Winner: Wyndham Clark (-10) over Rory McIlroy (-9)

The U.S. Open, my lifelong favorite tournament, will be played this week at the Los Angeles Country Club’s North Course. It is a George Thomas design from 1921 that is routinely included in the top 20 of the rankings of American golf courses.

Thomas also designed the Bel Air CC and the Riviera CC, both in Los Angeles, along with a number of other well-known course in Southern California. This one, though is his masterpiece.

Watch the flyover of every hole from Golf Digest, and the corresponding flyover from the USGA.

Then listen to Gil Hanse being interviewed about his restoration and comments on how the course will play for the pros this week. You won’t miss much by starting the interview at the 17:00 minute mark.

This rather crowded overhead below of the entire course indicates its routing, which will help you make your way around a far less crowded Google Maps overhead. Note the Playboy Mansion next to the 14th tee.

Below is the much-photographed 11th green, the hole being a 290-yard par 3. The green is 40 feet below the level of the tee. Good luck.

Just to mention, the 15th hole, also a par 3, might play at 90 yards on one day. That won’t make it any easier to get par, especially if the pin is in the very narrow tongue of green at the front. (You really need to watch the flyovers.)

The 6th hole will be drivable par 4, but you have to hit a blind tee shot to a narrow green. (So watch the flyovers already!)

After all the recent hoo-hah around the PGA/LIV merger, we need a major tournament at a course like we have never seen before to take our mind off it. I hope the drama of competition matches the reputation and stature of the course.

I want to end this brief preview by telling you a personal story. I have known about this course, and how fine it is, for a long time. In all that time I wished there could be a U.S. Open there so I could see the course in detail, but the membership was not interested. However in 2015, the USGA announced that the course had agreed to host the Open in 2023.

2015 was the same year my cancer was discovered and in 2016 it was found that I had gotten one that had no cure and a five-year survival rate of around 50%. I couldn’t count on being alive in 2023.

But here I still am, and I think I’ll make it through this weekend. Actually I am doing very well and look forward to a good number of years more, especially with the advances in treatment for my disease.

The motto of my blog is “Little things that make a big difference.” I could modify that to say that my being able to see the U.S. Open at the LACC is a little thing that means a lot.