Maggie Hathaway Reopens After Remarkable Facelift

Stand on the fifth green at the newly renovated Maggie Hathaway Golf Course and take a look around. To the upper left, the Hollywood sign. Straight ahead, the Griffith Park Observatory. On the horizon, the faint outline of downtown Los Angeles. Somewhere just off the course, two red-tailed hawks circle. Below your feet, the springy give of bentgrass cut to USGA specifications. And, from the first tee, centered squarely in your sightline is the bronze-green steeple of St. Eugene's Church.

This is not the golf course people expected. When the project began, organizers were hoping to raise three or four million dollars to give a tired, nine-hole par-3 layout in South Los Angeles a modest facelift. What they ended up with, after $21 million, a Gil Hanse design done entirely pro bono, and an improbable coalition of funders that reads like a civic all-star team, is something people are comparing to the courses they have long revered.

“I’ve sent pictures to people and asked, `What course do you think this is?’” says Kevin Gigax, CEO of the newly created Maggie Junior Golf and Community Foundation. “The most common response is LACC. Followed by Riviera.”

The grand opening is March 27, with public play beginning the following morning. Still a nine-hole par-3 course topping out at 1,008 yards, “Maggie” sits tucked behind Jesse Owens Park at the corner of 98th Street and Western Avenue, just down Century Boulevard from SoFi Stadium. At $7 per round, the course had hosted some 20,000 rounds per year. That price point stays roughly the same. What changed is everything else.

Hanse, who redesigned The Los Angeles Country Club’s North Course in 2010 and created the celebrated Cradle at Pinehurst Resort & Country Club in North Carolina, came to the project after preparations for the 2023 U.S. Open at LACC sparked a conversation about golf's relationship with the communities that host its grandest events. He liked what he found. The routing had good bones. The elevation changes and natural contours were assets waiting to be unlocked.

“We don't view it as a blank canvas,” Hanse said before construction began. “We want it to remain very familiar to those who know and love it in its current condition. We're just hoping to make it better, but still Maggie.”

On-site design associate Tommy Naccarato, whose parents were married at St. Eugene's, translated Hanse's vision into reality, drawing from the architecture of classic courses. A boomerang-shaped green echoes a design you'd find on LACC's South Course. A barranca snakes through the property in the spirit of the great ravines at LACC and Riviera. The course plays firm and fast, rewarding placement over power, with USGA-spec bentgrass greens boasting some dramatica contours.

“When you rate the course,” says Dick Shortz, LACC member and general chair of the 2023 U.S. Open, “a good golfer could go around and par it with the pins in easy positions. Put them in the tough spots and the best of the best would struggle.”

The practice facility alone represents a transformation. The old driving range was a long downhill walk, difficult and inconvenient for seniors and others to access, with eight tired mats. The new range was flipped and repositioned adjacent to the first tee. It's now 130 yards deep (visitors consistently guess 180), features 18 mats, 75-foot premium netting, and an autonomous robotic ball picker, essentially a golf-specific Roomba. A 10,000-square-foot chipping and putting complex with bentgrass greens, fescue surrounds and genuine sand bunkers sit just steps away. Everything in one spot.

Fred Terrell, chairman of the Maggie Junior Golf and Community Foundation, led the fundraising efforts along with PGA Tour pro/two-time major champion Collin Morikawa, who grew up in the Los Angeles area and represented the USA in the 2017 Walker Cup Match at The Los Angeles Country Club. The USGA., Los Angeles County and Southern California Golf Association made significant contributions as well as
several corporations, foundations and individuals totaling $21 million. Latham & Watkins worked pro bono on the agreements and land issues.

“It just goes to show, when you have all these groups come together to bring a project, it's just pretty special,” says attorney John Heinz. “Seeing it happen in this community, at a place like Maggie Hathaway, which has so much history. It's really celebrating the history of that golf course and that park, and its role in the community.”

The new-look Maggie Hathaway Golf Course, thanks to the work by architect Gil Hanse, had its grand reopening on March 27. (SCGA)

The total, which started as a $3 million daydream, climbed to $10 million, then $15 million, then $21 million, and kept growing because people kept falling in love with what Hanse was creating.

“Gil reimagined the golf course,” says Shortz. “It came out as a jewel.”

Fred Perpall, whose term as the USGA’s 67th president ended on Feb. 28, sees the project as a model for how major championships can benefit their host cities.

“It's one thing to say that you value a community and that you're interested in them participating,” said Perpall, the USGA’s first Black president and native of the Bahamas. “It's another thing to demonstrate that they are welcomed. This is a physical demonstration that we want to inspire people in the community to get interested in golf.”

For Perpall, the philanthropy that flowed into Maggie Hathaway reflects something essential about the game.

“There's no shortage of resources in golf,” said Perpall. “What we sometimes need is the inspiration on how we channel those resources to the benefit of people who need a little bit of a hand up.”

Maggie Hathaway (1911-2001) was a Louisiana-born actress, blues singer, journalist and activist, who came west in 1931 and later wrote for the Los Angeles Sentinel, helped found the Beverly Hills chapter of the NAACP and played a significant role in desegregating golf in Los Angeles County. She was recently inducted into the Southern California Golf Hall of Fame. The course was renamed in her honor in 1997.

Glen Porter, who has run operations through Southern Area Youth Programs, Inc. for more than 16 years, has watched the community's reaction with quiet satisfaction. “Everybody wants to play when something looks really nice,” said Porter. “The enthusiasm for coming to Maggie Hathaway is going to be way more exciting for kids than it's ever been before. Golf for juniors will cost roughly $1 a round. Coaches will be hired from the community.”

Added Gigax: “The biggest thing we learned in junior golf is that you're really good at introducing kids to the game. Keeping them in the game is a much bigger pathway. The role model is probably the largest success factor.”

For Terrell, the project points toward something larger.

“There's no reason why the great game of golf shouldn't be played on great courses inside of all communities,” he says. “Not everyone will have the good fortune of raising the dollars we have. But if we take care of those courses and treat them as places where people come together, it really adds a new dimension to golf.”

When Hanse first walked the property, Terrell recalls, he turned to the group with tears in his eyes.

“He said, `This is what golf is all about.’ And then it took him about 10 seconds to say, `I'll do it.’”

The sustainability numbers are striking: 50 percent projected water reduction; thousands of tons of sand incorporated into the soil; 36 trees removed, 72 planted along the perimeter.

“The landscape around the entire perimeter creates an oasis inside,” said project manager Pat Gradoville. “We did some tree removals and quite a bit of thinning and pruning, and it really opened up long-distance views.”

The result will eventually screen out the adjacent power plant and streetscape, replaced by callistemon trees growing 20 to 30 feet tall, turning a scruffy urban boundary into a flowering wall of red.

Stand on that fifth green again, one gets a full understanding of what they were after. This is an escape and a connection at once, a little world unto itself, with the Hollywood sign and the observatory and the downtown skyline all watching over it. The greens are perfectly underfoot. The barranca looks almost playable. The church steeple is right where Naccarato pointed to it.

It's still Maggie. Just transformed.

Sam Farmer is an award-winning sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times who has covered all four major championships for the newspaper.