Three Examples of George Thomas’s Innovative Spirit

At his core, George Thomas was an experimenter and innovator. In the 1920s, for instance, he created one of the most popular variations of a rose. Yes, the flower.

Thomas’s ingenuity is evident in all of his golf course designs, three of which remain faithful to their original intent. This year’s golf calendar will feature each of those designs in championship play. First there’s the Genesis Invitational this week at Riviera Country Club, then the U.S. Open in June at Los Angeles Country Club’s North Course, and finally the U.S. Women’s Amateur in August at Bel-Air Country Club. All of these courses have unique features that represent the innovative spirit of Thomas’s architecture.

Riviera’s sixth hole

Today, everyone knows about the par 3 at Riviera with the bunker in the center of the green. It has even become a bit over-familiar. In its time, though, it was an audacious design and, to my knowledge, the first of its kind. With that little bunker, Thomas created numerous smaller targets around the edges and took away the standard safe play to the middle of the green. Also, he contoured the green so that it’s feasible to putt around the bunker if you find the wrong side of the donut. It’s a brilliant design that has been mimicked by a few architects but rarely effectively.

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Los Angeles Country Club’s course within a course

One of the clever aspects of Thomas’s revered design at LACC North was its malleability. He referred to this notion as a “course within a course.” The basic idea was that a few holes would play in drastically different ways—changing par values or angles of play—from day to day. On the North Course, the fifth, seventh, and 11th holes all have alternate tee boxes that change the fundamental dynamics of the holes.

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Bel-Air’s canyons

All three of Thomas’s L.A. masterpieces involve canyons. At Riviera, all 18 holes sit in a box canyon. At LACC North, you plunge into and out of a canyon at various points in the round. Bel-Air’s routing is divided between multiple steep canyons. To make this intricate routing work, Thomas and his associate Billy Bell had to undertake what was, at the time, a hugely ambitious engineering project, tunneling from one canyon to another and even installing an elevator to deliver players to the 10th tee.

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This trio of courses show George Thomas’s will to move the art of golf course design forward. If modern architects want to honor his legacy, they should look for their own ways to reinvent the rose, so to speak.