Affluent and populous, with a great climate, Orange County in southern California, ought to be a strong location for golf. But, although there are certainly a lot of courses in the area immediately to the south of Los Angeles, really good golf is in short supply.

Santa Ana Country Club, founded in 1901, is Orange County’s oldest golf club, though it is not located on its original site, as the club moved in the early 1920s. Scotsman John Duncan Dunn was hired to design the new course, which endured for around half a century. In the last thirty or forty years, though, the Santa Ana course has been much changed, principally by architect Ted Robinson Sr.

More recently, the leadership of Santa Ana came to the conclusion that their course needed a refresh. Problems with the driving range, which was crowbarred into a corner of the property that, in truth, was too small, plus other issues led them to this conclusion, at which point they engaged the young Northern California-based architect Jay Blasi, to prepare a renovation plan.

Blasi, who, readers will recall, made his name as the on-site guy for Robert Trent Jones II during the construction of Chambers Bay, the course outside Seattle that hosted last year’s US Open, came up with a typically bold and aggressive plan. Why not, he said, forget renovating the existing Santa Ana course, and basically build a whole new course on the site – which is nicely undulating and well-suited for good golf? And into the bargain, said Blasi, why not go against the grain of Orange County’s courses, most of which are pretty resolutely modernist, and try to build something that looked and played like a course from the Golden Age of golf design, when the club was founded and its course was originally built? In short, look to the past to find the future.

Credit is due to the club for embracing this bold plan, and committing to find the several million dollars involved in executing it. Some members were unsure about whether there was space on the site to achieve everything in Blasi’s scheme, and it is true that the property, at 125 acres, is rather compact by today’s standards, and it is also true that there are a few places on the property where holes get a little bit closer than one might deem ideal – in particular, the medium-length par four sixth, which runs along the property boundary, involves a drive that goes quite close to back of the new-look fifth green (which, incidentally, looks as though it should be an excellent par five). It’s true, though, that by filling in a number of small lakes and ponds that had been created over the past forty years, and reinstating the natural dry wash that used to be there, Blasi will make more space available. He has also moved the practice range, away from the property boundary to a better location alongside the new first hole, enabling club members to practice more full length shots without risking hitting so many balls off the range area. In short, there’s no doubt that the new-look course will be significantly more appealing than the existing one – a number of local commentators have suggested they think Santa Ana will have the best course in Orange County, and the club hopes to recoup the cost through an increase in membership initiation fees.

This is Blasi’s biggest project to date in his own name, following his two projects as a lead associate for RTJ2, at Chambers Bay and at The Patriot in Tulsa, and the renovation of SentryWorld in Wisconsin, a job he ran while working for himself, but on behalf of his former boss. So, understandably, the architect is going great guns to give himself and his team the best chance possible of doing a great job – including moving himself full-time to Orange County during the works. Blasi has himself selected an all-star shaping team for the project, including Derek Dirksen, who he worked with at both the Patriot and SentryWord, as well as Tom Doak alumni Kye Goalby and Brett Hochstein.

Frankly, that shaping team will need to be all-star, as will contractor Landscapes Unlimited, because the project schedule is extremely tight, verging on over-ambitious. The plan is to complete the works and reopen the course at the beginning of November, having only begun construction at the start of March, at first glance an impossibly aggressive timescale for what is effectively a new eighteen hole course build. Even given the climate of Orange County, which should make growing in the new holes much easier than in a less amenable location, this is pushing it. But both Blasi and Bill Kubly of contractor Landscapes Unlimited, which is handling the build, except for the fine shaping which will be carried out by Blasi’s teams of hotshots, are extremely confident that the deadline will be met, and they do have one big advantage, which is that the fairway grasses will not be changed. As Santa Ana currently has kikuyu fairways, and kikuyu has a well-earned reputation for ‘stickiness’, this is not a decision that the team took lightly, and both Blasi and course superintendent Matt Marsh have been investigating other options that might allow them to change the composition of grasses, at least in the green surrounds, to enable a more Golden Age-style short game environment.

It’s also true that a few hole corridors, such as that for the new tenth, will be reused, though, in this case in reverse. To make the most of the small plot of land, Blasi’s routing for the new-look Santa Ana has had to be creative and, for example, run a number of holes straight along the site’s boundaries – it’s immediately noticeable, though, that wherever a hole runs along the boundary line, it does so with the edge of the property on the left of play. As most golfers are right handed, and most slice, this is a wise insurance – put the boundary on the slice side and one could expect a lot more golf balls to threaten the edge.

And, just because the site is tight, that does not mean that Blasi has gone down the route of building holes that are narrow and constricting. True to his principles, he’s stuck with a strategic approach to design, and found ways of creating the width that strategic golf demands. On the short par four sixteenth, for example, there is ample width for the golfer to choose his line of attack into the green (or try to drive it, if he feels so inclined), and the par five fifteenth features a central fairway bunker threatening the tee shot and challenging players to lay down their drive to the right of the bunker, close to a lake, if they want to shorten the hole.

Of course, much of the details of the Santa Ana build remain to be settled during the construction process, most notably the greens, the most important part of any golf course. But, from the meticulous planning that has gone into creating the schedule for the build, from the excellent routing that Blasi has produced for the club, and most of all from the quality of the underlying property, which for sure was not being used to best effect by the previous course, I have little or no doubt that architect and club together will achieve their bold goals. Kudos to all concerned, especially the leadership of Santa Ana CC, for having the vision to see the opportunity, and the bravery to embrace it. 

This article first appeared in issue 44 of Golf Course Architecture.