championships in 1928 and 1929, making him one of the two or three best players of his generation. In 1930, the title went to Joe Kirkwood Sr. and Olin Dutra in a tie — with Dutra going on to win the 1932 U.S. Open and the 1934 PGA Championship.
The tournament went dark from 1931 to 1948, a casualty of the Depression and the Second World War. When it returned in 1949 at Lakewood Country Club, it did so with a bang: Ben Hogan — fresh from his dominant mid-career run, and just months before the near-fatal car accident that would reshape his story — won the title. Fred Haas won in 1950, and Cary Middlecoff — the dentist-turned-champion who would win two U.S. Opens and a Masters — took the 1951 edition.
But the most significant chapter in the Long Beach Open's history — and arguably one of the most significant chapters in American golf history, full stop — was written not at Recreation Park or Lakewood, but at a 1957 satellite event in Long Beach.