The U.S. Golf Association this week plays its first women’s championship at The Olympic Club’s Lake Course in San Francisco, with the U.S. Women’s Open scheduled June 3-6. But the club has plenty of top-tier competitive history.
The layout was designed by William Watson and Sam Whiting, and it opened in 1927. Architect Bill Love renovated the course in 2009, creating a new No. 8 below the clubhouse, and the bunkers were restored again in 2016. More recently, architect Gil Hanse submitted a new master plan for renovating the club.
The Lake Course ties for No. 34 on Golfweek’s Best 2021 list of top Classic Courses built before 1960 in the United States, and it is No. 6 on Golfweek’s Best list of private courses in California.
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The Lake Course has been the host of five men’s U.S. Opens: 1955, won by Jack Fleck; 1966, won by Billy Casper; 1987, won by Scott Simpson; 1998, won by Lee Janzen; and 2012, won by Webb Simpson. It also hosted the PGA Tour’s Tour Championship in 1993 (Jim Gallagher Jr.) and 1994 (Mark McCumber), and it was the site of three U.S. Amateurs in 1958 (Charles Coe), 1981 (Nathaniel Crosby) and 2007 (Colt Knost). In 2004, Sihwan Kim won the U.S. Junior Amateur there.
The club will be the site of the 2028 PGA Championship and the 2032 Ryder Cup, as well as the 2025 U.S. Amateur.
Thanks to yardage books provided by Puttview – the maker of detailed yardage books for more than 30,000 courses around the world – we can see exactly the challenges that players will face this week. Check out each hole below.
The USGA plans to set up the Lake Course at 6,486 yards for the Women’s Open. The distances listed below reflect the standard yardage for the course, not specifically for the Women’s Open. Some holes will play at shorter yardages during the championship. Scroll to the bottom of the yardage book to see planned yardages for each hole for the Women’s Open specifically.